Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method? (Read 31929 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Hello,

I'm trying to organize all my music collection of FLAC, but is not a simple work! :-)

What is the best method for naming the folder and the file of the FLAC collection?

What is the most used and most "standard" method for naming file and folder that is used from "audio people"?


Thanks!

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #1 –
It is all a bit arbitrary.
In principle the tags enables us to navigate our collection so why care about a file structure?
In practice it might be convenient to have some kind of structuring.
A folder per Artist and within this folder a folder per album is common.
For file name you can use Track-title-artist
In pop music this works, in case of classical you now and then might hit the 256 limit.
Keeping all tracks from an album in one folder I do think convenient.
For top level I use separate folders for blues, jazz, pop, and classical simply because this allows me to define separate libraries.
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #2 –
Hello there,

It IS very arbitrary, so you have to organize your data the way it best serves your needs.

Personally, i use the classic Artist/Album/Track in a way that the music organizes by itself. For example, the Abbey Road album (The Beatles)

/Beatles-The
/1969-09-26_Abbey-Road
/BT-19690926-AR_01

This way, the first song will always be the first one, no matter the name of the song. Also the album is organized chronologically, because i put the date when it was released. This is their second to last album, so this way it can be organized in a Beatles folder as such, in spite the fact that the album starts with the letter "A". The name of the band will be organized within the "B" letter, in spite of the "The" before the name "Beatles". All the rest of the info can be done within the ID tag environment, but now you have your music in chronological order. This works very well with live albums, where they were recorded and released at two different dates.

Well, hope this works

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #3 –
Assuming you're organizing albums and not songs, my advice, keep the structure as flat, and as simple, as possible. Artist or Band / Albums or Singles / Songs. Over the years, I've tried to organize file structures by genre or year, but there were always too many exceptional cases that defied effective or simple classification by either. As well, I've found it's important to be quite consistent, that makes later wholesale changes to the structure much easier. In terms of handling a large collection, it really helps to be conscientious in terms of adding all of the details necessary in order to have complete metadata.

Personally, I wished I'd been more patient and played around with a small subset of my collection before doing the entire works.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: 2tec on
Artist or Band / Albums or Singles / Songs.

Actually I've extended the previous example. I'm currently using "Artist/Date - Album/Songs" which allows me to differentiate between the same album with different releases.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #5 –
Wouldn't it be far easier to use a app like iTunes or Foobar ect... to organise  your music? The control you have is far superior.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #6 –
I keep a very strict /Music/Artist/Album/Artist - Album [n] - Trackname.ext

Foobar2000's file operations allow me to easily maintain this structure for incoming files.

Media libraries that read tags allow me to do everything else, such as querying by year or genre.

Quote from: 2tec on
which allows me to differentiate


Nice to see people reasoning about this in terms of "X allows me to do Y". 

Maybe I'll add the date to albums as well.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #7 –
I keep mine in:

[album artist] - [album]/[track artist] - [track #] - [title]

There are very rare occasions where I need to add the year to the album such as the case with Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine getting a remaster and release so I'll just stick ([year]) after the album title

Saying there's no point having a structure if you use software to manage it is silly if that software cocks up and trashes all the tags or it gets corrupted or something, with a sensible file structure I can at least find tracks without needing to load any software.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #8 –
I've settled with the following structure:

[album artist]/[year]-[album]/[track #] [title][suffix]

and for CDs with various artists:

Various/[year]-[album]/[track #] [title] - [track artist][suffix]

To sync newly purchased CDs, I've a self-made script to calculate a scaling factor with wavgain in album gain, extract tags by filename and encode using LAME. It's all automatic.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #9 –
I use a modified version of the common Artist\Album\Song structure, but like Robert I put the date as part of the album name folder level, and track number as part of the filename level so that albums show up in chronological order and individual song files show up in order they occurred on the album, when I am browsing folders. For example:

Music\U2\1991--Achtung Baby\U2--03--One.mp3

I keep the artist as part of the filename in case I pull the file somewhere else (e.g., onto my USB, or email a song to a friend to see what they think, etc.)

for Various-artists albums or compilation, I will use the filename structure tracknumber--track artist--track name so that the files are still correctly ordered if you just browse through the files themselves; if I kept "artist" as the first part of my filename field, the files themselves would be organized alphabetically by artist.

