I use foobar2000's file utilities to sort all my music into folders. This is the structure I use for full albums:

Album Artist \ Album (Year) \ [disc #-]nn. title [~ track artist]

For single songs, I use this:

Album Artist -- Album [Year] -- [disc #-]nn. title [~ track artist]

Basically the same as the earlier one, only it doesn't create subdirectories.

I would like to handle disc numbers better in both cases, but I can't seem to find an elegant method. I don't put the genre in the directory structure for a few reasons:

• I don't know or don't care about the genre of most of the music I have.
• If I do add genres, I add them to single songs, not entire albums. An album may have songs from multiple genres.
• If my directory structure is inadequate from any point of view, never fear! fb2k's Album list window is amazingly flexible; I've never needed to search for a track (either using fb2k's Search feature or Windows Explorer).

What is a 'Set'?


You said it! I used to have around 5,000 songs sorted like this, and it would take a minute or so to open the folder, or even list it in the directory tree. The situation has been alleviated somewhat now: I have all my full albums in subdirectories according to the structure above. I do still have nearly 3,000 single songs thrown together in one large directory, though.


I've always felt the same way. And you wouldn't even need any program other than fb2k.


Assuming the `$if2()` is a literal part of an fb2k string, here's a small suggestion: use %album artist% instead of the $if2(). %album artist% uses the album artist if it's there, but falls back on composer/performer/artist.

Personally I tend to shy away from putting genres in the majority of my folder names because they can be so subjective and they're still evolving. Sometimes I even find myself going back and changing the genre in my ID3 tags. For example, I had the band "Explosions in the Sky" labeled as "rock (instrumental)" because they play rock music without singing. Months later I found out there's a popular term nowadays for that type of music called "Post Rock." It's hard keeping up with all the musical trends sometimes. Anyway, my basic folder structure breaks down like this:

Full CD's:
G:\Audio\At the Drive-In\[2000] Relationship of Command\01 - Arcarsenal.mp3

In each CD directory I keep a log of the rip, a playlist file and an image of the cd cover entitled "art.jpg." I tried the "folder.jpg" method but windows constantly got the thumbnails confused. I'm not a big fan of deep directories. Each disc in a multiple-disc release gets its own respective folder. I also frequently include a [MISC] folder in an artist's directory for random live songs and tracks which were not part of an official release.

Compilations:
G:\..\Compilation - Motown Legends (Volume 1)\[1994] Motown Legends (Volume 1)\Track Number - Artist - Track Title.mp3

Soundtracks:
G\..\Soundtrack - Rushmore\[1999] Rushmore (OST)\Track Number - Artist - Track Title.mp3

I use the prefix "Soundtrack" as opposed to "OST" in the folder name because, for the life of me, I can't expect someone new to digital music to alphabetically go to the O's to find a soundtrack.

The only time I use the genre in a folder name is for comedy and to clump together large groups of miscallenous single songs:
G\..\Comedy - Seinfeld, Jerry\[1997] I'm Telling You for the Last Time\01 - Intro-Phones.mp3
G\..\Misc - 80's\Artist - Track Name.mp3
G\..\Misc - Dance\Artist - Track Name.mp3

Hello to everyone by the way! This is my first post but I've been using the site as a wonderful learning tool for a while now. Figured this was a good thread to start in considering the organization of my own music collection is the only aspect of digital music I know more about than anyone else here.

Finally settled on something thorough but easy to navigate:

Albums
Music\Albums\Artist\(Date) Album\nn Title

Compilations and splits
Music\Compilations\(Date) Album\nn Artist - Title

Classical
Music\Classical\Composer*\Album (Ensemble - Conductor)\nn Title
* Sorted by last name.

CD Images
Music\CD Images\Artist - Date - Album.wv/flac

muzic\genre\subgenre\artist\[year] album\track# - title.container

it takes a helluva time to find a subgenre for certain artists/groups..

Hmm... isn't sorting by genre like that kind of limiting? For instance, many artists have songs that fit into more than one genre categories, and genres are largely a matter of opinion, so a song could be more than one genre, right?

Personally, I think it makes more sense to keep genre information in the tag, and not in the filesystem. You can use a number of programs, albumlisters, or database utilities to sort your music by genre when you want to look for a certain type of music, and that way would be much more extensible, so that those songs that could be either rock or country, say, depending on your mood or opinion, would show up in either seach without having to have them on the disk twice.

