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

[spile]

Can someone please explain what this fixation so many people have with the album is all about?

I will grant you that SOMETIMES the songs on the album are related to each other in some specific artistic way - "Sketches of Spain" (Miles Davis), say or "Tommy"(The Who). And house or DJ mix music has to be kept together so you can gaplessly transition from one track to the other as the DJ intended.



(I know I've made this rant on HA before, here, but I still don't "get" what the big deal with albums is)

The album "package" is important in the same way that a meal is made up of various foods that go together. Playing tracks from an album out order just doesn't sound right.
An album of mine that has related tracks is Neil Ardley's Kaleidoscope of Rainbows.
An album that doesn't have related tracks but the order and collectiveness is still vital - Faust's So Far

[Bjossi]

Folder structure:
\Music\Artist\Album\Title.wv

Tag structure (in correct order):
Title
Artist
Track Artist (Various artists only.)
Album
Disc (2+CD albums only.)
Track
Genre
Date
Original Date (Remaster releases only.)

I keep the folder/name structure simple and make the tags and player take care of detailed data and sorting. Works great for me and my still tiny music collection.

[vassie]

I've decided to restructure mine, from...

Album Artist\Album\Track Number - Title

to...

Album Artist [Year] Album\Track Number - Title

I much prefer a flatter structure

[trelain]

Can someone please explain what this fixation so many people have with the album is all about?

I will grant you that SOMETIMES the songs on the album are related to each other in some specific artistic way - "Sketches of Spain" (Miles Davis), say or "Tommy"(The Who). And house or DJ mix music has to be kept together so you can gaplessly transition from one track to the other as the DJ intended.



(I know I've made this rant on HA before, here, but I still don't "get" what the big deal with albums is)

The album "package" is important in the same way that a meal is made up of various foods that go together. Playing tracks from an album out order just doesn't sound right.
An album of mine that has related tracks is Neil Ardley's Kaleidoscope of Rainbows.
An album that doesn't have related tracks but the order and collectiveness is still vital - Faust's So Far

Sorry if the bump offends anyone, but this thread is an ongoing discussion, right?
The "album" is a part of the presentation of the song from the artist, so I keep it important to retain that as part of the default organization of the songs. We of course don't have to listen to them that way, but artists generally release songs in a specific sequence on the album to convey subtle relationships to each other and to tell a larger story, which I try to retain when storing my digital music. Even the "album" artwork can contribute to the cohesiveness of each album song and to their listening experience and interpretation. On the other hand I am not very concerned with transferring to the tags the original physical medium arrangement, e.g. CD Disc 1, Disc 2 aspect of an album or song - for instance, The Beatles White Album was released on two records, (or two compact discs), merely because of the physical limitations of the medium. I rather combine them into one album's combined collection of tracks, since they are presented by the artist as one album. Whereas now in the digital world an artist that is not hampered by that, could, although unlikely, release 500 songs as part of one "album" if they so choose. Quite ironic that artists who in the past were more impeded by physical limitations of records or CD's still released double or triple albums worth of work, but are less likely to do so today despite more freedom to do so. Perhaps today's digital world is more demanding, i.e., "we only want the good stuff", so it is harder to get per-song obsessed consumers to be interested in handing out double or triple album-priced collections to get the "big package" story that the artist is trying to tell. Back when the record companies controlled everything, you had to buy the whole triple album just to have the one song that never made it to a single, which = more album sales for them and more $$. It seems to be more of an all or ala carte world nowadays - give me "one song" or "discography box-set".

[ainz]

I use
/Album Artist/Album Artist – Year - Album Title [Bitrate Codec]
e.g. Autechre/Autechre – 2010 – Oversteps [320k mp3]

...except for compliations and other VA releases which I organise under
/Record Label Name/Various - Year - Album Title [Bitrate Codec]
e.g. Horizons Music/Various – 2008 – Dream Thief [320k mp3]
...which avoids having a single huge 'Various Artists' parent folder.