But as noted above, metadata runs most things nowadays which makes file structure less consequential, and if you have proper metadata on your actual files, it's easy enough to have a player reorganize the whole filename structure as a batch.
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #10 –
How to add date to album folder when ripping using EAC?

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Seeking_Lossless on
How to add date to album folder when ripping using EAC?

Straight from the EAC FAQ and HA wiki article on EAC Compression Options:
Quote
Additional command-line options
Here additional parameters for the external compressor can be specified.To configure the additional command-line options, you can use the following placeholders (taken from the EAC FAQ):

placeholder  meaning 
%s  Source filename 
%d  Destination filename 
%h...%h  Text "..." only when High quality selected 
%l...%l  Text "..." only when Low quality selected 
%c...%c  Text "..." only when CRC checksum selected 
%r  Bitrate ("32".."320") as chosen in the Bit rate option 
%a  CD artist 
%g  CD title 
%t  Track title 
%y  Year 
%n  Track number 
%m  MP3 music genre 
%o  Original filename (without temporary renaming) 
%e  Comment (as selected in EAC) 
%b  CRC of extracted track 
%f  freedb ID 
%x  Number of tracks on album
[/size]

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #12 –

I was using something like

\Music\<album artist@1>\<album artist>\<year> - <album> [<type>]\<track#> - <artist> - <title>

resulting in something like

\Music\A\A Perfect Circle\2004 - eMOTIVe [mp3]\02 - A Perfect Circle - Imagine.mp3
\Music\Z\ZZ Top\1983 - Eliminator [flac]\01 - ZZ Top - Gimme All Your Lovin'.flac

Now I have been using something like

\Music\<type>\<album artist@1>\<album artist>\<year> - <album> [<type>]\<track#> - <artist> - <title>

which segregates my library into file type.

Further, I separate my lossless into quality: AR Verified, AR Unknown, AR Insecure

\Music\<quality>\<album artist@1>\<album artist>\<year> - <album> [<type>]\<track#> - <artist> - <title>

\Music\AR Verified\B\The Beatles\2009 - Beatles For Sale (Mono Remaster) [flac]\01 - The Beatles - No Reply.flac

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #13 –
Personally, i omit putting the song's name in the file itself. Like i said, that's up for the metadata. The reason for this is that i sometimes have very weird and/or very long tilles such as those from opera and classical music (like having symbols such as ?/, which you cant use to name a file). Inside the metadata you can type virtually anything.

As for Compilations, i omit the various artist tittle and just go for the movie/tribute tittle from the start. For example, i want to look up the Pulp Fiction soundtrack under P, not V. It would apppear something li Pulp-Fiction_1994-XX-XX

I also use different folders for lossy and lossless, but that actually applies for all my media data. i have it as:
for lossless
Audio-Max
Video-Max
Image-Max

Lossy is the same, except i have the name POD instead of MAX. Easy for synchronizing with a portable device like an Ipad or an mp3 player

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #14 –
you can avoid too long filenames in some apps by applying something like

$left(<whatever your path mask used>,200) or whatever implementation is used to limit path/filename length, in this case 200

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #15 –
This is how I do:

%artist%-'('%date%')'-%album%\%tracknumber% - %title%

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #16 –
EAC set as follows:

%D - %C (%Y)\%N - %A - %T

VA - %C (%Y)\%N - %A - %T
WavPack 5.8.1 -b384hx6cmv / qaac64 2.84 -V 100

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #17 –
I keep everything in one directory, one file per track, named like so:

Code: [Select]
artist_name--album_name---01-of-03
artist_name--album_name---02-of-03
artist_name--album_name---03-of-03

I don't allow spaces or special characters in file names because I often do things via the command line. I like having the track numbering on the filename so that I can tell, with a directory listing, if I am not missing a track of an album. I don't put the track name on the file because I am album oriented.

This has worked fine for me so far, although there is a possibility of filename collision should I ever have two identically names albums from the same artist with the same number of tracks. That hasn't happened so far.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #18 –
I use this:
music\genre\artist\artist - year - album title [codec]\track - title.ext

Example: music\dance-electronic\Daft Punk\Daft Punk - 1997 - Homework [FLAC]\01 - Daftendirekt.flac

Notes:
1. The artist name 'twice' might seem redundant, but if I copy a specific album on the phone or something I like to have the artist name in the album folder.
2. I considered going without the genre folders, but I have too much music for a single folder and also some audio material that's not really music but still there. I'm keeping them for now.
3. The codec info ([FLAC], [V0] etc.) is another thing I'm considering getting rid of. Eventually the plan is to have all the music in FLAC and only add codec info for the albums that are in some other format.

