Your Music Directory Structure

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Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #125 – 2005-10-28 22:35:54

always the same one here. no matter if classical or compilation etc.

a concrete example would look like this:

x:\A\A Perfect Circle\A Perfect Circle - 2000 - Mer De Noms

and then # - title

i like seeing the albums in chronological order

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #126 – 2005-10-29 01:37:25

K:\My Music\Album Artist\Album\Track Artist_Album_Track Name_Bitrate.Format

You can see a listing (NOT actual files) of my entire music library here.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #127 – 2006-01-09 02:48:14

After many tries at creating my ultimate directory structure for lossy files (easy as hell with Foobar ), I arrived at these final options:

X:\Music\codec\artist - date - album\nn title
X:\Music\codec\artist\(date)* album\nn title
X:\Music\artist - date - album\nn title
X:\Music\artist\(date)* album\nn title

if the album is VA:
X:\Music\Various Artists - date - album (or compilation name)\nn artist - title
X:\Music\Various Artists\(date)* album\nn artist - title

*If I go with either of these options, I would have to decide between (date) and [date], unless there's something that might interfere with the use of []'s.

Something tells me to go with the "artist - date - album" style simply because that's exactly how I name my lossless images, but sorting first by codec seems like a neater way of organizing. I'm hesitant to use the "artist\(date) album" style, because that's what WMP and iTunes use, and I always fount it frustrating when all I have from ArtistX is a 3 song EP or something and I end up with a whole folder with "ArtistX\EP title\3 songs".

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the "artist - date - album" style can get produce folders with really long names, and looks like crap when using any kind of tree style view.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #128 – 2006-01-09 03:02:37

G:/Music/Artist/Album/Artist - # - Track.mp3

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #129 – 2006-01-09 03:25:35

X:\Music\FLAC\Artist\Album\Title.flac
X:\Music\MP3\Artist\Album\Tracknumber. Title (Year).mp3

Artist is Album Artist for compilations. I use different track titles for unique naming when loaded on my mp3 player.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #130 – 2006-01-09 06:27:54

Single FLAC/CUE Images
For normal releases:
Artist ~ Year ~ Album\Artist ~ Year ~ Album (Disc 1).flac
Artist ~ Year ~ Album\Artist ~ Year ~ Album (Disc 1).cue
Artist ~ Year ~ Album\Artist ~ Year ~ Album (Disc 1).jpg
Artist ~ Year ~ Album\Artist ~ Year ~ Album (Disc 1).log
Artist ~ Year ~ Album\Artist ~ Year ~ Album (Disc 1).html

Various Artists:
Year ~ Album\Year ~ Album (Disc 1).flac
(Same for .cue, .jpg, .log & .html)

Soundtracks:
Year ~ Movie/Album title\Year ~ Movie/Album title (Disc 1).flac
(Same for .cue, .jpg, .log & .html)

Individual files/tracks
Artist ~ Year ~ Album\Artist ~ Year ~ Album ~ ## ~ Name.codec

Why the tilde (~)? Because I've NEVER seen it used in an Artist/Album/Song name and it frees me up to use the dash (-) for things like "'89-'93".

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #131 – 2006-01-09 07:08:53

i am an artist - title.codec guy. one folder is all you need if you tag well and have a frontend that's worth a crap.

actually, i use two folders, not one:

stuff i have backed up/artist - title.codec
stuff i have not backed up yet/artist - title.codec

i'm surprised that nobody else has mentioned this. i learned the hard way that this is probably the most important element of directory structure.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #132 – 2006-01-09 08:47:16

I almost only have albums.

I used to have the following X:\Music\artist - album\nn-title.codec but now i've found something that i think is a very good tweak of this. The basic is still the same, but in those case I have more than one album from any given artist I will put those albums like X:\Music\a r t i s t\artist - album\nn-title.codec. This makes my music folder more tidy, especially while i'm getting more and more albums.

