Is there a standard or recommend way of doing this? I keep all my albums in folders (under artist names) but I would prefer to keep these various artists/soundtrack cds all in the same folder (whatever the name of the album is i.e. folder (soundtracks), next level (matrix) - next level (tracks)

- I have seen suggestions of:

Song Title = song title
Artist = artist of that song (not "Various")
Album = VA + album title (eg VA Triple J Hottest 100)

Album Title - with whatever it is
Artist field - "Various" or "Various Artists"
Track Name field - "Track Artist / Track Title" using the special character "/" always as a separator (or any special separator character)

is there something better? I am not looking for EAC codes or anything - just a method to the madness!

Thanks in Advance!

here's my method, for what it's worth:

its_electric_-_01_new_order_-_blue_monday_full_12_inch_mix.mp3
its_electric_-_02_kraftwerk_-_the_model.mp3
its_electric_-_03_soft_cell_-_tainted_love.mp3
its_electric_-_04_yazoo_-_only_you.mp3

--jth

I keep my soundtracks in order like this:

..\Soundtracks\Year - Soundtrack Name\Track# - Artist - Song Name.mp3

Pretty close to what I do as well. I just drop the soundtrack year so everything sorts alphabetically.
I keep all my albums in general genre folders (e.g. pop-rock, classical, electronic, soundtracks) and then the subfolders are all \Artist - Album\ except for soundtracks and compilations where I drop the artist from the folder name.

For the tags I use the track artist in the artist field and the track name in the track field. I don't know if it's a standard but it preserves the information that's most relevant to me. By looking at the album field I can tell whether a file came from a compilation album of not, I don't need Various Artists in the artist field. Not to mention that by doing that, by default in Winamp you'll get the tracks listed as "Various Artists - Artist Name - Track Name" rather than "Artist Name - Track Name."

G