Your Music Directory Structure, What format is your music organized in? Options

[Snire]

I do it this way.
D:\My music\Artist - Album_DVD-xx
And filename: Track nr - Songname.m4a
I add _DVD-xx for backup purposes.
But I have tagged all my music very well, so iTunes sort right.
I never use windows explorer to find music I want to play.

[dobz]

normal albums

music\genre\album\artist (year)\nn. track

compliations (various artits)

music\genre\VA. album - artist (year)\nn. track - artist

i find this fairly compact and easy to navigate on my iriver h140.
Some people prefer to put the year before the album but on the my h140 the display is fairly small and you really need to see the album or artist before you see the year

[Canar]

codec\artist - date - album (quality info)\tracknumber - title

[thinkum dinkum]

for artists with more than 1 album which is 80% of my collection

[Genre]/Artist/[Year] Album/T# Artist - Track.ext
or
[Genre]/Artist/[Year] Album/Artist T# Track.ext
..haven't decided yet which is more suitable for me, and I tend to move all "-" before and after T# because try to save space where I can (joliet)

for artists with 1 album

[Genre]/Artist [Year] Album/T# Artist - Track.ext

for various

VA/VA - Album or Artist or Label [year]/T# Artist - Track.ext

but, I also have other folders eg [Label] witch contains some obscure labels with 10 or maybe more releases, [Bootleg] folder etc etc ..and they have different structure, if one have a wide spectar of music it's impossible to have just one naming structure.
end yes, I always move "_" cause it looks ugly and all my txt, nfo, sfv, jpeg files are in the same folder and have 00 before file name.

I my case, I end up focusing more on directory structure than on that same music
..but it works fine now

[audio2u]

Wow.
Some interesting schemes among all these.
What does strike me as interesting is how many of you use 'genre' as a folder, which implies that all tracks from an album are going to be under a parent folder such as 'rock' (at some level).
As someone who has worked in commercial radio, I want every song to have it's own specific genre, not an entire album labelled as 'rock'. That way, if I want to listen to ballads, I could listen to ballads that come off otherwise 'rock' albums. For example, let's say, I dunno, Springsteen, for instance. Let's take 'Born in the USA'. A track like 'I'm on fire' or 'My hometown' would definitely be labelled a ballad, while 'No surrender' would most definitely be 'rock'.
Do these kinds of conflicts not bother those of you who use 'genre' as a folder?
I can definitely see the sense in contracting the filename so joliet limitations don't truncate said filenames when burnt to cd. Very smart.
Something else I'd personally never considered was putting the year in the album level folder, so that albums are sorted by year of release, rather than alphabetically. Nice.
Looks like I'm off to do some major re-sorting.
Oh, to the dude who said "if you use a single folder, you musn't have very large collections", mmmm, I dunno.
My collection is probably not as large as some who lurk around these parts, but I'm currently around the 5500-5600 mark ALL IN ONE FOLDER. Yeah, I know, I'm crazy.
What brought me to this thread is I'm wondering if parsing some of the tag data to the folder level (and therefore creating a couple of hundred 2nd and 3rd level folders) will help Windoze Explorer to browse the folders quicker?
Keen to hear peoples thoughts on that, too.
Cheers,
Bruce.

[tgoose]

I have two structures, one with albums in just in a single folder (only about 50 of these) and one with individual downloaded songs (about 1,500 of them), which are filed alphabetical letter, band name then just the songs and the filenames are just the title of the song.

[abasher]

Music\Albums\Genre\Artist - Album

And a separate folder with lossless albums.

This post has been edited by abasher: May 22 2005, 10:24

[EdBanky]

/Artist Name/(yyyy) Album Title/##. Track Name

When storing 10s of GB on a hard drive, I divide into Genre parent folders, like:

/Genre/Artist Name/(yyyy) Album Title/##. Track Name

Archiving (before formatting to my specs)

Artist Name - Album Title (<mm-dd- (if available)>yyyy) <3-letter code representing the source (ex: SBD, AUD, etc)> [CODEC] <Number of discs, if more than one (ex: 2 CD)>/<if multi-cd> Disc #/Track name as acquired

As in:

Juliana Hatfield - Live at Iota Club & Cafe (12-02-2004) AUD [FLAC]/juliana2004-12-02t01.flac

[EdBanky]

As someone who has worked in commercial radio, I want every song to have it's own specific genre, not an entire album labelled as 'rock'. That way, if I want to listen to ballads, I could listen to ballads that come off otherwise 'rock' albums. For example, let's say, I dunno, Springsteen, for instance. Let's take 'Born in the USA'. A track like 'I'm on fire' or 'My hometown' would definitely be labelled a ballad, while 'No surrender' would most definitely be 'rock'.
Do these kinds of conflicts not bother those of you who use 'genre' as a folder?

My way of thinking about the music seems significantly different from yours. For whatever reason, I kind of append a "working genre" to a band's name in my head, so if I decide to sort and/or listen by genre, it is to hear the bands that I know will show up that way.

I honestly had never even thought of each song having its own genre. I know what you mean, and can see how that makes sense, but I think of it kind of like this:

You've got the movie director (artist) and the film's genre (genre) and the film's name (album title) and scenes within the film (songs). While this obviously doesn't work across the board with many directors, it would play out like this for me.

