Music Library Organization

[RobbieThe1st]

Ok, I have a question for everyone here: How do you organize your music?
Do you use Itunes(or w/e) and have all your music files in one large folder?
Do you organize your files into folders by artist, by album, or by type(mp3/wav/wma/flac/ogg)?
Also, what do you do about artwork - Windows XP folders can take a custom image, and MP3 files *can* have artwork embedded in them.
What do you do about music tracks gotten from different sources, and differences in tagging(for example, an album off Jamendo is not going to be tagged the same as one off Itunes)?

Also, if you buy a physical CD, and rip it to some file format, do you put those files with ones you don't have a physical copy of, or do you use a separate system for them?

What about multiple file formats - Say you keep files as OGG, but your MP3 player can only handle MP3/WMA - How do you handle the multiple sets? Also, what if, to save space, you encoded your MP3 player music as a lower bitrate?

Filenames - how do you organize them? track # - Title? Do you always use two-digit numbering (i.e. 02 12 15 03)? Also, what about title-capitalization - do you use all lowercase, all uppercase, first-letter capitalized, first letter of each word capitalized... what?

Also, what about MIDIs, project files(like if you made/edited the track yourself), and album data(lyrics, information, booklet-scans)?



I need to figure out a really good way to store all my music, and so I am asking these questions to get some ideas.

-RobbieThe1st

[Tapewolf]

I'm not really organised.  I have a collection of Ogg and MP3 files, and in one or two cases, just he bare .WAV files which I've not yet got around to titling.  I'll probably just re-rip those with KDE since it has CDDB support, but when it was ripped that wasn't feasible.
I get around the MP3 player by not buying one that doesn't support Ogg format.

I actually have about four libraries, with different filing conventions:
/mnt/spare/albums/
...which is split in subdirectories of group, with each album given the name of the album truncated to fit 8.3.  Eg:
/mnt/spare/albums/kingcrimson/red01.ogg , red02.ogg ... starls01.ogg starls02.ogg ...etc
I also have /mnt/stuff/cds/trackinfo/ which is where the files were already ripped, and has the info files needed to set their titles if they have to be re-ripped.  When /mnt/spare began to run out of disk space, I just left the files there.

KDE's media system writes the filename as the group and the song, e.g. '01 - King Crimson - Starless And Bible Black.ogg' so the old scheme doesn't work anymore.
In an effort to get things more unix-like I created the directory ~/music, which again is split by group, but I just keep the files as KDE named them.  This is the current way I'm doing things.

I also have /mnt/d/mp3  which contains some of my oldest encodings, around 1997/1998.  This was back in the DOS days so everything is in 8.3 format.

Finally there is a directory called ~/mp33 which contains most of the random mp3 files which I may or may not have obtained from Napster back in the day.  This contains all kinds of stuff including things my brother may or may not have asked me to download for him back in the day which I wouldn't normally listen to.  I have been known to play it in order while colouring things.

[mits]

directories on disk:

Artist/Album/nn-Trackname.whatever

I found that trying to sort things by genre was impossible, and anything other than Artist/Album made no sense for me.

[Zina]

I buy CDs of my favorites artists. Mostly because I like supporting them, as well as owning an actual CD from them.

I actually just recently downloaded iTunes because I just got an iPod(just like everyone else. I am part of the cool kids). Before I had WinMX, and everything was organized. Now I need to organize everything again, but I'm lazy.
Considering most of my music is downloaded, anything goes. Organizing everything will take me most of the day(I have SO MANY music files). But I usually have them organized according to genre. It's the easiest.

[rabid_fox]

On iTunes - by most listened to.

By CD, a hierarchy exists.

Consideration 1 - Artist
Consideration 2 - How complete the collection is (is it one or two albums, or is it EPs, LPs and singles)
Consideration 3 - Chronology (when was it released)
Consideration 4 - How often I'm likely to grab that CD

[Paul]

CDs are ordered on the shelves alphabetically by artist; where I have more albums by the same artist, chronologically by album release date.

Same principle applies to iTunes: Folders alphabetically by artist, inside the folders albums chronologically. No difference is made with regards to whether I ripped the MP3s from my own CDs or got them from elsewhere.

Where I have only one or very few MP3s with an artist, they go in a folder labeled "diverse"; tracks ordered alpabetically by artist within.

I'm not particularly orderly like that with most other things, but I have so much music that I wouldn't be able to find anything if it wasn't neatly organized.

And I don't care about music artwork when it comes to iTunes.

[Ryudo Lee]

Ok, I have a question for everyone here: How do you organize your music?
Do you use Itunes(or w/e) and have all your music files in one large folder?
Do you organize your files into folders by artist, by album, or by type(mp3/wav/wma/flac/ogg)?

For my music, which is almost all MP3, is first separated into folders, under one folder titled MP3.
Music that I download from sites like OCRemix go into a folder titled as that site's name and then I have sub folders for each game that I've downloaded music from.
Music that's not game related, but is original stuff (like from Newgrounds) all goes into one folder titled as that site's name.  I don't have much of that, but when I start getting more, I'll create folders for each artist that I download from.
Copyrighted music that has been "legally" obtained goes into a folder called Music.  I don't download whole albums, but rather singles from various artists so this folder isn't further organized.
Each MP3 is renamed like this: Artist - Song Title.mp3

Also, what do you do about artwork - Windows XP folders can take a custom image, and MP3 files *can* have artwork embedded in them.
What do you do about music tracks gotten from different sources, and differences in tagging(for example, an album off Jamendo is not going to be tagged the same as one off Itunes)?

