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

[grindlestone]

One folder, no subfolders -

D:\Music\artist-album-track-title.codec

[diskvask]

Codec\Artist\Year - Album\Artist - Album - NN - Title.ext

Optional sub dirs; CD1/CD2/etc, Extra (if pictures & other info is present)

[Insolent]

CODE

Music\Artist\[Year] Album\T# - Title.codec

Unless it's a multi-disc album, in which case I use:

CODE

Music\Artist\[Year] Album\Disc #\T# - Title.codec

[f1losof]

Albums
/media/music library/Artist - Year - Album [Label]/## - Title.ext

Compilations
/media/music library/Name (Year) [Label]/## - Artist -- Title.ext

...Note the different but 'compatible' notation, this is by design. This way i can easily parse it with a script without the need to add redunant VA/Various Artist tags. The double'-' between Artist and Title in the compilations format is there to prevent (potential) parsing issues aswell.
Also it is a compact layout of which I can easily burn backups to CDR in Joilet format without the need to rename files. I'm quite happy with it, after all i worked 4+ years on it

[razer]

Albums
/media/music library/Artist - Year - Album [Label]/## - Title.ext

Compilations
/media/music library/Name (Year) [Label]/## - Artist -- Title.ext

Very nice, though I see two things "wrong" with it.

1: Compilation names mixed with artist/band names? Isn't that a bit untidy?
2: If you take away the directory structure and throw all the files in the same directory, there would be complete chaos.

Other than that, this is pretty much flawless.

[damaki]

For albums :
/mnt/media/Musique/Albums/genre/artist/(year) album title/[CD disc/]## title

For compilations :
/mnt/media/Musique/Compilations/genre/album title/[CD disc/]## artist - title

For original soundtracks :
/mnt/media/Musique/OST/type (movie, anime, series, ...)/album title/[CD disc/]## artist - title

For operas :
/mnt/media/Musique/Operas/main composer/(year) album title/[CD disc/]## title

This post has been edited by damaki: Mar 26 2005, 21:24

[Supacon]

One folder, no subfolders -

D:\Music\artist-album-track-title.codec

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?

1: Compilation names mixed with artist/band names? Isn't that a bit untidy?
2: If you take away the directory structure and throw all the files in the same directory, there would be complete chaos.

I used to do 1 all the time, and didn't mind, but eventually I got so many folders that explorer and such was very slow listing them all. My main reason for splitting comps and artists was to make each tree more manageable.

I used to worry about 2. But now I use a system like this, just ## - Title.codec. If you ever want to burn the songs onto a Joliet CD (limit 64 characters per filename) It's a pain in the @$$ if the names get cut down.

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.

[Muzzy^F8]

Music\[Artist/VA] - (Date) Album (Genre)\T# - Artist - Title.codec

I like it very much.

[damaki]

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 was thinking exactly the same, with foobar2000 masstagger it would not be a problem. The only issue would be tracks with the same number and the same title.

[schonenberg]

Music\Artist - (Year)\Album\NN - Title.codec

For compilations:
Music\Album (Year)\Track Artist - NN - Title.codec

Is that the itunes way? I've heard itunes has the best naming.

[Supacon]

Is that the itunes way? I've heard itunes has the best naming.

Well, what is "best" is kind of subjective. As long as the ripper, or media manager that you are using offers very flexible support for naming, you're just fine. (EAC, for example does a good job of this.)

[neutral_00]

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?

Not really. I use the library or playlist in the players makes a very easy. I do not
like having many folders.

[Cosmo]

Re: short filenames ( # - Title.ext )

2: If you take away the directory structure and throw all the files in the same directory, there would be complete chaos.

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.

Right, I have no worry of such hypothetical chaos because all files can easily be resorted or renamed from the tag metadata.

[Supacon]

Now that we all have a good idea of the various schemes people use to store their music, how hard would it be to write a program that can somewhat intellegently look at a series of directories and filenames, and determine what the song artists, titles, and dates and such are for the songs.

I wrote a program that scans files for duplicate songs, and if that is any indication, If I did this, such a program would be extremely thorough and extremely complex

I suppose a program like this could also guess at all the song data (by analyzing the filenames), then compare to any tags that exist. It would consider the fact that some people use underscores, lower case text, and avoid certain characters in filenames, and then consider any tags to be more "authoritative".

