How do YOU organize your music collection? *POLL*

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Chryso
I line up the cds on the shelf.

i used to do that but it just wasted space so i ripped them all and put them in a box in the basement

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Im an organization freak when it comes to my music, so 4) but you did it wrong, the way I have it is:

.../.../[1989] Pretty Hate Machine

Date comes first, this way the albums will always be in chronological order, which is just very useful

That's an interesting idea, though it breaks using the "by album" view on on a portable player since you won't find "The Downward Spiral" under "T". "By Artist" still works fine of course.

I add in the year if it's missing when I rip the CD with Exact Audio Copy but I haven't been adding it into the folder name. Something for me to ponder

 

[Ika]

Option 3 is the best. If I hadn't already organized my music my way, #3 would be the way I would want it, though I might do it with dates, depending on how many discographies I have.

I currently have my music arranged by Genre\Artist\Album, then track number and title.

 

[davestar]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: davestar

Originally posted by: pyonir
Uh...

In my music folder every album gets its own folder. Like i have 12 Atmosphere albums. They are listed as:
Atmosphere - God Loves Ugly
Atmosphere - Headshots
etc.

I don't have an Atmosphere folder with all 12 albums in the folder. As for file name it's artist/track#/song name or just track#/song name

Then again, i only have about 450 albums on my comp. so.

this

it's a bother to have to dig 2-3 folders deep to play a song/album.

see thats a personal prefrence, i have a "Iron Maiden" folder and inside it are folders for every single album of theirs and the lableing is like my post above this one

um, yes. it is a personal preference. as is yours. this thread is about personal preference.

 

[Kelemvor]

I simply have a folder for each artist. Inside that folder is a folder for each album. Inside that folder are the songs from the album. As for the song names, I think it's just <Track Num - <Song Name>

Honestly I just let WMP rip them and name them however it wants to. heh.

 

[theprodigalrebel]

I don't have a lot of music so it goes like this:

Music\Artist - Album\Track# - Title

eg:
Music\Pearl Jam - Ten\01 - Once.mp3
Music\Original Score - American Beauty\01 - Dead Already.mp3
Music\Original Soundtrack - Once\01 - Falling Slowly.mp3

If I don't have a full album, they go in the main folder as:
Music\Bruce Springsteen - Secret Garden.mp3
Music\Pearl Jam - Man of the Hour.mp3

All my tracks have accurate ID3 tags (from WMP's AMG metadata service), complete with 500x500 album art embedded in the files. I do tweak the genre tags to better suit my sensibilities and cut down on superfluous esoteric entries. I downloaded MediaMonkey to organize my files and edit tags but I now use it as my primary media player too. My naming/folder structure probably suits my limited music collection and I rarely launch music through Windows Explorer. I only have ~100 full albums and ~200 single tracks.

Used to have a lot more before but lost it all when my hard drive died and I realized I had no fucking idea where my backup DVDs went. I tried to get them back from a friend whose music & video folders were pretty much a mirror image of mine but as it turned out, he deleted them all while doing some 'organizing', thinking he could get them back from me. Any way, it was no big loss because most of it was junk stuff I got on P2P - it was back when I had to get every halfway-decent song I heard in a movie, commercial or on the radio. I'd listen to them for a week and forget about it. They'd just sit there, waiting to be played along with the other bytes.

 

[SludgeFactory]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself
Im an organization freak when it comes to my music, so 4) but you did it wrong, the way I have it is:

.../.../[1989] Pretty Hate Machine

Date comes first, this way the albums will always be in chronological order, which is just very useful

+1

I'd rather have the albums sorted chronologically than alphabetically, my brain likes numbers and dates. If I'm looking for a specific song or stylistic phase of a group, I can come up with the general date I want (+/- a few years) fairly instantly without much thought, and then zero in on the exact album. If presented with an alphabetical list of weird-ass arbitrarily-named albums, it takes a bit of thinking to mentally associate song with album and then click on the right folder. If that makes any sense.

1989 - Pretty Hate Machine
1992 - Broken
1994 - The Downward Spiral
1999 - The Fragile
2005 - With Teeth
2007 - Year Zero
etc.

That's the way a discography is laid out, there's just something satisfying about seeing it that way on my computer too

 

[Kabrinski]

All in a single folder, thats how I do it. No need for a ton of sub folders for this. Named like Artist - Song Name.ext If you want to put album name in then go with Artist - Album - Song. If it is something that benefits from listening in order such as The Who - Tommy then Artist - Album - 01 Song Name.ext

 

[Jeff7]

Option #3.

Artist
-Album
--00 - Trackname.flac

Putting the artist and album in the filename is redundant.

If I don't tag the files right when they're ripped, I autotag with MediaMonkey. It's not exactly intuitive software, but eventually it does do the right thing.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
Option #3.

Artist
-Album
--00 - Trackname.flac

Putting the artist and album in the filename is redundant.

If I don't tag the files right when they're ripped, I autotag with MediaMonkey. It's not exactly intuitive software, but eventually it does do the right thing.

The Godfather is a great mp3 tagger, as long as you're not daunted by it's capabilities.

 

[Mojoed]

For those of you that use dBpoweramp Reference, (as a former EAC user, I gotta say dBpoweramp Reference is definitely worth the price) and like option #3, I came up with the following code:

[IFCOMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],Various Artists[]\[album] [[year]][IFMULTI] [Disc [disc]][]\[track] - [artist] - [title][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album] [[year]][IFMULTI] [Disc [disc]][]\[track] - [title][]


Simply paste that code into the naming box and most CD's should come out perfect. I tested singles, regular CD's, compilations and multi-disc sets.


For a CD with a single artist, the output would be:
Madonna\Immaculate [1990]\05 - Holiday.flac

For a compilation CD (soundtracks, etc) with various artists, the output would be:
..\Movie Soundtrack\Trainspotting [1996]\01 - Iggy Pop - Lust for Life.flac
I diverted from option #3 a bit for this scenario because for a compilation CD, you would want the artists name in the file name. Also, if the "Album Artist" ID3 field happens to be blank, a "Various Artists" folder will be substituted.


For a compilation CD that's a part of a multi-CD set, output would be:
..\Madonna\Immaculate [2003] [Disc 1]\05 - Madonna - Holiday.flac
I haven't run into this scenario much at all. Again the file name has the artist name in this scenario, because there would be various artists


For a non-compilation, Multi-CD set, output would be:
..\Pink Floyd\The Wall [2000] [Disc 1]\02 - The Thin Ice.flac


With the above naming code using dBpoweramp Reference, CD's can be ripped where ever you want, to any format, wiith one click. Great piece of software. Thanks to all for your suggestions and help!

 

[flunky nassau]

I prefer:

Folder: The Simpsons Sing the Blues

01 - do the bartman
02 - deep deep trouble

etc

 

[rpanic]

Originally posted by: Nitemare
Musica\Genre\Artist\Album

if it doesn't have an album just stick it in the artist folder

:thumbsup:


6

\80s\Eurthymics\Sweet Dreams\01 - Love Is A Stranger

sort 208gigs this way, 48,682 files in 4,828 folders