Exceptions etc.:
The year I use there is the year of the original release. If the version I have was released later (remaster), I'll put another year after the album name.
Example: Megadeth\Megadeth - 1990 - Rust in Peace (2004) [FLAC]
If it's not a digital (CD/internet) release, I'll also put that after the album name.
Example: Yes\Yes - 1971- Fragile (2006 vinyl) [V0]

The second release year (and vinyl) is part of the album title in the tag.

If it's not a studio album (EP or compilation etc.) it's, again, part of the album title and I might put those in another subfolder.
Example: Slayer\Slayer non albums\Slayer - 1984 - Haunting The Chapel (EP) [FLAC]

Classical music can be complicated (especially the year and artist fields) and there I'm still improvising and trying to figure out the best approach.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #19 –
Good idea!!!
I have a bunch of official live recordings from Pearl Jam, so maybe the same song appears as the same track number, so now i figured it would be best to type the date from the album or show. Like:
Pearl Jam/
20091007_Live San Diego US
20091007_17_Rearviewmirror.flac

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #20 –
I don't use automated tagging from online databases, which I find messy, so my music is organized with one thing in mind: to be able to "guess" most of my tags from my paths/filenames with some scripts. To this end, I use separators that can't be found in actual artists/titles names. And I replace each forbidden character (/, |, ", :, ?) by another, authorized but again nowhere to be found in real world names/titles. Then it's just a matter of seconds in MP3Tag with the right script to restore the "real" characters.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #21 –
I use this:
artist/artist (year) album_name/track_no track_name

e.g. Sepultura/Sepultura (1989) Beneath the Remains/01 Beneath the Remains.flac

This way I may directly upload separate albums to my MP3 player without causing much mess on the device. I don't upload separate songs, although I sometimes listen to individual tracks on the PC which is why I keep the song's name in the file name.
If I had a very diversified music portfolio, I would prolly slap the music genre in front of the band's name.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #22 –
If you guys really want to blow your minds, you should see how iTunes/Floola stores music files on an iPod.

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #23 –
yup, naming is arbitrary. I like mine one folder per album:

Album Artist - Album Name\Track Number. Track artist - Track name.ext

Journey - Arrival of the Best\02. Journey - Don't Stop Believing.mp3

If you find it redundant if the album is just from one artist you might want to try (to keep the filename shorter):

Album Artist - Album Name\Track Number. Track Name.ext

Journey - Arrival of the Best\02. Don't Stop Believing.mp3

For compilations/Various Artists you might want to try the first naming convention, with the Album Artist set as "Various" or "Various Artists", although you may want to drop it altogether and just begin with the Album Name (problem is, if you have two different albums with the same title)

Best of Dirty Rap\01. Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina.mp3

Edit: font color and paragraph spacing
"Listen to me...
Never take unsolicited advice..."

Naming system for file and folder: There is a standard method?

Reply #24 –
I've come seeking a naming convention as well.

At this time, I am using

%Genre%\%Artist%\(%Year%) %Album%\$pad(%Track%,2). %Title%.ext

This allows for folder art for both the artist and the album.

Resulting in something such as
Classic Rock\Boston\(1976) Boston\01. More Than A Feeling.mp3

For various artists releases, I use a rather messy
%Genre%\Various Artists\(%Year%) %Album% [%AlbumArtist%]\$pad(%Track%,2). %Title% [%Artist%].mp3

Resulting in
Electronic\Various Artists\(2001) Deep & Chilled Euphoria Compilation [Red Jerry]\04. Autumn Leaves [Coldcut].mp3

I am debating whether to separate %AlbumArtist% from the album folder which would allow for additional folder art.

However, I'm currently in a predicament with my brother in whether to include disc numbers when sorting.

My argument: Discs are used because the industry runs out of room on a single 70-80 minute cd, so they need to use additional cds. If there were a new method to release albums (kinda like those flash drives), then there would be no reason for this.