It would also have to account for the fact that id3v1 tags might be truncated, and then guess the remainder of the title, or whatever, based on the part of the filename that extends beyond the tag data.

If there is data in the filename that is not present in any of the tags, then perhaps there would be some additional field defined for "extra filename info". (This is often the case with single-file downloads off crap networks like kazaa and such). Someone will make a filename like:
Rush - Subdivisions (Remastered Version).mp3
But there would be no tag data for (Remastered Version), so then my theoretical program would consider that data an extra comment or something.


Would anyone have use for a program, or rather, an algorithm like this? I'm thinking that it would be really handy if you have a large collection of music, and wanted to homogenize the way that your collection is formatted.

So if you finish archiving your 500 CDs, and then think "Damn - I should have labelled the directory names with the years in them", you could use this program to do that as a simple one-step process.


(BTW, Rush released more than one album per year some years, those ambitious guys. I have to label THEIR directory names with the month, like 1975-10)

This post has been edited by Supacon: Mar 27 2005, 00:05

[zombiewerewolf]

I've let iTunes organise my files. This is its structure if an album has more than 1 cd.
Artist\Album\cd#-track# Title.codec
otherwise
Artist\Album\track# Title.codec

[jcsston]

Looking at all the posts makes my naming schemce seems too far simple

Music\Artist - Title.mp3

About 4000 files in a single folder. There are all tagged and I use fb2k's search feature to quickly locate a song or artist I want to listen to.

[plonk420]

i've long given up organizing my music... i used to do it by genre, but i just do it by first letter....

music\0numbers
music\0numbers\16-bit lolitas
music\a\
music\a\ace of base
music\a\...
music\b\...
...
music\w\
music\xyz
music\y_mixes
music\y_osts
music\y_various_artists
music\z_unsorted

kinda sucks if i want to hear a lot in a specific genre, but .. *shrug*

This post has been edited by plonk420: Mar 27 2005, 04:13

[Teqnilogik]

For my ripped music:
Multimedia\Music\Ripped\Artist\Album\## Title.mp3

For music I have received from other sources other than CD:
Multimedia\Music\Downloaded\Artist\Album\## Title.mp3

Compilations are stored in a
Compilations\Artist\Album\## Title.mp3
structure in their respective directories above.

[Rommel]

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

[grindlestone]

One folder, no subfolders -

D:\Music\artist-album-track-title.codec

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?

I have a bit over 1800 tracks so I guess not as big a collection as some. It's easy to find tracks with the foobar search function and i've never been one to listen to a whole album straight through either. A few playlist of favourites do me and I have one big playlist with all available tracks in it to browse throuh as a feel like it. I use tags now, but didn't for a long time - the filename was enough.

[jaybeee]

Artist:

CODE

\Audio\<lossy> or <lossless>\codec\Artist\Album\T##-Artist - Title.codec

e.g:
C:\Audio\lossless\flac\Massive Attack\Blue Lines\01-Massive Attack - Safe From Harm.flac

EAC naiming scheme: '%D\%C\%N-%A - %T'

or

Various Artists:

CODE

\Audio\<lossy> or <lossless>\codec\Various Artists\Album\T##-Artist - Title.codec

e.g:
C:\Audio\lossless\flac\Various Artists\James Hyman - A Quentin Tarantino Mash-Up\01-James Hyman & Audio Shrapnel - Intro Using 'Kill Bill' & Shaw Brothers Stings.flac

EAC naming scheme: 'Various Artists\%C\%N-%A - %T'

[Miriam]

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

[clintb]

I have a dedicated external drive for all my music and everything is off the root as below.

\Codec\Artist\Artist - Album.flac (single file image)

[CyberTootie]

Music\Artist\Album\Artist - Title (CT - Format).codec

Adding track numbers would be cool if Windows didn't allow for sorting by track numbers. Since it does as long as it's in the tags, it's all good. And with my "signature" I know what's mine.

[Supacon]

For my CD images I use:
\Music\Artist\YEAR - Album[cue.flac]\Artist - Album (YEAR).cue.flac

(although I probably use ape slightly more than flac, and am probably going to switch to WavePack soon, but that's beside the point)