Out of curiousity, does foobar's albumlist component have this functionality? I seem to think it does, but I haven't used it much.

You are exactly correct except often artists are known for a certain genre. For example, Jethro Tull do blues, classic rock, folk rock, etc.. but I would class them as Prog-Rock. I would rather seperate my oldish music to today's new music scene aswell.

Heres how I organise my files:
Albums/EP's/Singles:
..\Albums\Genre\Sub-Genre\Artist\Album\## Song Title.ext

Singles: (single .mp3 files that wern't realeased as singles but didn't on an album)
..\Single Songs\Artist - Song Title.ext

Bootlegs: (live, unauthorised recordings)
..\Bootlegs\Artist\(Year) Album\## Song Title.ext

Compilations: (often VA)
..\Albums\Genre\Sub-Genre\Various Artist\Album\## Song Title.ext
or
..\Compilations\Genre\Sub-Genre\Album\## Song Title.ext **

**rarely its this because I like the first structure better.

Here is my music directory structure.

Have a album playlist on all my albums in the album folder as

Artist - Album

also have a album art image on each album folder as

Folder.jpg

Albums, EPs and Singles:

I store albums, singles and EPs in 1 folder called Albums since EPs are like mini albums and most singles have more then 1 or 2 tracks.

Albums

Music\Albums\Artist - Album\Track # - Artist - Title.codec

eg

Music\Albums\Fear Factory - Demanufacture\04 - Fear Factory - Replica.mp3

also double disc albums are stored in the same folder as:

Music\Albums\Artist - Album\Disc # Track # - Artist - Title.codec

eg

Disc 1

Music\Albums\Black Sabbath - We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'N' Roll\1 04 - Black Sabbath - Paranoid.mp3

Disc 2

Music\Albums\Black Sabbath - We Sold Our Soul For Rock 'N' Roll\2 09 - Black Sabbath - Snowblind.mp3

EPs

Music\Albums\Artist - Album (EP)\Track # - Artist - Title.codec

eg

Music\Albums\Nine Inch Nails - Broken (EP)\06 - Nine Inch Nails - Gave Up.mp3

Singles

Music\Albums\Artist - Album (Single)\Track # - Artist - Title.codec

Compilations

Music\Compilations\Album\Track # - Artist # Title.codec

eg

Music\Compilations\Relapse Records Sampler\15 - Zeke - Chinatown.mp3

Soundtracks

Music\Soundtracks\Media Type\Album\Track # - Artist # Title.codec

eg

Music\Soundtracks\Video Game Soundtracks\Quake II OST\06 - Sonic Mayhem - Quad Machine.mp3

Misc (Non-released, podcasts and non-album playlists)

Music\

Mine is:


\Music\_Soundtracks_\Album\Album Artist - Year - Album - Track# - Artist - Title.xyz

\Music\_Techno_\Year - Album\Album Artist - Year - Album - Track# - Artist - Title.xyz

\Music\_Various_\Year - Album\Album Artist - Year - Album - Track# - Artist - Title.xyz

\Music\A\Artist\Album Artist - Year - Album - Track# - Title.xyz

\Music\B\Artist\Album Artist - Year - Album - Track# - Title.xyz

Basically most compilations are sorted according to techno/soundtracks/various, everything else sorted into #/first letter folder, then artist folder.

I don't use album folders for non-compilations.

Album art is stored either artist - album.jpg or album.jpg, and also in tags where possible.

Also in most situations, I store multi-disc sets as one album and use the track numbers to indicate disc... IE 101 for disc 1 track 1, 201 for disc 2 track 1, etc etc.

For me:
GENRE\ARTIST\ALBUM [YEAR]\TITLE.CODEC
note: the genre is often innaccurate

lol... been away from the computer awhile
anyway.... ever been to a concert? Typically the headliner(main) band will play more then one 'set' of songs

My MP3's are are labeled with track number and title like so: "05 Just my Imagination"
Those are placed in a folder labeled like so: "Cranberries 1999 Bury the Hatchet"
And those folders are in my MP3 folder.

Don't have to much on my computer as of now, but as I rip and the number of folders grow I probably will make artist folders labeled simply "Cranberries" where I store all my Cranberries albums (and singles). Those subfolders will still be labeled "Artist Year Songtitle"

While I have mine:
\music\Artist - Year - Album\Track# - TrackTitle.Codec
File structure makes a poor database.

