How do you organize your Music

[Digital [email protected]]

OK, I am quickly getting buried in keeping my music collection organized and need help. What categories do you use for your MP3 player? What folders do you create? How do you store it on your hard drive? I am looking for any helpful hints you may have.

[Star Drifter]

The services I use automatically sort the music by artist name, then album. It works pretty well, too.

 

My only real problem is stuff gotten off the web, usually from friends on other forums. Those all tend to fall into my generic "downloads" folder, where they're never heard again.

[mgmaranda]

I start by sorting it into genre. Rock, Folk, Metal....... (I know folk and metal don't mix well)

 

I keep a tree structure. So I have one music folder, then I subdivide that into folders by genre, within the genre I organize my music by artist (if I have 3 or more albums by the artist) or general if not. I also have an mp3 naming convention of 'artist_name - song_name'

 

This allows me (using winamp) to play all of my music in one big list, all of my music in on genre, or all of my music by one artist.

 

There are a few exceptions to this rule. For example Genesis "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" is a CD I often listen to but prefer hearing it in the order it was recorded. For CDs like that I create a playlist and save that elsewhere so I can play those albums the way they were meant to be heard.

 

Hope that is descriptive enough and helps you out.

[slidedog]

Been using i-Tunes keeps things sorted. I can create lists easily that pretty much go with my moods and put them on shuffle. My iPod has saved me from screaming kids on a couple of recent flights, couldn't save me from them kicking the back of my seat the whole trip though....

[Vil-hatarn]

I reorganize genres--I think right now I have Celtic, Christian Rock, Classical, Country, Game Music, Musicals, New Age, Rock, and Soundtracks. Then, I set up playlists for a few things that are in multiple genres--I've got a Christmas playlist with celtic and new age. My mp3 player and windows media player can both play by album, artist, or genre, and I use all of them at one point or another. Still, I usually just use albums for organization purposes. The other stuff just makes it easier to find things.

[warlordgarou]

Right now, everything is arranged by artist, then album on my hard drive. I'll rip entire albums to the hard drive, then copy certain songs over to a folder labelled "Running music", which I then copy to my MP3 player. I generally use random play, and change out the song list periodically, because eventually even a couple hundred songs gets repetitive.

[haldir]

ummm in 2 big giant folders, ha ha

 

I've got tons of digital music that I have in 2 folders, that I desperately need to get organized one of these days. Eventually if I ever move out of this computer I'm just gonna take one of the existing hard drives make it a removable & make that my mp3 storage device, as digital music is the only thing I get now, no more cds for me (just gotta finish ripping what I have left of those)

 

RM

[Froggy the Great]

Hard drive, sorted by artist by folder and then by album by flolder, sorted and labeled by date.

[SaintRigger]

I used to sort by genre and subgenre but then I found that it is easiest for me to keep everything by artists names in folders ie 0-9, a,b,c ... z, Audiobooks, Various artists (for comps), Soundtracks. I did this because I started having too many artists and folders in one subdirectory - so I felt it was easier and more intuitive to break it down, plus it helped speed up seek times.

 

Then within there I have folders broken down by artist, then album, arranged by year of release.

 

I've taken to using iTunes on my PC, so I can simply read all the folders in and organize them however I want within the iTunes database - so by genre, artist, album or even custom groupings .. ie.. "Growling germans" for anything that has vocals that consist of um... growling germans. :)

[Frankthedm]

1 folder

 

Metal

[Zinzig]

One main folder labeled "mp3s", then subfolders by artist, then more subfolders by album title, and finally tracks by numerical order/artist/title. This helps when I'm only grabbing a song or two off a cd and I'm not going to bother with a folder for the artist (then I knock the track number off the beginning and dump it in the main mp3s folder). Then all the stuff I've "borrowed" off the internet or from friends is in the main mp3s folder listed alphabetically by artist/song title. Not much to the genre thing...I've got 3 whole cd's that wouldn't fall under the rock/metal category. Recently though everything I've been listening to has been going back to late 80's early 90's hair bands

[Sergeant_Crunch]

I do folders for genre/artist/album. Mostly so I don't accidently get any of my wife's country music loaded into my palm.

[lonepainter]

This has had me perplexed for awhile now but yet I have never asked. Can Itunes be intergrated with any MP3 player? If so how? I am very unsure of how to work Itunes to begin with and am not too fond of the software that came with my MP3 player so I am looking for tips to make the two talk to each other. I have heard that there are drawbacks to using Itunes what are they?

[SaintRigger]

This has had me perplexed for awhile now but yet I have never asked. Can Itunes be intergrated with any MP3 player? If so how? I am very unsure of how to work Itunes to begin with and am not too fond of the software that came with my MP3 player so I am looking for tips to make the two talk to each other. I have heard that there are drawbacks to using Itunes what are they?

 

 

I actually have an iPod - but I don't use iTunes to load it, I use a program called Ephpod simply because I like it better. I'm in the process of organizing and arranging my music right now (I have close to 60g - and it's all a MESS!!!) Here is what I do.

 

I use iTunes to update and manage the id3 tags which lets me set things like artist, title, album, year, genre, album art etc... The really nice thing is grouping - so I can have a generic grouping of electronica but it can include genres like trip-hop, IDM, trance etc.. and I can create playlists based on groupings. I also do collections of artists like the Sisters of Mercy as a grouping, and can then add in any covers ir tribute albums to that grouping as well.

 

Then I simply upload everything using ephpod :)

 

If you use itunes, you might want to make sure you go into the preferences to make sure it doesn't move all your music to an itunes folder as that is a nightmare sometimes for organization.

[Cadaver]

I have Alphabetical Folders. Any artist with more than two songs I make them their own folder . If I have some albums I then add folders under the artists.

 

It works well with Virtual DJ.