Archiving your music

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Archiving your music

Reply #25 – 2004-03-15 23:17:04

G:\Artist - Album\Track# - Title.ext

Besides being the best way I could find to keep my music on the computer, my mp3 cd player sorts directories by name and files by number, so this way I can burn the albums directly to a cd, know the album order and play the files in the correct sequence

Archiving your music

Reply #26 – 2004-03-16 02:51:12

\Artist\Album\Artist - Track - Title.ext
everything is stored as an album and songs can also be taken from an album and put into a mix folder easily since artist is included in the filename

Archiving your music

Reply #27 – 2004-03-16 03:03:45

Code: [Select]

Artist/Album/Artist_-_Album_-_Track_-_Title

I really hate files that are just track number and title. Very confusing if seen outside the context of the directory structure.

Archiving your music

Reply #28 – 2004-03-16 05:06:09

Forgot two variants - for various artists, I put the release year after the albumname:

Code: [Select]

Various Artists - Forms of Hands Vol. 3 (2003) [Lame MP3 192]/03 - Ah Cama-Sotz - Khêmikalz.mp3

Causes stupid sorting, if done different. On double/tripple/.. CDs I put that before the Encoder:

Quote

Blackmore's Night - 2002 - Past Times With Good Company [2 discs, FhG MP3 VBR]

I ordered my collection by genre for some time but I don't think this clever anymore: You always come to some albums, which you just can't put in exactly one genre (I got a dozen of artists who chanced their style considerably) - and putting some albums of an artist in this genre, others in that.. Quite stupid imo.

Thats it basically. Happy if that helped you a bit

Archiving your music

Reply #29 – 2004-03-16 08:12:09

Quote

Code: [Select]
Artist/Album/Artist_-_Album_-_Track_-_Title
I really hate files that are just track number and title. Very confusing if seen outside the context of the directory structure.

why do you need any subdirectory structure in this case?

Archiving your music

Reply #30 – 2004-03-16 08:57:31

I used to use Artist - Album - ## - Title for my files as well, but there is a huge flaw with this scheme, and that is that albums are not sorted chronologically (first album first, second album second, etc.) Instead the albums are sorted by title, and though it looks fine, it's not very practical or accurate.

I've changed to Artist - (Year) Album - ## - Title now for my files, and I'm not looking back. It is, for lack of a better word, perfect, for me.

For various artists/soundtrack filenames, I simply add a prefix, and change the formula a bit: VA/OST - Album - ## - Artist - Title . In my opinion, the Year isn't really needed with VA/OST albums, and so far I haven't encountered any problems with this (been using this scheme for over a year now).

With filenames like these, directory structure becomes an independent thing. It can be anything you wish, and all your files will still retain the necessary information in their names and be sorted correctly. However, keeping albums separate is never a bad idea. I have separate directories for single files as well as full albums.

My structure is like this:

Format / Full Albums / Artists / Artist - (Year) Album [QX] / *.*
Format / Full Albums / Compilations / VA - Album (Year) [QX] / *.*
Format / Full Albums / Soundtracks / OST - Album (Year) [QX] / *.*
Format / Single Files / Genre / *.*

This keeps all my music just a few clicks away. It could be narrowed down even further by eliminating the Artists/Compilations/Soundtracks directories, and just throwing it all into the Full Albums directory, but I like to keep it separate. The [QX] is used to ascertain the Quality of the encode (Q5, Q6, etc.). Not needed by any means, but it can be useful.

Hope some of this is useful to you.

Archiving your music

Reply #31 – 2004-03-16 17:43:36

i use quite a common structure, but i lowercase everything (including id3 tags) :

Code: [Select]

faith no more\1992 - angel dust\01 - land of sunshine.mp3

i use lowercase because nobody capitalizes the same way. here's a few examples of how i've seen "faith no more" written :

Quote

Faith No More
Faith no More
Faith no more

edit - (not to mention people uppercasing the file extension ! )

for me it's a lot easier not to bother with the shift key anymore...

also, I like to make sure that the genre id3 field is empty... i've always hated it !

Archiving your music

Reply #32 – 2004-03-16 18:24:37

Code: [Select]

%artist%\%album%\%tracknumber% - %title%

Quote

I really hate files that are just track number and title. Very confusing if seen outside the context of the directory structure.