Hi Everybody,

my Directorystucture is as follows:
X:\Audio\A...Z\Artist\Album\Titel.Codec

For multible CD's in one Album:
X:\Audio\A...Z\Artist\Album\CD1..CD2\Title.Codec

For ripped Vinyl:
X:\Audio\A...Z\Artist\Album\Side1...Side2\Title.Codec

For sampler and soundtracks:
X:\Audio\A...Z\Album\Title.Codec
X:\Audio\A...Z\Album\CD1...CD2\Title.codec
X:\Audio\A...Z\Album\Side1...Side2\Title.codec

Everything else is organized with the tags and in a database.

Greetings
Christian

Music\Genre\Artist\Artist - Year - Album\Artist - Album - Track number - Title.codec

I voted as the second choice, however, I do incorporate the year.
Actual directory structure of HD:
(drive letter):\music\albums\(artist - (year) disc title)\(T# - song name.codec)

"soundtracks" and "recorded" in "music" dir as well.

This makes the albums appear with artists in alphabetical order and their albums in chronological order.

I voted none.

My structure is as follows:

ALBUM-XXX/Release_Name
ALBUM-XXX/Release_Name
ALBUM-XXX/Release_Name
LiVESET-XXX/EVENT/Event_Name/Release_Name
LiVESET-XXX/SHOW/Artist-Show_Name/Release_Name
ViNYL-XXX/A/Release_Name
ViNYL-XXX/B/Release_Name

etc. Where XXX is either "HARD", "OTHER", "SOFT" and for some categories a few exceptions.

For the ViNYL section I separate the releases in letters, because well, there's such a shitload of stuff there. I put DJ_X in the X letter and also The_X in the X letter. Which could be a bit confusing sometimes.

This works very well for me, since I like "hard" music. Hardcore, hardstyle, jump, etc. I don't listen much to the other stuff, so it's in a separate category. It's mainly for "having it". I don't listen very much to the cabaret stuff either, since it's usually nice to hear it once and also it isn't really music. So a special category for that too.

Some examples:
I:\ALBUM-HARD\Qlimax_-_Mixed_By_Lady_Dana-2001-TWCMP3
I:\ALBUM-OTHER\Extince_-_Vitamine_E_DUTCH-Retail-2001-TWCMP3
I:\ALBUM-CABARET\Hans_Teeuwen-Trui-2CD-2000-REV (this is such an exception)

I:\LiVESET-HARD\EVENT\Sensation_Black\Sensation_Black_2004_-_Luna_Live-07-10-CABLE-2004-XDS_INT
I:\LiVESET-HARD\SHOW\VA-Club_Fresh_Hardhouse\Deepack_-_Hardhouse_Generation_(FreshFM)-FM-14-11-2007-HBLiVE
I:\LiVESET-SOFT\EVENT\Sensation_White\IDT_Sensation_White_2004_Afterparty-Live_At_ID-T_Radio-Read-NFO-CABLE-07-03-2004-TWCLIVE
I:\LiVESET-HARD\SHOW\Blutoniums_Brian_M_Vs_McBunn-Harder_Styles\Blutoniums_Brian_M_Vs_Mcbunn_-_Harder_Styles_003__Incl_DJ_Vortex_Guestmix_(DI.FM)-SBD-27-06-2006-HBLiVE

I:\ViNYL-HARD\#\3_Steps_Ahead-Drop_It__The_Prophet_Remix-Promo_CDR-2003-MiM
I:\ViNYL-HARD\G\Gizmo_and_Symastic-Listen_Up-Vinyl-2006-SND
I:\ViNYL-HARD\T\Technoboy-Into_Deep__Into_Dub-Vinyl-2006-SDS
I:\ViNYL-SOFT\B\Barthezz_-_On_the_Move-CDM-2001-iDC

Full albums:
Full Albums\%artist% - %album%\%artist% - %track% - %title%.ext

Multi-disc albums:
Full Albums\%artist% - %album%\Disc %discnumber%\%artist% - %track% - %title%.ext

Soundtracks/compilations:
Full Albums\%album artist% - %album%\%track% - %track artist% - %title%.ext

Singles (in varying folders):
%artist% - %title%.ext

Album art, for full albums is always:
Full Albums\%album artist% - %album%\cover.jpg

which means that for multi-disc albums, I just have one picture. Rarely, a boxed set will have different covers for each disc, then those go inside the Disc %discnumber% folder with the tracks.