Thriller/Alfred Hitchcock/(1935) The 39 Steps/The scene with the prayer with the guy and the farmer's wife

So the way I think of genre, it would be like classifying each scene in a movie as its own genre. I know it's a peculiar way to look at it, but it's in my brain that way.

[audio2u]

I honestly had never even thought of each song having its own genre.  I know what you mean, and can see how that makes sense, but I think of it kind of like this:

You've got the movie director (artist) and the film's genre (genre) and the film's name (album title) and scenes within the film (songs).  While this obviously doesn't work across the board with many directors, it would play out like this for me.

Thriller/Alfred Hitchcock/(1935) The 39 Steps/The scene with the prayer with the guy and the farmer's wife

So the way I think of genre, it would be like classifying each scene in a movie as its own genre.  I know it's a peculiar way to look at it, but it's in my brain that way.

Fair enough. Each to their own, eh? It's things like this that I love about these sorts of forums (or fora).... hearing everyone's different views on stuff.

[audio2u]

I know this isn't the thread to post this in, but seeing as how this is where I am right now....
...anyone know why the url tag doesn't seem to work in the sig file?

[matth6546]

music\artist\artist_date_album_track#_title_genre[_year2]


year2 = re-release date, if there is one

[LordSyl]

I store my music files on a different drive than that of the OS, for safety reasons.

The folder structure is:
<quality>\<music genre>\<codec>\<artist-album>

where quality is:
-RandomFi (this special folder is for a few random tracks and has no structure)
-HiFi (mpc q5+, mp3 --aps+)
-LoFi (mp3 128kbps , etc)

This post has been edited by LordSyl: May 22 2005, 17:18

[Cyaneyes]

\Artist\Year - Album\tracknumber. title.ext

When an artist has multiple albums for one year:

Year (1) - Album
Year (2) - Album

[MusicLover]

Two folders:
"Academical" (serious) music>Composer>CD Title>(often)CD 1, CD 2, CD 3...
"Pop music">Group>Album (01, 02, 03 according to the year of release)

And one more, special folder "Various" in each main folder.

[MusicLover]

P.S. It's quite complicated, so I'll provide some examples:

Music Library/Academical/Beethoven Ludvig von/Symphonies (Karajan)/CD X/03 Symphony No. 3 Es-dur op.55 Eroica 3. Scherzo. Allegro viace.ape
(I.e. Track # (space) Track name.ext)

Or Music Library/Pop/Therion/01 Time Shall Tell (1990)/02 Dark Eternity.mp3

[Canar]

Codec\Artist - Date - Album\Track - Title.codec

[unmake]

Main music directory:
AUDIO\Artist\Album (Year) [CODEC*]\nn Title.codec

Secondary one (just assorted tracks with no full releases):
AUDIO 2\Artist\Artist - Title.codec

* — only if lossless (then [LL]) or MPC (then [MPC]).

that's approximately my style..

e:\audio\music\artist\artist - year - album [encoder.bitrate]\nn. track

For bands like "The Soundtrack of Our Lives" I'll abbreviate, or exclude, their name at the album level; otherwise I tend to hit the filename length limit.

I keep audiobooks and classical music in a separate root directory, as I do 'incoming music' which hasn't been tagged/error-checked/replaygained. once that process has been done, it gets moved to a 'clean' directory, which gets dumped to DVD once it's reached 4.3GB. Only then do things get moved to the main music dump.

The [encoder.bitrate] field is added manually, with reference to EncSpot or MQM. I've long pined for something which could tag directories automatically, but alas..

[negritot]

It's 2005. Are you guys really still doing this manually?

I had to actually look at how the database-like management program I use (iTunes )keeps things organized. Turns out it's Artist/Album/T# - Song.codec

[Canar]

negritot: I use foobar2000. It allows me to organize my files the way I want them, instead of shoehorning me into whatever format it wants.

[myxomatosis]

For "full albums":

F:\Albums\*Genre*\*Artist*\*Album*\Tracknumber Title.extension

F:\Albums\Rock\Pink Floyd\Dark Side of the Moon\03 Time.ape
F:\Albums\Metal\Sonata Arctica\Ecliptica\07 Letter to Dana.mpc





For "various songs":

F:\Tracks\*Letter*\*Artist*\Title.extension

F:\Tracks\S\Springsteen, Bruce\Blinded by the Light.mp3
F:\Tracks\W\Who, The\Pinball Wizard.ogg
F:\Tracks\B\Beatles, The\All you need is love.mpc



Not perfect but I don't have that many files (~8,000) so it works fine for me

This post has been edited by myxomatosis: May 23 2005, 01:01

[khiloa]

I do Poll option #3; it looks like this: Artist\Album\Track

[cerberus]

D:/music/format(mp3 , ape)/ type(rock , heavy)/

[negritot]

negritot: I use foobar2000. It allows me to organize my files the way I want them, instead of shoehorning me into whatever format it wants.

You're missing the point. The idea is that the database program becomes the front end to your music. I didn't even know what the directory structure was until now.

[DreamTactix291]

negritot: I use foobar2000. It allows me to organize my files the way I want them, instead of shoehorning me into whatever format it wants.

You're missing the point. The idea is that the database program becomes the front end to your music. I didn't even know what the directory structure was until now.

I'm too picky. I prefer doing it myself. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion you know

(Also a happy foobar2000 user)