Why/when/how would you see the files outside of the directory structure? I suppose if someone was downloading individual files from me THEY might have a problem, but I don't cater to illegal file sharing, else I wouldn't Musepack or FLAC . I could not care less when an album was released, so long as it is good, thus I have no use for putting the DATE field in with the filename.

In terms of metadata, I HATE comments. IMO they are useless unless you are sharing your music and want other people to know that you are the one who ripped/encoded (I'm sure the RIAA loves seeing that information). I always use ARTIST, ALBUM, TRACKNUMBER, TRACKNAME, GENRE and DATE (I only put in the year, which IMO is mostly irrelevant anyway, as long as the music is good) and I sometimes use (if needed) ALBUM ARTIST (very useful for CDs with Various Artists) and/or DISC, very useful for multiple CD albums, after all the album isn't called Blah Blah (Disc One), it is just called Blah Blah, so, IMO, (Disc One) should not appear in the ALBUM field.

edit: typo

Archiving your music

Reply #33 – 2004-03-28 21:48:58

Artist/Year - Album/Artist - Album - Trk# - Title

This way the file itself has enough info so you know what it is. I'm starting to get too many artists, I may have to put letter groupings together

Archiving your music

Reply #34 – 2004-03-28 22:13:52

I just use "artist - album - track# - title" and stick all my songs in the same directory.... all 3700 of them

Archiving your music

Reply #35 – 2004-03-28 22:52:02

I've yet to find a naming scheme that is flexible enough for every situation.

Anyway as of today my standard for pop, rock, jazz, etc. is the following one:

Code: [Select]

Artist\Album\Track - Title.Format
Ozric Tentacles\Become the Other\05 - Neurochasm.mp3

                     or

Various Artists\Album\Track - (Artist) Title.Format
Various artists\Natural Born Killers [Original Soundtrack]\15 - (Nine Inch Nails) Something I Can Never Have.mp3

Things gets a lot more complicated for classical music, where I want to have at hand also information about the conductor and performer(s) or orchestra and very often also about the movement and tempo.

Some examples:

Code: [Select]

Johann Sebastian Bach\Brandenburg Concertos, Suites No. 2 & 3 - Concentus Musicus Wien - N. Harnoncourt (Disc 1)\01 - Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, BWV1047 - 1. Allegro.mp3

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\Die Zauberflöte - Berliner Philharmoniker - Herbert Von Karajan (Disc 1)\02 - Die Zauberflöte - A1 Nr. 1 - Introduktion- Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!.mp3

Various Artists\Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Live (Aula Nervi, Città del Vaticano, 13 giugno 1987)\01 - Ludwig van Beethoven - op.2 n.3 - 1) Allegro con brio.mp3

In this cases to pretend to store also artist and album name in the filename it is obviously infeasible.

I must add that all the information is also stored in tags so I can easly batch-rename my files the day I change may mind on my naming scheme (which already happened a couple of times).

Right now I'm considering that the lack of "year of release" information is a major drawback and I'm considering to include it in the "album directory" name. That will not anyway will be a match for compilation of material released in different years.

One more thing: I also use mp3collector from collectorz.com to organize my library. I find it almost perfect, letting me to search for every field and look at my collection in inifinite different virtual views, with only a MAJOR limit: like the name implies it is only for mp3. (Anybody listening from collectorz.com???)

I've yet to thoroughly test if the new Winamp 5 library fits my needs, but the first feeling is it will not. Same for iTunes, which anyway i'm reluctant to adopt as I'm a Winamp addict.

Sergio

Archiving your music

Reply #36 – 2004-03-30 13:42:17

My structure:

standard album
D:\Artist - (Year) - Album\Track# - Title

compilations
D:\Album - (Year) - Volume\Track# - Artist - Title

soundtracks
D:\[Soundtracks]\Album - OST - Composer - (Year)

always renamed using Renamer v5beta to Large Case. (is a hell of work)...don't like the recent version of Renamer.
ID3v1/2 tagged by MP3 Tag Tool v1.2 (shitty proggie, but the f2k masstagger isn't very handy)

The ambition:
- keep titles short for readability
- (Year) for info and correct order; no reason for the brakets
- soundtracks: don't find the album I'm looking for, when the composer is @ the beginning
- Large Case due to readability (lower case is hard to read)

Problems:
- don't know what to do with classical music (so many artists and composers and other stuff)
- system should be consistent for ALL albums
- cannot find a reasonable sorting method for single music files (no albums)
- MP3 Tag Tool v1.2 is buggy but didn't find a worthy replacement

JD

Archiving your music

Reply #37 – 2004-03-30 19:16:26

I'm using the following scheme:
Music/
-Albums
--flac
--- /Artist - Albumname/Tracknumber Artist - Title.flac
--ogg
--mp3
-Soundtracks
--flac
--- /Soundtrack - Filmtitle/Tracknumber Artist - Title.flac
--mp3
--ogg

etc.. the same for /Comedy /Audiobooks /Sampler
You can add the whole music directory to a playlist or only a certain category.
The file format folders allow to identify which codec was used.