The duplication of %artist% bothers me from time to time, but this way the tracks can be singles without losing any important information.

More precisely:

MyMusic\Artist\Album\T# Title.codec

i do:

music\artist\date.album\track.title

Release type\%artist%\%album%\[%discnumber%\]%tracknumber% %title%.filetype

Release type is one of the following:

• Albums
• Bootlegs
• Collections, Tributes and Soundtracks
• EPs
• Greatest Hits and Boxed Sets
• Loose Tracks
• New Music

AlbumArtist\Album\TrackNumber Name.mp3
AlbumArtist\Album\DiscNumber-TrackNumber Name.mp3

mine is:
Music\Artist - Year - Album\Track # - Title.codec

but i only use this way because thats how i started to sort my collection

eventually i'll sort it like this:
Music\Artist\Year - Album\Track # - Title.codec
can foobar do this for me or can i do this with a script or something?

My structure is: Music\ALBUM ARTIST\[DATE] ALBUM\(DISCNUMBER)TRACKNUMBER TITLE

@ArtMustHurt: foobar2000 can do it using the "Move to" dialog and Titleformatting.

Here's the titleformatting that I use to move to my music from my downloads folder to my music folder:


The bits before the first backslash just move "The" to the end of the Album Artist folder name.

As I've said many times before on this forum, the directory structure is NOT VERY IMPORTANT. What's important is that the TAGS are consistent, well-organized, and well thought-out.

My directory structure is simple. At the top is a root. (say "music" or "audio"). It should NEVER be a specific drive letter like "C:". First of all that's a Windows convention so what would happen if you moved your collection to a different environment? And, second, what if you move your collection to another drive, e.g., an external USB drive or a NAS? Then the letter would change. So your root should never be drive-letter-dependent.

Under that I basically have classical and non-classical music. Classical music is organized into folders of composers, and then all the relevant tracks are under that. Non-classical music is organized into folders of artists, with all the tracks a level below that. So, for example, all my Rolling Stones songs are in the same folder, all my Billie Holiday songs are in the same folder, ditto my Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, ditto all my Feist ( a small collection so far), all my Radiohead, all my Moby, etc.

I have over 10,000 tracks, about half classical, half nonclassical, and I add maybe 20 or 30 tracks a week, and this simple, easy system works great! The heavy lifting is done by the tagging scheme. Ambiguities are never a problem - I have 3 versions of Dvorak's Op. 90 'Dumky' trio for instance; I have 3 versions of "Everything in its Right Place" (the Radiohead song) - one by Radiohead, and covers by a jazz pianist and a classical pianist. I have FIVE versions of "Orange Blossom Special" - two different ones by Bill Monroe and 3 more by other artists.

I play this music on my PC, on my two iPods, and on my Sonos system and my simple directory scheme (with a sophisticated tagging scheme) works great! Also, I hope it's clear from my above comments that I'm a serious music lover with eclectic tastes and a big collection so if this works for me it will work for ANYbody!

I have:

h:\Music\Albums
h:\Music\Singles
h:\Music\EPs
h:\Music\Soundtracks
h:\Music\Compilations
h:\Music\DJ Mixes

Each of these uses artist\album\n. trackname.codec

Does the job, very nicely too

Maybe this would help:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

I use the Music\Album\T# - Title.codec structure, but I also put the year in parenthesis after the album. It looks like this:

My Music\Within Temptation\The Heart of Everything (2007)\01. The Howling.mp3

I use MusicBrainz and MP3Tag to do all of my tagging and folder creating/file moving after I rip a CD.

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.

But the vast majority of the time the songs are just songs and the "album" is just a container - the physical polycarbonate or vinyl disk the record label decided to put them on. I'm also a photographer and it's like if I bought a bunch of photographic accessories - filters, lens caps, straps, etc, and they all came in the same box so I decided to always store them together after that because of the box they came in.

Many times the SAME song will appear on more than one album - a first release, a later "best of" compilation, and then a late-night TV "greatest hits of the 90's" collection. Other times the "same" album will have DIFFERENT versions of the "same" song - for instance, when the Moby album "Play" was first released it had one version of "South Side" and then later they CHANGED it to include the version with the Gwen Stefani vocals! Also sometimes the US and EU versions of the "same" albums will have different content.