Also note the effect of these artists being on top of every first letter when sorting this folder.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #133 – 2006-01-09 22:21:37

Music\Artist\Album\T# - Title

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #134 – 2006-01-09 22:49:41

A big music folder, each with smaller folders that are "Artist - Album" and in those folders I have "Artist - Title".

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #135 – 2006-01-09 23:19:49

F:\Audio\Artist\(Year) Album\#. Title.mp3

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #136 – 2006-01-09 23:56:31

Music/Artist/Album/# - Artist - Album

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #137 – 2006-01-10 07:40:31

Flac/Cue Images
Music\ripps\artist\album\artist - year - album (disc 1).flac, *. cue

Mp3
Music\mp3\artist\album\artist - album - tracknumber - title.mp3

Harald

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #138 – 2006-01-10 13:09:12

d:\music\[genre]\artist\(year) album\#T. artist - title.ext

my brother demands I have [genre] there :-/

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #139 – 2006-03-31 06:08:09

I find that, in many cases, Genre can almost be subjective, unless you're really vague or generic. Like... the difference between Metal and Classical is usually easy... but what about NuMetal and Rap? Or overlapping and crossover genres?

Often music can be categorized into more than one genre, so I think that it's best to leave genres in your meta tags... of course, music stores have to make that choice to make it easier to find types of music that you listen to, and I suppose that for the bigger ones, at least, they can just put a copy of the CD in each section that it applies to.

On that note, it'd be cool to have some kind of a filesystem, or perhaps just a music management or database system that allows you to have one album or track in two places at once (through some kind of link, most likely). I've seen software that does this, and perhaps foobar's Album List can do that if you have two genre tags or something.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #140 – 2006-05-11 00:37:39

Quote from: Supacon on 2006-03-31 06:08:09

I find that, in many cases, Genre can almost be subjective, unless you're really vague or generic. Like... the difference between Metal and Classical is usually easy... but what about NuMetal and Rap? Or overlapping and crossover genres?

I try to avoid genres, I only use generic stuff like Metal, Rock, Classical, Electronic... The only use I have for the genre tag is with Classical, because I have a separate sorting string in foobar for it, but otherwise I don't fuss over it. Some of my metalhead friends go as far as having different super-specific genres for each track on an album, like "Neo-classical/Progressive/Symphonic Metal" and the next track is "Ambient/Darkwave/Neo-classical". Ridiculous.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #141 – 2006-05-11 06:14:07

%drive%\--music--\artist\year - album\t# - artist - title.codec

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #142 – 2006-05-11 07:54:04

[drive]\Music\Artist\Album - Tracknumber - Title.codec

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #143 – 2006-05-11 09:12:26

\genere\[nationality] artist - album (year)\#t - title.codec

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #144 – 2006-05-11 14:06:48

[0-9,a-z]/$artist/$year $album [catalog info]/$track# - $tracktitle.codec

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #145 – 2006-05-11 19:55:57

Artist/(Year) Album/Artist - Track # - Song Title

for various artists: Various Artists - Album Name (Year)/Track # - Song Artist - Song Name

This was a question I spent alot of time pondering.
I started doing things one way and thought that was best...
I made a change mid-stream and added the "(date)" before "Album" for better chronology.
I also changed mid-stream and added "Artist" before track # to better identify the thousands of songs in my library-so I can easily see, in the track name itself, who the artist is.
I currently use only FLAC & keep everything in a FLAC Archive so I do not use ".flac" in the song title.
In the future, I plan to transcode to (probably) MP3 and in that case I will use ".mp3" as a file name/format descriptor. Since there would be a loss in quality from the original lossless source, I would mark this and make it as clear as possible that the files are MP3s.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #146 – 2006-05-11 22:40:10

Mine is:

Music\Album Artist\Album\T#. Artist - Title.codec

This works for both compilations and single albums. If it's a single album I just set Album Artist to what Artist is.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #147 – 2006-05-12 17:41:47

