I have a fair few thousand audio files on my HD. thus i have the problem of how to organise it all. currently, i have 7 big folders of music:

AMERICAN (nu-metal, grunge)
COMEDY
DANCE
HIP HOP
LATIN
METAL
POP
ROCK CURRENT
ROCK OLDER
SPOKEN


additionally, i have a folder called FILLER TRACKS AND MP3 DOUBLES, containing, well, all the filler tracks that i dont want but others in the community might want to try, at some point. this folder also contains all the old mp3s i used to have, which have now been replaced by ogg files (i dont just delete the mp3 - some1 else might want it etc).


thx for reading.

e - none of the above

Codec\Artist\Album

Ex: [musicdir]\Ogg Vorbis\Rush\Different Stages - Live

I hope you didn't transcode those...

I don't think this poll will work the way it has been set up, since most people probably use a combination of these categories.

I use:

codec\genre\artist\album\

I have mostly mp3 files (for portable player use - my archos jbmm can't browse by id3 so directory hierarchy is very important) and a smaller number of flac files for archivals purposes. On my system I can't really tell the difference between lame -aps mp3 and flac/cd and don't really see the need to move to mpc/ogg/aac since I have most of the original cds anyway.

.dd.

I store my music files within directories which indicate the source of the music file. Within the directories all files are named using (in foobar2000 notation)


For example some of my directories are

• CD
• Tape
• mp3.com
• dmusic.com

MusicType/ArtistDir/AlbumDir/TrackNumber - Title - Album - Artist.mpc

I like to put the track # 1st because I find that hardware players always get the correct track order then, this would be for Mp3 files, since no MPC hardware support.

I think maybe I'm one of those few people who doesn't use tags. I can't stand when an audio player sorts my audio the way it wants to, so I use QCD player and remove all tags. I have ways of labelling music, for example it's always in upper case letters,

"PLANET X ~ MOONBABIES ~ 03 - ATARAXIA" and so on.. all my mp3's are labelled exactly the same way. I don't use lower case letters, they're harder to read on my players playlist than upper case.

I have one folder for AUDIO which sits on my E drive away from the page file and operating system. Inside it are folders for each artist. Inside these folders are more folders for each album. If there's only one album by that artist the folder goes straight into AUDIO without giving them their own folder. If it's just a few tracks by an artist it goes into VARIOUS. That's it.

By composer.

By Artist, then by album. Example:

I:\Music\Pink Floyd\Dark Side of The Moon\03 - Time.mpc

My system is:

/Music/%artist% - %album%/%artist% - %tracknum% - %title%

It works well, except when I have artists or albums with really long names.

Both by genre and by title through the use of hard links (via NTFS reparse points). I use Junction Link Magic to tie the same albums onto the same directory.

I name all my music files in such a way that even if all the files were thrown into a single directory, all the files would still be sorted by Artist and Album. So, I use this naming scheme;

Artist - (Year) Album - Tracknumber - Title

I want the same thing with compilations with various artists, so I name them like this;

VA - Album title - Tracknumber - Artist - Title

The release year is kind of redundant when it comes to compilations IMO, because the music contained on the album might differ in time period, and most compilations have some form of year in their title anyway (like "Hits '96", or something like that).

I just know how I would sort my CD-Collection, so I try to sort my music the same way. I make directories for everything as well, to sort even further, but I want a good base filename scheme to fall back on.

I used to do something similar to this:

%artist% - %album% - &track% - %title%

The only problem is burning this title scheme to CDs, almost every time the name will be too long.

I use
Artist - [album - Disc] - tracknumber - title
on my HD

and
Artist\Album\Tracknumber. Title
On the MP3 cds I burn for my SlimX

I'm using Artist - Album\Artist - Trackname.

Music\Artist\Title.mpc

Only problem with this is compilation discs. When you get comilations, they want to write over songs from the original album. I don't let it, but it screws up ReplayGain. I also store album playlists (in the m3u format because path is relavtive) in the root of the Music directory.

I just have iTunes sort it out for me:
~/Music/<Artist>/<Album>/[[<Disk>-]<Track>. ]<name>.{mp3,m4a}
Compilations go into "~/Music/Compilations/" instead of "~/Music/<Artist>/".

If there is no artist, etc., they get "Unknown Artist", "Unknown Album" and so on. Works quite well since I normally don't access the actual files - when I add it to the library, it's copied to the right place, and if I retag it, it's moved or renamed. If there already is a file with that name " N" is added before the suffix (where N is the lowest number possible).

I guess this is one of the reasons iTunes blew away the competition in the mac world; it just works...