If you feel the album is significant you can always include that information in the tag. But why make it part of the directory structure? As I said above, I keep ALL the songs by a given artist in one flat older. The songs may have been ripped from a CD, bought online, or stream-ripped, it doesn't matter. I've never had any problem with this scheme and it's very easy and simple.

Also, albums are SO 20th century! They are an old-fashioned, outmoded concept, like dial telephones. CD sales are down, online sales are up; most people just care about individual songs anyway, and your kids are going to ask you what an "album" was.

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

/mnt/blockdevice/mediatype/artist/artist.yyyy-mm-dd.albumname/artist.yyyy-mm-dd.albumname.##.title.ext

Rexeg friendly structure.

I’m not interested in file structures at all.
I use the contents of the tags to browse my collection.

To plnelson
In classical Music, a composition in general consist of several parts and they are related and should be played in the right sequence.
That’s the way I use the album tag, album=composition, song=parts. The album tag is an excellent way to structure your collection by composition

Mine's still the exact same.
Audio\Music\Artist\Album\Artist - Album - T# - Title.flac

Personally, I still find this to be the most 'intuitive' and useful structure; although I keep my lossy (distilled) files elsewhere and I'm still fiddling with Various Artists and compilations.

As for why use an album-centric structure? For me, it's mainly due to the fact that most music IT is already structured around the album, ie. Freedb, discogs, etc.

Yes, that's the canonically correct way to do classical. Album = opus.

I use almost the same structure. All my complete albums are stored in one directory "Music", in which I use the following structure:
\%Album Artist%\%Album%\%Album Artist% - [%Album% (Disc %discnumber%) - %tracknumber%] - %Title% (%TrackArtist%).ext

"(Disc %discnumber%)", is of course used only when it is multi-disc. And "(%Track Artist%)" only when the song has a "Feat." artist or it is a multi-artist album, in which case %Album Artist% in the file name is rendered as "VA". A multi-artist album, which is not Various Artist has each artist delimited by ";" (which is displayed as "," in foobar2000). So, "Simon & Garfunkel" but "Frank Sinatra, Antonio Carlos Jobim".

Soundtracks are tricky. I used to have a folder in the Music root directory called !Soundtracks, but I now put then within Music\Various\Soundtrack\%Album%. The problem is %Album% should be just the name of the movie, or if it should be the complete title as appears on the CD ("Music Inspired By..."). Also, soundtracks by a single artist pose a problem. Should that be located in the soundtrack category, or in the artist's name? (Currently, most such albums go in my soundtrack category, because most of them were composed for the film, and not just used in it.)

Western Classical (and Carnatic and Hindustani, to a lesser extent) create problems. For a Glenn Gould recording, for instance, should primacy be given to Glenn Gould or to Johann Sebastian Bach? Currently, I list it in a separate folder in the Music root directory, called !Genres. So, the structure for that is:
\!Genres\%Composer%\%Album%\%Performer% - [%Album% - %tracknumber%] - %Title%.ext

I would like to know how others handle Western Classical. Another area of problems: "Sets". (E.g., the Verve sixty-album "Jazz Masters" set, in which most discs are by single artists, but some (two) are compilations.) Currently, they're on a separate partition, so create no problem.

Note: I came up with the above system when not all my music was properly tagged. So, while I would have liked to use %Original Release Date% (or %Date%, if I have the original release itself), I did not.
My aim in coming up with this system was to be able to "sort by name" and have all albums by an artist in release order and the tracks ordered by track number. And also to have all the information pertaining to the file not only in the folder structure, but in the file name itself. So, if I create a flat structure (put all the files in a single folder), the degradation will be graceful, and the files will still be in order.

Comments?

My only comment is that I don’t understand why one is so concerned about file structure.
Any decent player uses tags to browse your collection.
Using WMP I can select a composer say Beethoven. I can sort all his works by title, genre and as I have given a couple of tags a very distinct use, by opus number and by year of composition.
Why do I need a complicated file naming convention when filtering and sorting by tags (not to mention the search box) do the job?

If I read these postings about directory/filename structures, I have the feeling that a lot of people simply don’t understand where tagging is about.

If your after a painless method of reorganising your entire media library's file structure and file names in one fell swoop try MediaMonkey. You can specify the file name and path using title formatting and it reads the relevant info from your id3 tags. It also moves album art. If your tags can a bit patchy you can use it to auto tags the files, although I prefer Winamp for this as you can select batches of files rather than single albums.