I still the use the ancient 'Album list (panel)' tree view which lets me view & navigate by folder structure.

[lunkhead]

\Music\Letter\Artist - Album (Year)\Track - Title

I don't have a lot.

[yakkady]

I've just got mine separated by genre. A whopping five subfolders!

[Bright Star]

Here is my settings

I've folders named Music 1,Music 2,,,Music n (currently I'm at Music 11), and inside each folder the files are separated by genre (Alternative, Pop, Rock, Jazz and more, where Black Music has more folders inside, such as Rap, Soul, Hip hop and more).
At the bottom of each folder, I save the albums named Artist - Album name.

The reason (historic somehow) for Music 1 & etc is because when I've started to collect mp3, I've quickly lost space and needed to transfer the entire collection couple of times, between folders, hard drives and etc.
The Music n helps me know when I've downloaded the album (more or less of course) and navigation this days is pretty much strait forward for me (although I've to admit that I'm considering changing structure, hence my appearance here :-)).

As long as Foobar is able to correctly read the tags (consider that when I've started to collect, tagging wasn't much in fashion and now thesedays, the manual task looks quite annoying to me), I'm quite happy.

C&C are welcomed.

[Nessuno]

My main music library is made solely of classical CD ripping, one directory per CD and one file per track: a two level structure that allows me to reference at once the physical medium where that file comes from. CDs are univocally identified by label name & catalog number.
Actually there are two distinct directory trees, one for lossless FLAC files, replicated on three different external drives and one for 256kbps VBR AAC on internal drive for actual listening. So a typical full pathname is:

[parent dir]/[FLAC|AAC]/Alia Vox AV9818 A/Track 01.[flac|m4a]

Directory of CDs who belong to a box which has only a catalog number as a whole, are added their progressive index number.

E.g.: ../Brilliant 92136-1/* ../Brilliant 92136-2/* … ../Brilliant 92136-60/*

[The Seeker]

C:\Users\Gavin\Music\Dawnbringer\(2010) Nucleus\1.06. Like an Earthquake.mp3

[Porcus]

Usual ones:
Harddrive:\single_char_folder_name\Artist {year} ~ album ~ [code with disc id and rip accuracy]\Artist {year} ~ album ~ tracknumber ~ title.flac

... that single character prevents paths from exceeding the length limit.


Classical music follows different pattern, as I don't want to sort by performing artist.

[justsetmefree]

F:\Musics\A\Apocalyptica\Apocalyptica - 7th Symphony

[pandino]

I use

MUSIC / "*" / Artist / Year - "CD/EP/Single etc" / #T - Title .mp3/.flac/.wav etc

For example:

-"Music"
- - "A"
- - - "Amplifier"
- - - - "2004 - CD - Amplifier"
- - - - - "01 - ...mp3"
- - - - - "02 - ...mp3"
- - - - - "03 - ...mp3"
- - - - - ...
- - - - "2011 - CD - The Octopus"
- - - - - "CD 1 - 01 - ...mp3"
- - - - - "CD 1 - 02 - ...mp3"
- - - - - ...
- - - - - "CD 2 - 01 - ...mp3"
- - - - - ...
- - ...
- - "T"
- - - "Tool"
- - - - "2001a - CD - Lateralus"
- - - - "2001b - Single - Schism"
- - - - "2002 - Single - Parabola"
- - - - "2006 - CD - 10,000 Days"

And so on.. :)

[Jplus]

I use a 4 level arrangement where the artists or composers are grouped by genre or period. In non-contemporary periods I subdivide by composer and concerto, in the contemporary genres I subdivide by artist and album. The year is often included in the folder name of an album, but I always sort by album title.