I have one big directory with albums in single files. They're named [Artist]-[Album]. That's it.

Pro's: it looks like a digital version of my CD-rack. Structure is simple to maintain.
Con's: if I forget an artist's name, I can't go looking if I recognize the CD-box...

i only collect music that was released on 12" (dance music)

ordering by label makes the most sense for this genre in my opinion

\Label_Name\(Catalogue_Number)_Release_Artist-Release_Title\

on a side note all music is the same genre

H:\Audio CDs\Artist - Album [date] (codec)\artist - album - number - title.bleh
ie
H:\Jimi Hendrix - Experience Hendrix CD1 (limited edition) [2000] (flac)

-CD1/CD2 is just added onto the album when needed looks clean and sorts correctly
-extra info is put in ( ) at the end of the album title ie (remaster) (1992 remaster) (promo) (live)
- date is always set to when the cd came out, if a remaster that date is put in the ( ) in the album title

also 2 things that come up

H:\Audio CDs\OST - Natural Born Killers [1994] (ape)\OST - Natural Born Killers - 08 - Burn (Nine Inch Nails).ape
H:\Audio CDs\VA - Logic Trance 2 CD1 [1995] (mpc)\VA - Logic Trance 2 CD1 - 01 - What Is Sound_ {The BLYZ}.mpc


also each folder has a "artist - album.rar" with all supporting files (cue log covers nfo) and a "artist - album.jpg" which is the album cover ie
Pink Floyd - The Wall CD1.jpg
Pink Floyd - The Wall CD1.rar


one last rule

artists that start with The, I don't put in the stupid the except for
THe Cure The band The who only ones i've come across that sound bad without the the

Rolling Stones and Beatles are fine ... i hate how Rolling Stones, The looks too uggy and i hate how The Beatles would be in the Ts if u leave the The on.



My biggest problem now is what genres to use

can't be too broad or its no hlep but not too specific or else u can't just pick 1 :/

\albums\artist - albumname\[disc no.\]artist - track no. - title
\compilations\compilation name\[disc no.\]track no. - artist - title
\singles\genre\artist - title
\sound tracks\moviename\[disc no.\]artist - track no. - title OR track no. - artist - title

So except for singles, the music is sorted by CDs. If there are various artists, then the track number comes first in the filename. Otherwise I start with the artist.

I also have a folder where I collect complete maxi singles, or I have a larger number of songs from one particular artist. I'm thinking of abandoning those because they mean a lot of maintainance. The tracks in the "singles" directory are usually individual tracks from CDs where most of the other stuff is crap I deleted.

The only genre with subgenres is "electronica".

Well, I don't do that very often, so I don't have that problem. Besides, with well-tagged and well-organized files, it's a snap to rename something for burning.

HDD:
Artist+Year+Album+Track Number+Title+Genre
This is primarily so that Tag doesn't see dashes as a separation point on track titles that use dashes. I haven't had to manually re-tag any tracks since using the plus symbols.

CD-R:
Artist\Year-Track Number
This is so that the names are keep to the absolute minimum (supposedly I'm doing this for cross-platform support just in case I dump Windows). Of course proper tagging is required to do things this way, and a text file is needed to be dumped in every artist folder just in case some future media/audio player cannot read the tag's.

I use:
/Music/Artist/Artist - Date - Album

I voted for "Artist".

However, this only applies to music-streams on my pc. I also have a large collection of MOD-Files and MIDI-Songs. These i sort by genre instead.

- Lyx

Music / %Artist / %Year %Album / %Track %Title
Music / !compilations / %Year %Album / %Track %Title

I voted for Artist, but my "system" is:
Artist - Album (Year)\Track number - Title

E:\Music\*codec*\Artist\Album\Number. Title

For example: E:\Music\mpc\Adiemus\Songs Of Sanctuary\01. Adiemus.mpc

It's the most organised I can get with normal albums. The only bad side is on compilations - the filename doesn't show what artist it is.

Generally I sort by artist.

But my library programme will also sort by genre, album, or even keywords. I use dj2000 and have always been very pleased with it.

<artist> <album> - <track #> <title>

Good Tunes\Artist\Artist - Album\

No mention of codec for me!

NONE of the above..


I sort like this (I have 150+ gigs so I have to be organized.. )

c:\music\<list of genres>\<list of artists>\<list of albums in format of 1999 - Title>\<list of tracks in format 01 - name>


This way I can find exactly what I am looking for quickly..