It all lives on my external hard drive in a directory called "Music", organised thus...

\Music\Artist\Album

...alphabetically for artist and album.

Winamp picks up on the tags and displays them in almost exactly the same order.

In answer to Roseval regarding directory structure having no importance (apologies if I've misread that), there's nothing to be lost by showing a little discipline and making use of an OSes existing directory structures. It sure makes it easier when you're trying to find something via Windows Explorer. I follow the same disciplines for all installations and file storage. It seems pointless to avoid it and shabby practice not to do it IMO.

Cheers, Slipstreem.

Agreed
One can conjecture up many reasons to have a well structured structure.
1 directory with 20.000 files might affect performance
Coverart as a jpg in the album directory requires an album structure
Finding a missing track using explorer,
Etc. etc.

In practice I have root/artist/album/ not because I’m structuring it this way but because I set my player to do so. Any change in a album/artist/title tag is reflected in the directory structure / filename.

I only browse the file structure to solve problems (hey, track 4 is gone) and in these cases a good structure and meaningful names are important.
However, I do have the feeling that a lot of people are trying to put as much different information as possible in the structure because they don’t use or don’t understand tagging.

I agree completely. The behaviour that I (and some others in this thread) exhibit is most definitely anal-retentive. But it's not only about file-structure. The way I see it, file-structure is only a reflection of metadata. (After all, renaming files in accordance with the scheme I've outlined above is only a click away in foobar2000/mp3tag/[your mp3 renamer of choice].) Changing file-structure isn't all that difficult. But coming up with a consistent and intelligent metadata system is.

So, you see, at the root of things, I'm concerned not so much with the file/folder structure, as with tagging. Who should be "Artist" for a a Classical performance? Sometimes it is the performer who is the highlight (e.g., Glenn Gould/Luciano Pavarotti), and sometimes it is the piece being performed that is the star (e.g., a second-rate philharmonic performing Beethovan). Sometimes, it is the conductor who is given top billing. How do you tag it, and how do you organise/display/sort it in your player of choice?

The questions I had raised for the file structure also apply directly to tagging. Do you tag it uniformly as "OST: [Movie Name]" or "[Movie Name]" or "[Full title as provided on the CD]"? AMG has a habit of using "Soundtrack" as the Album Artist for all multi-artist soundtracks. Do you follow that, or use "Various Artists"? These are questions about tagging as well.

Sure, most people never think twice about such questions. But then, those people aren't following this discussion, are they?

I’m using WMP so I have tags for
Composer, Album, song, artist, contributing artist, conductor.
These are self explaining
Genre I use for something I don’t know how it is called in English but it contains String quartet, string quitet, sextet, etc.
Period I use it for the year of the composition
Sub genre for opus numbers.

The album is the work, so I have each composition separately.
Now Beethoven wrote his first string quartet and called it rather aptly String quartet 1.
Now Brahms wrote his first string quartet and called it rather aptly String quartet 1.
As an album don’t exist in PC audio, a lot of players use the album title to group songs together.
To avoid this, every composition is pre fixed with the name of the composer so:
Beethoven – string quartet 1 op. 1
Brahms – string quartet 1 op.3
Now if you ad the opus number there is no real need to pre fix the composer but I rather have the works grouped by composer then by type.
Beside
string quartet 1 op. 1
string quartet 1 op. 3
is not a very easy way to find a string quartet by Beethoven

You can have duplicates, say Beethoven – string quartet 1 op. 1 performed by the Alban Berg Quartet and by Hagen quartet.
Most players group these together so you get part 1 played by Alban and then part 1 played by Hagen. So I add the performer to the album to
Beethoven – string quartet 1 op. 1 – Alban Berg
Beethoven – string quartet 1 op. 1 – Hagen

1 You have a piano sonata played by Martha Argerich
2 A violin concert played by Gideon Kremer
3 A sonata for violin and piano played by both.
I want to be able to find all the works performed by Argerich, like wise by Kremer.