[eahm]

"D:"
- "Music"
- - "Artist Name"
- - - "Year - Album Name [FLAC/WV/APE]" ([] only for lossless albums, nothing for lossy)
- - - - "Track Number.Song Title.ext"
- - - - "600x600.jpg"
- - - - "800x800.jpg"
- - - - "1000x1000.jpg"
- - - - "1500x1500.jpg"

- - - "Box Set/Compilation Albums/EP Albums/Live Albums/Single Albums"
- - - - "Year - Album Name [FLAC/WV/APE]" ([] only for lossless albums, nothing for lossy)
- - - - - "Track Number.Song Title.ext"
- - - - - "600x600.jpg"
- - - - - "800x800.jpg"
- - - - - "1000x1000.jpg"
- - - - - "1500x1500.jpg"

- - "Random"
- - - "Artist Name - Song Title.mp3/m4a"

- - "ToDo" (for temporary conversions)

This post has been edited by db1989: Feb 15 2013, 21:49

Reason for edit: replacing by request

[o-l-a-v]

Lossless:

- "FLAC"
- - "Artist Name"
- - - "[Year] Album Name"
- - - - "Disc Number(If multiple discs).Track Number - Song Title.flac"

Lossy:

- "MP3"
- - "Artist Name - Year - Album - Disc Number(If multiple discs).Track Number - Song Title.mp3"

Would be like: "El Caco - The Search - 05 - Substitute.mp3"
My lossy system makes LONG file names. But different portable devices handle folders differently. This is the best solution IMO in order to get the same system on any device.

[The Milkman]

It has been interesting to read over this topic, as I thought I had it all figured out but I think there is at least one change I want to make to my file structure now. Normally I will let my media player handle finding my audio for me, but I still like to have it organized in such a way that if I ever want to quickly copy a track out for whatever reason, I can do so with ease.

My system right now is:

:\Music\Album Artist\Album\d# - Title.EXT


I use "Album Artist" instead of "Artist" because that avoids the problem where an album may have one or two tracks with collaborating artists showing up in the "Artist" tag, and it works well for compilations that have "Various Artists" in their Album Artist tag.

d is the disc number, which I only include if it's a multi-disc album. That way I know if a track starts 01 - Title.EXT, it's from a single disc album.
In a multi-disc album, track numbers are shown as:

101
102
..
114
201
202


Anything more than that, and you're ending up going through too many subdirectories to find what you were looking for.

From reading through this topic though, I think I may now change my naming scheme to:

:\Music\Album Artist\[Year] Album\d# - Title.EXT


It also has me reconsidering my filenames. I have them named in such a way that they make sense inside that directory structure, but I am now wondering if I should be naming so they will automatically sort, and make sense in any folder, if I were to just grab a selection at random and copy them to a USB stick for example.

Something along the lines of:

<album artist> - <year> <album> - d# - Title.EXT

might work better, as they will automatically be displayed in the correct order.

This post has been edited by The Milkman: Feb 16 2013, 16:57

[jkauff]

I start organizing at a higher level. I have a folder called Hi Res Music that is then organized by artist-album/track no - title. This is all my HDTracks and needledrop stuff. I have separate folders on another drive, one each for lossless Jazz, Rock, and Classical, with the same artist -album/track -title scheme.

I have another folder for Live Music, which is organized with the same scheme except with artist - date - venue. If I have a lot of shows by one artist, I'll make an Artist folder and put all the shows in there.

I also have an iTunes media folder for iTunes lossy files, mostly because I got tired of fighting with iTunes. I've got plenty of disc space, if it wants to make a copy within its own file structure, fine. I have another folder for MP3, which includes everything from iTunes organized the way I want it, and stuff that I never put in iTunes. It uses the same artist -album scheme as the rest of my music.

I can always find what I'm looking for without searching and without foobar2000's library function (although my collection is in there if I want to use it.). I also have lots of stuff on DVD data discs, which I keep track of using a highly recommended program called Where Is It?.

EDIT: I also have backups of most of this stuff organized exactly the same way. I use a very nice free program called Allsync that automatically updates my backup folders.

I'm also a heavy user of Mp3tag, so I made a donation. I encourage others to do the same.

This post has been edited by jkauff: Feb 17 2013, 16:08

[roebeet]

/Music/Genre/Artist/Album/<Track #> - <Track Name>.codec