How are your music libraries organized?

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NismoTuned

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Apr 2, 2013
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I'm not sure this is the appropriate sub-forum for this so if it isn't I apologize prior to anyone correcting me. Whatever the case, What kind of structure do you have your music library(s) organized in? I was curious if there was a better solution to what I've got now because my entire library is a mess.

I've got my larger MP3 library organized like this:
Ryan\Music\Band\Album [year]\01. Song Name

My smaller FLAC/Lossless library is organized like this:
Ryan\Music\FLAC Collection\Band\Album [year] (flac)\01. song name
 
I have a folder called music. If I acquire an individual song I just dump it in the folder. If I acquire an album I dump the album folder in there. If I acquire a bunch of albums by one artist I dump that in there.

I point Winamp to the folder and it automatically does everything for me.
 
Album Artist/Album/Artist - Title.mp3
Various Artists/Soundtrack Album or Compilation/Artist - Title.mp3
Singles/Artist - Title.mp3

I am against putting the track number in the filename. A song is uniquely identified by the artist and the name of the song. Therefore, the filename should contain only that unique identification. Folders are used to group files, not replace their names. If you move the file, transfer it, send it to someone, etc, the filename will still make sense.

Besides, people seldomly buy CDs or listen to an album straight through anymore. They buy individual songs. Most songs on an album are crap. If, on the rare occasion I want to listen to an album straight through, the music player can read the ID3 track number and play them in order.

I use iTunes. I edit my music manually. I refuse to let iTunes modify my files.
I rate songs using the 5 stars. Then I also export playlists based on those stars. Because if the database gets corrupted or I switch to a different music player, I can use the playlists to recover the ratings.
 
I lost interest in my library as I moved from Zune Marketplace into Rhapsody and am happy to fork out 10 bucks a month to access WAY more music than I had.
 
Music
-Film Scores
-Game Soundtracks
-Mainstream

[Track Number] [Title].flac
 
mine are all on google music since it becomes easier to manage it across multiple systems
 
To me, physical file locations and names aren't so important. All my tags are properly filled in though, so when I load my library into a media player it can sort and display it as I see fit.

I think this is the way of the future for data storage. Physical file locations shouldn't matter, we shouldn't even need folders. Everything should just be tagged so it can be dynamically viewed and sorted the way you want at that time.

I am really happy to see in OSX 10.9 tagging support has been implemented. And Microsoft has wanted to do this for awhile.

You can see bits of this concept in "Libraries" in Windows and the whole WinFS file system that they were working on which was ultimately canceled. I still think they will find a solution for their new file system concept in the near future though.
 
{#-0 A-D E-G H-L M-Q R-T U-Z}\Artist\Year - Album Name\Tracks

Makes it much easier to browse when using other devices like a game system, or my receiver.
 
\\ Music \ Albums \ Artist\ 2013. Album \ [disc#.]track#. Title \

Or, for various artists albums:

\\ Music \ Albums \ ## Various Artists \ 2013. Album \ [disc#.]track#. Artist - Title \
 
Music/Artist/Album/Tracknumber - Trackname.flac
Soundtracks and various artists are in the same directory with the Artists, unless it's a soundtrack all written by a specific musician, in which case it is included in that artists directory. An example is the Danny the Dog soundtrack, which is filed with Massive Attack.

Another note, some artists with a prolific music history I also include the album year with the album like this:
Music/Artist/Year Album/Tracknumber - Trackname.flac
This makes going through specific artists easier, like DJ Shadow, Depeche Mode, and Davide Bowie as some examples easier.
 
I use orange cd. On my Hard drive I just have them by artist/album/song name. But really Orange cd does all of the dirty work for me...so I also have folders with dates then artists or album.
 
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