I remove the artwork.  It takes up space and I don't care for album art anyway.  And I always use List View instead of Icon View anyway.

Also, if you buy a physical CD, and rip it to some file format, do you put those files with ones you don't have a physical copy of, or do you use a separate system for them?

I haven't bought a physical CD since... err... 1998.  Yep.  But in the event that I do rip a CD, it's always into MP3.  I don't like to deal with other formats.

What about multiple file formats - Say you keep files as OGG, but your MP3 player can only handle MP3/WMA - How do you handle the multiple sets? Also, what if, to save space, you encoded your MP3 player music as a lower bitrate?

I always try to get all my music into MP3.  If it's WMA, then it just gets bundled in with the rest of my MP3's.  And no, I don't lower the bitrates.  I want the highest bitrates I can get, as I don't have to deal with space issues.

Filenames - how do you organize them? track # - Title? Do you always use two-digit numbering (i.e. 02 12 15 03)? Also, what about title-capitalization - do you use all lowercase, all uppercase, first-letter capitalized, first letter of each word capitalized... what?

For the few albums that I actually do have (I have only 2, both of them are Demons & Wizards, which is a really awesome power metal band btw) I name them this way: # - Artist - Album - Song Title.mp3
That way, I can reproduce the CD when I want to.
All others are: Artist - Song Title.mp3

Also, what about MIDIs, project files(like if you made/edited the track yourself), and album data(lyrics, information, booklet-scans)?

I have a bunch of MIDIs and WAVs that are in a separate folder that's just collecting dust in the dark recesses of one of my HDD's.

In short, other than all the game remixes that I've downloaded, I'm not very organized with my music.  I only really organize my game remixes for quick reference.

[Tapewolf]

Also, what about MIDIs, project files(like if you made/edited the track yourself), and album data(lyrics, information, booklet-scans)?

This is a part of the question I missed.  With the DOUG the Eagle stuff, I have a directory in ~/music/ for them, where each album has a subdirectory which is itself is split up something like:
track16
track24
master16
master24
artwork

Track16 contains the 16/44 versions of the raw tracks in WAV format.  This generally has test mixes of tracks before the album is finalized.

Track24 will contain two 24/96 WAV files, one for each side (i.e. each reel) of the album.  This will be a flat transfer from the master tapes.  It may also contain the project divided into tracks in FLAC format, ready for sending to the mastering engineer.  Sometimes I'll just encode both sides and send them like that.

Master16 usually contains test masters from the engineer for proofing purposes.  When the 24-bit master is sent back, these will be moved to a subdirectory and replaced with a 16-bit master downsampled from the 24-bit version.  CDs and MP3s will be struck from these files.

Master24 contains the 24-bit master when it is returned from the engineer.

Artwork contains the full-res images making up the cover, the master version of the cover in ODF format, and the PDF version.  For cases like Mythical Creatures where it is professionally printed, the templates for printing will also be here.


As for MIDI files, I have a separate directory (C:\cakewalk) on the windows partition where those live, mostly in SONAR's native CWP format (or whatever the current flavour is).

For digitally edited projects in Audacity, e.g. the radio series, I have a directory called ~/recordings/ where these are kept.  The performance archive is in '~/missmab/audio/cast/' and split by actor.  Symbolic links are used when the actor has changed their name, e.g. Volfram

In short, each situation is different and you probably aren't going to find a single solution that fits everything.

[Sufurin Scorda]

(Whatever the music folder's called) / (Band name) / (Song title).mp3

That's pretty much how I organize all my music. If I have a crap load of songs, I might have it separated into albums. But for most of the bands I have crap loads of songs of, I just have it all in one folder, because I like listening to all of it. <3 Not just whatever's in some album.

The stuff I enjoy listening to is on my mp3 player (I do not have an iPod because I am not cool. But I'm still cooler than Bill, so that's okay.), the stuff I love and want to listen to on a daily/almost-daily basis is on my flash drive, music that I like but don't listen to much (BECAUSE I DON'T LOVE IT AS MUCH AS THE OTHERS) is on the "family computer" in a hidden folder (So my brothers don't delete it ), music that I'm going to listen to ('Cuz I heard it was good) is everywhere...

On my flash drive, there's a "Misc" folder with my music, where I just have a few songs from different bands. Like if there's only 1-4 songs by a band I like to listen to a lot. Sometimes I have music I haven't listened to yet in there, but I usually just have it like every other song, except the folder for the band name has a tilde or an underscore or something infront of it.

I don't like album art. Not because it's ugly, but because I don't look at it, and if I don't even look at it, why have it wasting my space?

For tagging, I just look at the info and make sure it's like everything else. I make sure it at least has the artist/band name, album name and song name. Don't really care about track number or comments (Even though I usually get rid of the comments because it's just the URL for a torrent site or something.)

Jamendo

That site's cool, I've downloaded a few albums on there. I like All:My:Faults. <3

[Eibborn]

I do the equivalent of chucking it all in a box and shaking it. I will never be organized, so I might as well be glorious in my disorder.