Archiving your music

Reply #38 – 2004-03-30 19:39:48

depending on the source of the files -
either
0) Artists/groups with multiple recordings or at least the chance I will acquire more from them
\artist\album\*broken up into individual files with varying codecs depending on album*
e.g \network drive\Prince\Purple_Rain_Soundtrack_(1984_Warner_Bros._LP)\separate .APE files for this one\

1) Isolated albums - usually LPs
\LP title with label info\seperate tracks\
e.g. \network drive\Nickel_Music_of_the_Gay_Nineties_(1962_Audio_Fidelity-AFSD_5960)\more files from my Monkey's Audio days\

Archiving your music

Reply #39 – 2004-03-30 20:57:04

Having the artist and track in the filename is essential. With 90% of my collection being jazz and classical there is a common problem of identical track names. For ecample, I have several recordings of Summertime, I'll remember April, Filthy McNasty and many more. The filename has to have the artist to distinguish the two or to burn them onto a CD. In classical music, I would hate to count the number of tracks names Allegro

Archiving your music

Reply #40 – 2004-03-30 21:14:32

i use

backed up\artist - title
not backed up\artist - title

back up the new stuff regularly. tag the bejesus out of everything. don't ever run mass taggers and the like over your whole collection; copy bit by bit to a working directory and make sure it is coming out properly, then copy back to the main directory.

use winamp's gen_yar plugin and "physically remove" option to move files around as necessary.

artist - title is how i want to see my songs displayed, so that's why i use it for the filename format. id3s are good for organizing metadata (year of release, album, track number), but it's always better to disable id3 reading when possible and rename your files to the display format that you want. there's an analogous model for human memory in cognitive psychology called content-addressable storage. if the filename is the display scheme you want, then by knowing the location of the file (hoobastank - escape.mp3), the program also knows the content (hoobastank - escape). if you try to do the same thing with id3s, the program has to actually read a little part of each file (ie turning "c:\my music\rock\hoobastank\2003 - the reason\04 - escape.mp3" into "hoobastank - escape" by reading the id3).

turn off id3 reading and queue up a long list of mp3s. then turn it back on, do the same, and watch your program get lagged all to shit.

i can refresh my 4500-song media library in three seconds. literally.

Archiving your music

Reply #41 – 2004-03-30 21:36:08

What I use is:

%root%\Album (Bitrate)\(Disc)\Album - (Disc Number, if Applicable) - Tracknumber Title

I too find that not having the album in the filename could be the cause for confusion if the tags were ever lost, or if for some reason somone found these files later and the tags were stripped (its not likely to happen, but it satisfies my orginizational needs.) I also include the disc number in the filename, so I never have to sort through a bunch of files (again, if the tags were lost and mixed up.) To get the proper bitrate, I attach a field to each track in an album, indicating what format I have ripped them in (so for my Vorbis rips, it would be (Ogg VBR). The only reason I tack the bitrate onto the end of the album's folder name is to keep track of what format each rip is in, so I have some way to tell what I need to re-rip to a higher bitrate (or a lossless format). Since I have done this from the beginning, it has been easy for me to do this (as many of my older rips were in 128 or 192 CBR).

And I only really use comments to indicate the encoder settings I had used for that perticuar album, which is also helpful in determining weather I need to upgrade to album with a better form of compression.

With this scheme in place, I would simply use this string with Foobar's masstagger (Guess Values from Filename):

%album% - %disc%-%tracknumber% %title%

Archiving your music

Reply #42 – 2004-03-30 21:53:52

Quote

And I only really use comments to indicate the encoder settings I had used for that perticuar album, which is also helpful in determining weather I need to upgrade to album with a better form of compression.

