okay to wrap things up I’ve decided to stick with itunes + plexamp for the easy file management and playlist compatibility with DJ software
- thanks to 2 scripts from here: iTunes | Scripts for iTunes for Windows I was able to effectively disable track and album auto ratings in itunes meaning I can rely on smart playlists in plexamp again
- thanks to bulk updating the album artist field of my collection with MP3Tag all of my weird album artist/collab album issues described above are no more
- by cross referencing smart playlists of everything with ratings in plex and itunes I can say that only around 3% of ratings are missing in plex (likely due to this issue iTunes import fails due to Unicode in paths) and those I can likely fix at some point by building a smart playlist to look for a list of characters that I know cause issues
3% I can live with for now. totally fair trade off for not having to do my own file management and not needing to make copies of files to DJ with until I need to. stoked to be able to just enjoy Plexamp now.