For artist I simply use the names so 3 becomes Kremer/Argerich
The contributing artist is the same as the album artist but in case of 3 this becomes Kremer;Argerich
In WMP using artist I see the combinations
Using contributing artist due to the ; I get all the works where the individual artist is involved.
This is also great for jazz or samplers (Artist: Various, Contributing: XYZ

To become a bit more specific: Who should be "Artist" for a a Classical performance is a question I don’t have.
Glenn Gould is simply one of the many excellent performers, no reason to treat him different.
Luciano Pavarotti, treat it as it is, pop music
A second-rate philharmonic – delete

A bit more serious, there is no reason to use the artist for any thing else as the performer. The only exception is a player not supporting the composer tag (not uncommon as players are designed with pop music in mind). In these case you might consider using the composer as the artist. In fact standard FreeDB output is Artist: Beethoven Composer: unknown.

From a psychological point of view, I understand, sometimes an artist becomes more important than the works but stick to the tags, if you do it right (and your player allows for it) you can find them all

My Musics\Artist\(Year) Album\Track n. Title

Used to be My Musics\Artist\Title, but now I'm listening to more formal music that actually gets released...

also, I found a problem when downloading old music, like Mozart. I just don't know what year and album it is =P

My thoughts exactly. As long as you have the most basic file system organization of your music files there is no need to worry about it more. The era of browsing music through Explorer and listening to music is over. Now a good player provides very customizable, searchable browsing abilities (foobar2000), so a logical order of your music files in AlbumArtist\Album is enough.

Music/mixed compilation/album album artist year
Music/compilation/album album artist year
Music/albums/ album artist album year
Music/tracks/genre
Music/live sets/genre
Music/vinyl/label/catalog album album artist year

I like to keep things a bit separated because tracks and live sets aren't really official releases (soulseek/website downloads stuff) and I have way to much vinyl to put them in the same folder with the rest. Also nice to know which label your listening, i think it gives a better image of a certain genre (for house music that is). Also have a lot of various artist albums that's why I prefer separate folders for those (compilation)

Very simple, as I don't care for "albums" at all:

Artist\Artist - Title.codec

Album-directories only make sense if you like complete albums on your hd. I personally haven't come across an album were I liked each and every track.

edit: typo

hm.. and since our needs evolve, and this poll has been running a while: (;-))

%composer%/$iflonger([%conductor%],%key%,$substr(%conductor%,$add($strrchr(%conductor%, ),1),$len(%conductor%))',' $abbr($meta(ensemble,0),20)[',' $substr($meta(performer,0),$add($strrchr($meta(performer,0), ),1),$len($meta(performer,0)))],$iflonger([%ensemble%],%key%,$abbr(%ensemble%,25)[',' $substr($meta(performer,0),$add($strrchr($meta(performer,0), ),1),$len($meta(performer,0)))],$abbr($meta(performer,0),35)[, $abbr($meta(performer,1),25)][, $abbr($meta(performer,2),25)][, $abbr($meta(performer,3),20)]))/[%album%][ '('%date%')']/ (where i use %album% to contain the work information)

That's weird, I use this exact directory structure/naming scheme!

Owww. Not even Dark Side Of The Moon? What about albums like Jeff Wayne's "War Of The Worlds" or "Best Of ..." albums?

MUSIC / Artist - (album number) - Album / %N - %T

i put the album number there to keep the albums in the chronological release order.

example:

Metallica - (1) - Kill Em all
Metallica - (2) - Master of Puppets
Metallica - (3) - And justice for all

ect


browsing by tag is fine but for archieve purposes its much easier to have one folder per album.

Sorry, but I don't care for that kind of music at all. I guess it all comes down to personal preferences really.

But I used to have all my music in one folder per album... until I came to the conclusion that I am building up mountains of things. Why keep music on my hd that doesn't sound good to my ear - for the sake of completeness? No, that would be stupid.

But I am aware that other people see things differently - and having the complete album in one folder is just the perfect thing for them.

Why not use the year associated with the album? e.g. Mike Oldfield - [2008] Music of the Spheres.

Recently I changed from one folder per album to one file per album, so I no longer have the problem of deep directory structures.

Actually, personally I also don't bother keeping songs I don't like. However, even if I have a single song, it resides in a folder named after the source of the song. In most cases, this is an album / CD / DVD. The main reason I have found I need to do this is to distinguish between the additional images and lyrics that I maintain with the song(s). Without distinct folders, I'm left either maintaining a database or a separate repository, both of which have exactly the same need for structure as my directories now reflect, so why bother?

Besides, it is possible to rename and reorganize directories and files based on tags, so it should be possible to produce a collection organized exactly as your tags are, no?


Ok, but how do you listen to tracks in an order different than the album's?