I have been using comments for the 1972 Deutsche Grammophon boxed set Beethoven records I am currently transferring and will likely do so for any future projects that are similar.

having this is good 'Sonata No.1 In F Minor, Op.2 No.1-1st movement-Allegro'
but it helps a bit more IMO having album notes in the comments (same notes for all four movements):
\This piece starts with an ascending motif known as a Mannheim Rocket. In shape it is like the the theme of the finale of Mozart's G minor Symphony (No. 40). (Beethoven jotted down Mozart's theme in his sketch-books some years later, while working on the finale of his own C minor symphony.) Already, in choosing a four movement pattern, and in the range of dynamics, Beethoven was forging a new scale for the piano sonata, even though the slow movement and minuet here are fairly conventional. The finale is turbulent, eventful, and far from easy to play.

edit: and of course I use comments for nearly of the Old Time Radio shows that I am encoding in both FLAC (archiving) and MP4 (web downloads when that site is redesigned a bit)

Archiving your music

Reply #43 – 2004-05-24 14:04:25

At first my directorty structure was:

Code: [Select]

\genre\artist\album\

But i had a lot of albums of artists working together. When i have an album of ArtistX & ArtistY, in what artist-folder should it be put?
That's why i decided to go for this structure

Code: [Select]

\genre\artist - album\

At first my file-naming structure was:

Code: [Select]

artist - album - track# - title.ext

At some point i had tracks with extremely long titles on an album with an extremely long name by an artist with an extremely large name. My PC couldnt cope with that. the files were unreachable. i had to go renaming them under DOS..

That's when i decided to go for:

Code: [Select]

track# - tracktitle.ext

Archiving your music

Reply #44 – 2004-05-24 15:32:46

Lots of different organisation schemes here... this is mine:

albums:

Code: [Select]

%base music dir%\Albums\%artist%\%year% - %albumtitle% [%codec%]\(if 2 or more CDs: "Disc # - ")%track (+leading zeros)% - %songtitle%

for single songs:

Code: [Select]

%base music dir%\Songs\%artist%\%artist% - (somtimes: "%album% - " and or "%tracknumber% - ") - %songtitle%

One last things you should keep in mind: FAT32 and NTFS (or is it the Windows OS?) have a path limit of 255 characters!!!

Any file which path is longer than that is inaccessible, you can't even rename them! To create or salvage those files just move around the folder that contains these files.

In any case try to keep your file and folder names short.

Archiving your music

Reply #45 – 2004-05-25 12:46:12

Other threads on this subject:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=21847
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=20699
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=17258

Archiving your music

Reply #46 – 2005-12-15 19:54:53

Label/Year-Artist_or_VA-album/##-Artist-Title

Archiving your music

Reply #47 – 2006-03-05 11:16:02

my structure:

Quote

Main genre\Artist [Nation]\(Year) Artist - Album [Label no.] {Bitrate} \ ....file unchanged(scene)

sample>

Quote

O:\=dnb,beat\Adam Freeland [gb]\(2004) Adam Freeland - Fabriclive 16 [FABRIC 32] {flac}\04 Xylophone.flac

Archiving your music

Reply #48 – 2006-03-06 03:35:49

Quote

How I should go about organizing all my audio, be it mp3 mpc acc, any of it.

I do:
Folder: LastName, FirstName (for example, Orbison, Roy or Beethoven, Ludwig)
---Folder: AlbumName (for example, Black & Wight Night, Legend)
------Folder: Music - FLAC
---------File: 01 TrackName01.flac (for example, Ooby Dooby)
---------File: 02 TrackName02.flac
------Folder: Lyrics
---------File: 01 TrackName01.txt (for example, Ooby Dooby)
---------File: 02 TrackName02.txt
------Folder: Liner Notes
--------- I can't find any of this online and have to type it all into a text file.
------Folder: Artwork
---------FIle: Front Cover - AlbumName.jpg (or .gif)

,dave

Archiving your music

Reply #49 – 2006-03-06 13:56:34

I organize by:

Artist Year Album/tracknumber. title

This results to nearly as short as possible path & filenames, but includes the necessary information.

The sorting of albums is done obviously by artist, then followed by year release.
And, I don't need to move albums to sort them.
All artists & albums are in 1 main music directory.
So, I don't need to browse into #A# subdirectories, if i search for ABBA vs. Beatles in a #B' subdirectory.
Same is valid for creating subdirectories per artists. Unconvinient to browse.
Scrolling per mousewheel is onyl thing to do with my method.
well, other people, other preferences.

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