--Grant

yea, the structure of the poll is a bit flawed and i tried to edit it but of course u cant

youre right that people use several layers of sub-folders on their HD: but there we have the reason for this thread. when it comes to backing up the music to removable media, keeping the format of codec/genre/artist/album/record company/year/month/day is just not practical. what is the label on the cd gonna read? there is only so much surface space on that disc...

ok, im being flippant. and im probably in the minority cos every1 i see on soulseek or dc has spent some time creating pretty little sub-directories.

i guess i wanted a simpler - yet *Reasonably* accurate way of filing my music. the 'best' one ive seen is

folder: major artist
file: artist-album-song

leaving 1 big 'miscellaneous' folder, for all the filler tracks you dont want appearing in your playlist.






course not. i ripped them from my own CDs or those of others. i keep the mp3s for 'the wider community' , but am only doing this cos ~60% of people still look for mp3s, and so to be helpful i make it available for them. i will probably always keep them - on the off-chance that my future ogg player breaks down and im only left with my old portable mp3 player...

At first I did so:

music/codec/artist/album/artist - album - track number - title

Now, as I mixed up all codecs, I do it like that:

music/genre/artist/album/artist - album - track number - title

I voted for Artist, but I use

on my hard drive and

on backups.

~ Florian

I don't bother sorting for genre, too much stuff that could fit into two or three different categories, sit there for five minutes humming and hawwing wondering which one I should put band X in. I just sort everything alphabetically starting with the first letter of the band, plus a 0 directory for all the numbers. Then for each artist I've put the year of the album in parantheses before the album name so I can see the chronological order.

\<single characters from A-Z>\<artist>\(year)<album>\<artist> - <track #> - <song title>

By Codec, by Artist and by Album. - Why couldn´t I click on all of these three possibilities?!

My personal opinion: Easy things should stay easy. So: No genre-sorting (makes all too complicate and time-consuming) and only 3 main-directories in general:

A) Albums (for single artist-albums)
B ) Samplers (for multiple artist-albums)
C) Singles (for single artist-albums, but with only few songs on it -> "Single-CD")
For each album or sampler, I use one folder, never mind if I have only 1 or 20 albums of the concerning artist. So: Without any subdirectories (that makes all only more complicate and unclearly):

Name-schemes for:

A1) A - N - T
but with the exception of "duets", (where more artits contributed to a song, e.g. "vs.", "pres.", "feat.") then:
A2) N - A - T (this because of the uniform look)

for
B ) N - A - T (generally)

and for
C) A - N - T

Last rule: No year, neither in the album-directory nor in the filenames itself. ´Cause it´s not such an important information and after all everyone can take a look in the TAG-info, when really interested in it.

But all in all I know: A thousand people - a thousand different sorting-schemes.

artist - genre/album - year/track - title
If I used more than one codec I would use:
codec/artist - genre/album - year/track - title

on hd:
artist_year_album/tracknumber_songtitle.mpc

in player:
songtitle, tracknumber, trg, artist, album, lenght, diskdrive letter

I do Artist / Album. For playing Itunes owns because it does genre / artists / albums!! And the search feature is killer MAC HAS the best player available for mp3/aac

This has been a surprisingly useful thread for me.

I'm reevaluating how I sort my music, since it isn't always helpful for me to have it in Artist/Album/Tracknumber - Title format. I've also been introduced to Hard Linking in NTFS, which I'm probably abusing already. Basically, for every song I have in an album, I have it hard linked to the artist. So /U2/U2 - With or Without You.mpc is hard linked with /U2/The Joshua Tree/03 - With or Without You.mpc

Are there any problems I might have with hard linking like this (aside from being a bitch to delete)?

EDIT: Deleted a question that was off-topic and invalid.

On HDD:
%artist% - %album% \ num$(%tracknumber%,2). [%performer% - ]%title%
e.g:
D:\Music\Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump\02. Hewlett's Daughter
D:\Music\Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beat As One\13. Center Of Gravity
D:\Music\Burt Bacharach - The Look Of Love CD2\01. Dionne Warwick - Walk On By

edit: "performer".

I voted artist because I'm using genre for maybe 5% of my albums only : reggae, jazz and french music. Those are no-brainer genres for me and I don't own a lot of albums in each (maybe 40 or 50). If the artist crossed over several genres, I categorize him where he seems to belong. So Louis Armstrong is in Jazz, whatever pop recordings he made, while Brian Setzer or Joe Jackson are not, whatever jazz recordings they made. Ditto for Jimmy Cliff in reggae, though a lot of his records are not reggae.

