Your Music Directory Structure

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Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #100 – 2005-07-12 01:35:16

I use
Music/A/Artist/Artist - Album (Year)/Artist - Album [#Tracknr] - Song.codec

Example:
Music\I\Iron Maiden\Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark (1992)\Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark [#5] - Childhood's End.mp3

Various Artist goes in
Music/V/Various Artists/Various Artists - Album (Year)/Album - [#Tracknr] - Artist - Song.codec

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #101 – 2005-07-12 01:49:31

I must be weird:-)
Year\Album~Artist~T#~Title.codec

The year directory is just used to minimize files per directory.

All organization is done using metatags in fb2k. No need for great organization at the file level.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #102 – 2005-07-12 02:01:52

My Music\<Artist>\<Album>\T# - Title.codec

Various Artists/Compilations:
My Music\Various Artists\<Album>\T# - Title.codec

Soundtrack:
Music\Original Soundtrack\<Album>\T# - Title.codec

When I used Windows Media Player I had:
Music\Artist\Album\Title.wma ...and for any WMA files I haven't been too concerned about renaming.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #103 – 2005-07-12 03:07:55

Quote

x:\one of 6 main genres\artist\album\## - artist - title.mpc
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=299835"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

What main genres do you use? I've wanted to do a mapping of the ID3v1 + Winamp extension genres to a few that really describe what the music is. For directory structures I'd like more generalized genres to keep things together (for example, make Electronic include Techno, Drum & Bass, House, Jungle, etc)

My set up is:

\Music\<Format>\<F>\<Artist> - (<Year>) - <Album>\<Track> - <Artist> - <Song>

<F> is the first letter of the Artist (excluding the, a, an) Numbers are converted to what letter the number starts with.

For CUE/M3U/MD5/JPG I prefix with 00. Multi CD's I keep in separate directories. If it's a CUE I don't create an M3U.

I save EAC LOG files for personal rips. For lossy formats I create MD5's, for lossless the EAC LOG file is enough since there's programs that can decode on the fly to verify (not much slower than MD5/SFV, and just cleaner).

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #104 – 2005-10-14 09:17:40

Single tracks:
%artist%\%album\%tracknumber%. %title%
Various\%album%\%tracknumber%. %artist% - %title%

Images:
%artist%\%album%
Various\%album%

I don't have a strictly-enforced naming scheme but, in terms approximating foobar2000's formatting, it would be something like that. I also have a couple of "Disc n" folders.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #105 – 2005-10-14 12:49:30

Music\bitmap\[Artist]\[Album] - [TrackNumber] - [Title].[ogg|flac]

My folder bitmap\ contains all recorded sound. Another folder, vector\, is for my MIDI collection, and another, hybrid\, is for the modules (*.mod, *.s3m, *.xm, *.it).

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #106 – 2005-10-14 16:20:08

For people that use media jukebox software, can I ask do you, or why do you care how they're stored on your filesystem? I just let iTunes do it's thing and manage my music through that - not the finder (or explorer.exe). I couldn't care less whether they were stored by artist, genre, album or even a random hash ala the ipod filesystem.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #107 – 2005-10-14 17:26:25

\Music\<F>\<Artist>\<Year> - <Album>\<Tracknumber> - <Title>.<codec ext>

<F> is the first letter of the Artist (excluding the, a, an) Numbers are converted to what letter the number starts with.

various artist :
\Music\_Compilation\<Genre>\<Year> - <Album>\<Tracknumber> - <Artist> - <Title>.<codec ext>

soundtracks & classical music are in specials directories

for classical music I use :
(Bith year - death year) <Artist>\<Year> - <Album>\<Tracknumber> - <Title>.<codec ext>

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #108 – 2005-10-14 19:53:09

Quote

For people that use media jukebox software, can I ask do you, or why do you care how they're stored on your filesystem? I just let iTunes do it's thing and manage my music through that - not the finder (or explorer.exe). I couldn't care less whether they were stored by artist, genre, album or even a random hash ala the ipod filesystem.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=334357"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I'll try to answer that - what happens if you decide to use a new program? Locking yourself into doing whatever "Program X" or "Program Y " does could potentially limit your options if you were every to change how you use your music.

Personally, I use too many programs in my daily music needs to even consider doing it in an unstructured way - EAC for ripping, Winamp for listening and Catraxx as a database/frontend.
My setup is close to Level 3 in the poll, except I don't use "Music" at root, I use an "A" folder, a "B" folder, etc.
example - Z:\S\Sianspheric\RGB\01-Sianspheric-To Myself.flac

I used to have it as Z:\artist\album\file but it was getting to be too much scrolling when adding items to my database. (This is on a dedicated drive).