Mine is:

1. For Complete Albums:
e.g.: Jeff Beck's you had it coming:

E:\J\Jeff Beck- [2001]- You Had It Coming\##- Title.codec

2 For Singles
e.g.: Beulah's Gene Autry:
E:\`Singles\Beulah\Beulah- Gene Autry.codec

3 For Compilation Albums
e.g.: I Am sam soundtrack:
E:\`Compilations\OST- I am Sam [Date]\##- Artist- Title.codec

4 For Songs whose tags have to be fixed
E:\`Fixx\<File>

Works well for me

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #148 – 2006-05-12 20:21:09

For the most part, I use REACT defaults as they are well thought out. Alphabetically organize by artist, then year of album, then title.

F:\Music\The Beatles\1965_Rubber Soul\The Beatles - (1965) Rubber Soul.flac
F:\Music\The Beatles\1965_Rubber Soul\The Beatles - (1965) Rubber Soul.cue

Level 1 gives me... well, my music folder
Level 2 is the Artist alphabetically
Level 3 is the year with Title
Level 4 is the file itself, with all that stuff in case I move it around

#3 is the most important because if an artist has 10 or so albums, I'd like to visually see them in chronological order. Metatags will come and go, and preferences will change over time. File structure has been with us for decades, so that will always be important.

I only archive full albums.

-Robert

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #149 – 2006-05-12 20:50:30

I use foobar2000's file utilities to sort all my music into folders. This is the structure I use for full albums:

Album Artist \ Album (Year) \ [disc #-]nn. title [~ track artist]

For single songs, I use this:

Album Artist -- Album [Year] -- [disc #-]nn. title [~ track artist]

Basically the same as the earlier one, only it doesn't create subdirectories.

I would like to handle disc numbers better in both cases, but I can't seem to find an elegant method. I don't put the genre in the directory structure for a few reasons:

I don't know or don't care about the genre of most of the music I have.
If I do add genres, I add them to single songs, not entire albums. An album may have songs from multiple genres.
If my directory structure is inadequate from any point of view, never fear! fb2k's Album list window is amazingly flexible; I've never needed to search for a track (either using fb2k's Search feature or Windows Explorer).

Quote from: Cornie on 2005-03-26 09:30:13

Live shows: Artist\Venue\Date\[Disc #/Set #]\nn - title.codec
This would be for any LIVE recordings (bootlegs)...
The 4th level defaults to 'Disc' unless all tracks fit one disc - in which case it splits by 'Set'

What is a 'Set'?

Quote from: Supacon on 2005-03-26 20:21:42

Quote
One folder, no subfolders -

D:\Music\artist-album-track-title.codec
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=285710"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

For the people who use a system like this, I'm guessing that you don't have very large collections of music. Doesn't this get rather hard to search through after you get past about twenty albums or so?

You said it! I used to have around 5,000 songs sorted like this, and it would take a minute or so to open the folder, or even list it in the directory tree. The situation has been alleviated somewhat now: I have all my full albums in subdirectories according to the structure above. I do still have nearly 3,000 single songs thrown together in one large directory, though.

Quote

In reality, what would happen to remove the folders from the directory structure? And even if that happened, you could always just use a program like directory opus, or even some fancy media management software to sort by album title and reorganize it all or something.

I've always felt the same way. And you wouldn't even need any program other than fb2k.

Quote from: Erich w/ an h on 2005-06-05 14:09:51

AUDIO\$if2(Album Artist,Artist)\(Date) Album\Artist - Date - Album (Disc#) - Track# - Title.flac

Assuming the `$if2()` is a literal part of an fb2k string, here's a small suggestion: use %album artist% instead of the $if2(). %album artist% uses the album artist if it's there, but falls back on composer/performer/artist.

Notice

Poll

How do you arrange your Songs and Album folders?