Everything else is by artists, alphabetically, be it rock, pop, soul, rap, country, american or english, etc. Basic album goes like this :

A~Z\Artist [Year] Album_Title\Track_Number [Performer] Track_Title

e.g:

B\B.B. King\B.B. King [1993] Blues Summit\01 [B.B. King & Robert Cray] Playing With My Friends

Track number comes first in the filename so I can see the right track order in explorer even if there is a duet or a "feat. xxx".

If there are several editions for an album, I add a mention in the folder name. Ditto for double CDs.

e.g:

W\Who\Who [1970] Live At Leeds (1995)\...
W\Who\Who [1970] Live At Leeds (2001 Deluxe) (CD 1)\...
W\Who\Who [1970] Live At Leeds (2001 Deluxe) (CD 2)\...

Optionnaly, I append more information in the filename, like {Errors} or {Burst} if the rip wasn't clean and in secure mode. Or some track info, like (B-Side), (Mono Version) etc. I don't care much about the filename lenght since my whole collection is on my HDs. And I don't do P2P so the organization of shared files is pointless to me. My only problem is the organization of the 10 HDs on my real desk.

Wow! First post after lurking for one year or so!

1st order is genre, but i group different genres together, eg. "Trance, Techno, House", and only split the folder, have to much artists inside.

2nd order is artists, or compilation series

3rd order differeres between "Album", "Maxi", "Best Of", "Live". But only if there are at least two different types of music

4rd order is album or volume of compilation with a leading release-year, e.g. "2003-Tour De France Soundtrack", so the albums are ordered by release-year inside the folder.

Then track is: MediaNumber-TrackNumber - TrackArtist - TrackTitle

Example:
\# Trip-Hop # Drum&Bass # Electronica # Club #
\LTJ Bukem
\Progression Sessions
\2002 - Japan Live 2002
\01-01 - Greenfly - G-Funk (Vocal).mp3

or

\# Techno # Trance # House #
\ATB
\# Album #
\2000 - Two Worlds
\01-01 - ATB - See U Again.mp3

Artist/Album - Track Number - Title

Although that filename is mostly for CD's I rip. I don't usually rename files that I download. (many of which are direct from the electronic artist's website)

pros: simple, it's easy to figure out where things go (ie... you don't have to figure out what genre the music is; a lot of my songs don't have albums)

cons: currently at 634 folders, many of which only have one or two songs

stripe/ben

I sort my music first by height of the lead singer, then by hair color (blonde, followed by brunette, followed by redhead).

OK, really...The music on my home PC resides under D:\Music\<artist>\<albumname>\<nn> <trackname>.ogg The music on my car's hard disc resides under \\PHTDTA\Music\<artist>\<albumname>\<nn> <trackname>.ogg. I therefore voted for "Artist", as that's my first criteria.

I'm thinking about adding the release year to album names to keep my albums sorted by year, and since I've seen some people here who do just that, I'm even more inclined to. I'm just wary of looking at something like "(1967) The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" instead of just "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn". The latter just looks so much cleaner in a directory listing, though it does put it after "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason" (which chronologically seems odd).

If my OS could just read the "year" value from my Vorbis comments in the tracks in a directory, then sort the album directories based on year, then album name, while only displaying the album name...that would solve all my sorting issues. I know...I'm the poster child for neurosis. Story of my life...

Artist/Album/Title

And The GodFather is the best tool I've found yet to organize/catalogue/tag/whatever my music.

LOL!
Funniest post on the thread...
On the other hand:

artist/year - album/tracknumber - trackname

You are right on the year-album scheme looking odd, but it is the only way that you can keep your albums in the correct order for portable MP3 CD players. So I have to keep using it.

I hate to classify my music by genre. To me there there are only two genres: 1)Music that I like and 2)Music that I don't like.

Amen to that!

I tried using genre for a while...but I could never decide if The Chemical Brothers was House? or Techno? or Electronica? or Trance?

Is The Police Rock? or New Wave? or Post-Punk?

Pink Floyd...Rock? Progressive Rock? Or for the early stuff, Psychadelic Rock? So different genres for the same artist???!?!?

No thanks! All my music is the same genre, hence genre is not a sort criteria for me. It's all in the genre "M-U-S-I-C". You know, to differentiate it from MOVIES or TREES or GIRLS or FINGERNAILS.

Genre(\Subgenre)\Artist\Year - Album [info]\Artist - Track - Title.mp3

example:
Metal\Progressive\Rush\1981 - Moving Pictures [remastered,vbr]\Rush - 01 -Tom Sawyer.mp3

D:\Music\Codec\Artist\Artist - Album\track - Song Title.ext

The reason I double-up on the artist name, is it makes it display
nicer in the program PartyTime Jukebox, which I find myself
using more and more.

Dex