how is the music on your computer organized?

[nageov3t]

assuming you still have local MP3's and don't just rely on streaming for everything...

I'm finally getting around to trying to reorganize my music library. I've been ripping CD's and downloading music since the late 90's, so at this point it's just a giant clusterfuck because I never had a great system for organizing it all.

right now, I'm thinking...

music\!compilations\album name
music\!soundtracks\movie title
music\artist name\album name

debating if I should throw in "music\!singles\" for one-hit wonders rather than saving entire bad albums with 1-2 good songs.

previously I tried sorting by genre, but that just turned into a mess (because it's a fine line between alt rock vs alternative, and can you really classify a band as generic "80's Music" when their first album came out in 1978?)

 

[Anubis]

Music\Artist\Album\Artist - Track ## - Title

262 GB organized that way. just over 25000 songs, everything is tagged correctly with art

 

[KentState]

Music/Artist/Album/Track # - Title

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Music/(first letter of artists name)/Artist/Album

 

[effowe]

Music/Genre/Artist/Album/# - Song Title

 

[nageov3t]

Music\Artist\Album\Artist - Track ## - Title

262 GB organized that way. just over 25000 songs, everything is tagged correctly with art

I'm jealous

album art seems to be a perpetual problem for me... even when it shows up on my computer, it seems to lose it half the time when I sync it to my MP3 player (android phone running PowerAmp).

when I ripped all my CD's this summer (before throwing out the jewelcases and boxing them up), I went with that same structure. ended up with dozens of albums sorted into "various artists" and "unknown," though (hence why I felt the need for dedicated soundtrack and compilation directories, even if I'll have to manually move folders there)

 

[Anubis]

it took me a solid 3 weeks to go through everything and make sure it was perfect, i woudl just come home from work and spend hours renaming stuff with MP3Tag,

nearly all mu music was already separated by artist and album which made it slightly easier.

 

[Mixolydian]

iTunes.

 

[lxskllr]

Artist-album-song. I also have it segregated in a few rough categories; Ambient, Celtic, DooWop, Jazz, and so on.

 

[TallBill]

Dont have a computer anymore....

 

[T_Yamamoto]

iTunes.

And if I ripped it, C://My Documents/Music/

It's all in there

 

[shortylickens]

Artist first, then Album.
For a while it didnt matter, then I started buying all kinds of shit from Amazon, dirt cheap. Now I gotta keep it organized.

 

[Eos]

Artist\Album\nn - song title

M: \Music\Eric B. & Rakim\Paid In Full\06 - Paid in Full.mp3

I also spent a very long time ripping and sorting and tagging. 600x600 album art grabbed from http://www.albumartexchange.com

The BIGGEST coup for me was proper case capitalization. I was looking at manually changing the case on the words:

a|an|and|as|at|but|by|for|from|in|nor|of|on|or|so|to|the|yet

For me, I wanted those to be lower case unless the first or last word in a title. In Mp3tag, I have a five step "action" sequence that changes any selected track. So changing 13000+ files took just a few minutes instead of weeks.

 

[JimmiG]

Very rarely rip or download anything. Almost everything is streaming via Spotify now on my phone or computer.

However it used to be
Genre\Artist\Album

Genre was very broad, just 6-7 in total, but I found it necessary because I listen to everything from classical to folk to harsh EBM...

 

[gevorg]

Music/Genre/Artist/Album/# - Song Title

This, all in FLAC. 735GB.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Music/(first letter of artists name)/Artist/Album

This.

And then I have a folder for just random singles and a folder for split EPs.

I don't have a folder for compilation albums as I usually just pull the single tracks I like off them and put them in the random singles folder.

And I track down and embed the album art and make sure the tags are exactly how I like them for each track.

A little over a terabyte in MP3s all neatly organized and easily searchable and playable. Getting it organized from scratch was a tedious job but it was well worth it and now when I add something new to my collection I just have to put it in the right folder...grab the album art and edit the tags...quick and easy and everything stays oranized on the fly as my collection grows.

 

[PingviN]

Music\Artist\Album\Song title

 

[cronos]

Right now it's just Music/Album/Track. Eventually I'd like to get it to Music/Artist/Album/Track but I haven't found the time to do the reorganizing.

Just like most everyone here I don't bother with genre, it's in the ID3 tag, so I'd just let the player worry about it.

 

[alien42]

music\letter of alphabet\artist\(year) album\track #. track title

 

[sdifox]

type/artist/album

 

[JoeyP]

How do you guys manage collections from various artists? For example, I have some old Billboard Top 100 CDs and they have a bunch of different artists. Just wondering the best way to organize those.

 

[lxskllr]

How do you guys manage collections from various artists? For example, I have some old Billboard Top 100 CDs and they have a bunch of different artists. Just wondering the best way to organize those.

Compilations sit by themselves under the general category I chose.

 

[IronWing]

Physically via iTunes using mysterious Apple logic.

Within iTunes, playlists are segregated by Genre/Geography. We have lots of world music so it makes some sense (except for the former Ottoman territories which screw up everything, damn pluralistic societies). So:

Africa
Americas
Blues/Gospel
Central Asia
Choral
East Asia/Oceania
Europe
Folk/Country
India/Pakistan
Middle East
Rock/Pop
Shape Note

 

[bigrash]

Music/(first letter of artists name)/Artist/Album

this

 

[JoeyP]

Compilations sit by themselves under the general category I chose.

So when you view by artist, you see hundreds of artists with maybe one song each? And then those songs may be duplicates: the artist sold that song under one album, and Billboard packages it under another album.

Maybe I'm over thinking this. Viewing by album makes sense here, but I am used to viewing by artist.