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #109 – 2005-10-14 20:03:06

Z:\Music\

FileFormat\<first letter of artist>\Artist\AlbumTitle\Artist-AlbumTitle-TrackNumber-Trackname.extension

Aye I have long filenames. Arguably, I have no need to put Artist and AlbumTitle as part of the file name if the ID3 tags are properly maintained so this may change. This is a holdover from the time when I traded individual files around more often and didn't maintain the ID3 tags well. Files orphaned away from the file structure had none of this identifying metadata. This shouldn't be so much of a problem these days. I still rigidly maintain this folder structure to easily find and pull files for compilations or to sample for people. Also helps when writing scripts to do stuff for me or when using other people's scripts and small programs.

The FileFormat level of separation is to keep FLACs separate from MP3s which are separate from MPC which are separate from AACs. I used mareo I think to rip into both FLAC and MP3, but there are some leftover MPC from when I experimented with that (if my iPod played MPC I would rip to that format again, but alas) and all the AACs are purchased or free downloads from Apple ITMS.

I used to have some divisions based on Genre, but I discovered that to be too subjective.

If the first letter of an artist is actually a number, I have a folder called "123s" for bands like 2 Live Crew and 311.

Soundtracks and compilations I never seem to satisfy myself. I'll do it one way for awhile and then switch so right now i have about 2 or 3 competing "standards" in my file structure.

What do I do for Albums with multiple discs? As I sit here I don't remember, but I believe I put (disc n) in the Albumtitle level. For example, Infected Mushroom's Converting Vegetarians would be :

Z:\Music\MP3s\I\Infected Mushroom\Converting Vegetarians(disc 1)\

Again, keeping to a fairly rigid 2 level heirarchy above the actual tracks, helps when writing scripts as I always know how to treat the folder names of the parent folder and the parent of that folder.

Then again, now there are tools that can analyze the file itself and try to fill out tags for you unlike the days you had to make your own tools.

Note I don't own much classical style music so I haven't run into the organizing needs some of you have nor have I really hit the limitations of ID3v1.1 even as I move to ID3v2.3

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #110 – 2005-10-14 20:08:48

I really like the way I have it now. It's like fileformat/artist/artist-album-year/tracknumber - trackname. I can find my music files fast this way.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #111 – 2005-10-14 20:16:28

I'm just curious about the level of importance many of you people have for the year.

While I don't consider my ID3 tags complete unless I have the year, especially so if I own the full discography for an artist, I never would have thought to add that to the file names or make it part of the folder structures.

In most cases, I never need to know the year.

Why is it so important to you all? (Note I am asking this not to knock your decisions and opinions, I'm actually curious if you have a good reason that I may not have considered)

Edit: I just considered one reason why to maybe go \AlbumTitle-Year\ because I think a couple of bands have released albums years apart with the same title (like the first few self-titled Peter Gabriel albums, which reminds me I need to rip them eventually)

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #112 – 2005-10-14 20:24:18

I just add the year as that on the CD case, as I do with the COMMENT field (CD catalog number). It's not too important but I try to include everything.

It's genre that irks me. I may just start tagging my CD images with a genre from the freedb list rather than wondering what exactly to call them. It's so much simpler to call something rock instead of wondering if it counts as punk, metal or punk rock!

Anyone have any good hints for genre classification?

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #113 – 2005-10-14 20:33:53

Quote

I just add the year as that on the CD case, as I do with the COMMENT field (CD catalog number). It's not too important but I try to include everything.

It's genre that irks me. I may just start tagging my CD images with a genre from the freedb list rather than wondering what exactly to call them. It's so much simpler to call something rock instead of wondering if it counts as punk, metal or punk rock!

Anyone have any good hints for genre classification?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=334415"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Well, I've often gone to allmusic.com and used their recommendation for genre, mostly to keep from having to make that determination myself.

Also, I have some CDs where the album as a whole is characterized one way, but there might be an song on there with a decidedly different feel. Do you think I get down to the track level when characterizing genre? Nope, I'm too lazy for that. I justify it by saying Genre is so subjective and characterize the whole album.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #114 – 2005-10-14 21:56:27

About the issue of genres, I've really found that the whole concept of a genre is a matter of opinion.

As I may have mentioned in another post, tagging files with "correct" genres is very important to me, as I use my music to DJ, and often need to search for music by style. Usually I use generic types, like Rock, Country, Dance, etc. But I'm finding that my music supplier is using weird ones like "Adult" and "Top 40 Pop" now, so I've been retagging them as "Pop/Urban/Rap Fast" and things like that.

This blows the usefulness of the id3v1 tags right out of the water, but basically what I'm saying is that I tag every single song with multiple genres (delimeted by slashes). Obviously this would be tedious for regular music albums, but for my Various Artist compilation albums with an assortment of current popular music, this seems necessary to me.

I'd almost like some kind of fancy relational database system with support for internet connectivity to a database of all songs and artists and the classifications of each to do this crap for me, but... my system works. It just takes some time whenever I rip a CD.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #115 – 2005-10-14 22:42:08

Quote

But I'm finding that my music supplier is using weird ones like "Adult" and "Top 40 Pop" now, so I've been retagging them as "Pop/Urban/Rap Fast" and things like that.

