Organizing Music

[DiGiTYZED]

I need advice on storing and organizing my massive music (MP3) collection. I have different genres though Hip-Hop is my main genre. Also I have full albums, full mixtapes and singles.

I just want to simplify everything so I can easily use iTunes or similiar to better organize my library/collection.

Any kind of advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

TIA

[Jason Dunn]

Well, I organize my music in this way:

GENRE > ALBUM

So I have a folder for "New Music", and any albums that I buy/rip go into that folder, which each sub-folder being for each album. Some people go a step further and do a folder for each artist, then the albums in sub-folders underneath that.

The reality though is that as long as you have good meta tags in place, the way your organize it doesn't matter - the music software will let you sort and access the data in many ways...

[DiGiTYZED]

Hmmm... that'll be too much, too many genres. And not everything is albums. My collection/library album section is just as important as my singles section.

I think I'm just going to follow something like this:

A - D
E - H
I - L
M - P
Q - T
U - Z

And throw all genres, albums, individual tracks, etc. into their respective folder. I realize I just don't like labels anymore (rap, blues, r&b, rock, black, chinese, indian, male, female, gay, republican, etc.)

I admit I'm not too sure about this idea. Can anyone see any potential problems?

TIA

[Jason Dunn]

Well it's like I said, WMP10 and most other media players will be looking at your meta tag info - so if you want, you can put all the songs in ONE folder - it makes no difference.

I don't know why made this into a politcal thing :? but I'm out of this conversation now...

[DiGiTYZED]

my bad, sociology class getting to me

[Suhit Gupta]

I am a bit confused, do your MP3s have ID3 tags? If so then can't most players just scan your collection and make a nice database of them?

Suhit

[DiGiTYZED]

yeah, but I'm a neat freak so they have to be stored nicely as well as tagged appropiately.

[Gary Sheynkman]

I have all my ripped music in one very unorganized folder. I dont have much meta data on them (most are remixes often recorded straight from the tables and put online or made without meta data). Every time i feel like listening I just go into that pool and play songs that I like....but then again Im a weirdo

[DiGiTYZED]

Well I'm the source of music for my family and friends. They often use my computer to burn music, transfer songs to their MP3 players, play a mix/playlist, etc. I just want it more organized and easier for my non-technical folk to find stuff. I'm essentially want to use some music software that has a great library component and burns music.

[Jason Dunn]

I use a program called Media Monkey for tagging - as long as your file names are unified, or you have the proper tags, you can re-name and re-tag nicely.

[DiGiTYZED]

I use Tag & Rename. All I need now is a great player with a great library feature/component.

Any ideas besides iTunes?

[mrkablooey]

iTunes can just organize your music by artist then album if you tell it. That's the folders, but within iTunes itself you can sort however you want.

Seems easy enough. :)

[Ploobers]

Is there a program that will automatically set my tags based on my file structure? My meta tags are all messed up but my directories are organized very neatly. I looked at Media Monkey and it will set up your directories based on meta tags, but it didn't look like it would do it the other way.

[Darius Wey]

Music Label 2005 (http://codeaero.com:20101/music-label/) might be worth having a look at.

[Jason Dunn]

Is there a program that will automatically set my tags based on my file structure? My meta tags are all messed up but my directories are organized very neatly. I looked at Media Monkey and it will set up your directories based on meta tags, but it didn't look like it would do it the other way.

I've never seen a program to do that - but even if your meta-tags are messed up, are your file names at least the same? I use Media Monkey to set the meta tags based on file names initially, and now I use it to set the file names based on meta tag info.

[Ploobers]

My file names are just the track number and song, so there isn't any other info embedded in the filename itself. All the genre and album info is in the directory structure.

[Jason Dunn]

My file names are just the track number and song, so there isn't any other info embedded in the filename itself. All the genre and album info is in the directory structure.

If both the file naming AND meta data is screwed up...you've kind of painted yourself into a corner. :? Might be time to change your methods a bit. ;-)