This blows the usefulness of the id3v1 tags right out of the water, but basically what I'm saying is that I tag every single song with multiple genres (delimeted by slashes).
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=334433"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

In Vorbis Comment (the tagging format used in Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files) you can repeat the same tag. You can set GENRE=Pop and GENRE=Urban in the same file.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #116 – 2005-10-14 23:02:52

I just have all my random singles an a flat folder and all my albums in a folder named after them. I let the various media librarys of winamp, foobar, etc do all the organising / searching for me.

This of course only works because my tagging is spot on

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #117 – 2005-10-15 00:45:30

Albums\Artist - Album Name - Year\Track No. - Title.codec

Dont like to overcomplicate things...

As above my tagging is very spot on.

Regards

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #118 – 2005-10-15 18:56:06

Quote

I just add the year as that on the CD case, as I do with the COMMENT field (CD catalog number). It's not too important but I try to include everything.

It's genre that irks me. I may just start tagging my CD images with a genre from the freedb list rather than wondering what exactly to call them. It's so much simpler to call something rock instead of wondering if it counts as punk, metal or punk rock!

Anyone have any good hints for genre classification?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=334415"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I use genre as a top level because when I want to listen to music, I have a hard time deciding since I have so much stuff, so I'd rather think "I feel like listening to metal" instead of "I feel like listening to artists that start with the letter B".. if that makes any sense.

Defining your own genres is better than strictly using generic ones, but it does take a lot of time. For example, sometimes I have one genre, and sometimes I have subgenres, making sorting not as uniform. With APEv2 you can add multiple genre tags, which I'd like to figure out but haven't had the time yet.

If you want to switch to genre based sorting, first write down which genres you will need. I use 18 main genres, about half of which are ID3.1 compliant, the other half are not. I found the list of basic ID3.1 compliant genres and used what's relevant there, then supplemented the rest with my own definitions for APEv2 tagging. For example, I use "Blues" from ID3.1 with no subgenres, but within Rock I have several and I use "Rock-Garage" for garage rock (APEv2) because I have far more subgenres in rock than in blues. But a blues guy might only need "Rock" (ID3v1 compatible) but need "Blues-PreWar" for a blues subgenre. It depends on how your collection is weighted in terms of genre, that is for you to figure out.

Dates would be nice but I have a harder time with them than with genres, so I'm not using them in directories. So many albums have different dates that are useful. Ideally for me all the dates would be referring to the recording (the most important date for me). But then there are so many albums with several years between the recording and the release. Then there are reissues, compilations. The date listed on the CD (and in online databases) is rarely the recording date, but more often the release date. No biggie if it was released the same year it was recorded but....

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #119 – 2005-10-15 19:27:50

That's some good advice on genre. I would indeed stick to a few but my problem comes at classifying certain bands from my strange music taste. For example, are Velvet Revolver rock or metal? Was blink-182's new album punk or alt. rock? And just WTF are CKY?

(No comments on my collection please. )

EAC asks for release dates but I usually just put the date on the rear of the CD case. Which is probably the final mastering date and thus may not be representative of the release date on all CDs! But oh well...

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #120 – 2005-10-15 19:58:53

I know, there will always be problem cases. In the end, you can just pick one and not worry about it too much. And like I said, if you use APEv2, you can put as many genres as you want on a file (though of course you will only want it in one genre directory). Personally I would not put Blink 182 in punk, but it's different for everyone. Don't worry what anyone else would think, it should just make sense for you. I agonized over things like the Pretenders (Pop? Rock?) and the Pixies (Pop? Alternative?). And of course you can break them apart. Like I have early Husker Du in Punk, but their later albums in Alternative. But I have both Punk and Alternative as subfolders in Rock.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #121 – 2005-10-15 20:56:52

%artist% - %date% - %album%\%artist% - %album% - %tracknumber%. %title%
or
%album%\%album% - %tracknumber%. %artist% - %title%
if %album artist%

With a few exceptions, eg for artists I own the full discography or a lot of albums:
%artist%\%date% - %album%\%artist% - %album% - %tracknumber%. %title%
or
%artist%\%date% - %album% - %tracknumber%. %title%
(I think I'll be renaming those ones though)
or
%artist%\%date% - %album%\%tracknumber%. %title%
only if $or(%artist%,%album%) is really too long

PS. It can be %album%[cd %disc%] instead of %album%, and everything in lower case.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #122 – 2005-10-16 09:50:55

Wow, that must get confusing. Whatever will you do when one of your album or track titles has a dash (" - ") in it?

Anyway, singaiya, thanks for your insights about genre.

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #123 – 2005-10-28 22:15:08

Artist\Artist - Year - Album\Artist - Track number - Track name.filetype
like...
Nightwish\Nightwish - 1998 - Oceanborn\Nightwish - 03 - Devil & The Deep Dark Ocean.flac

That way I get all the information even without tags, if needed

Your Music Directory Structure

Reply #124 – 2005-10-28 22:19:46

artist/album/track# - artist - title.ext

works good with various, too.
oh, i don't use tags either

later

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