Song organization with Various Artists

2007-02-22 17:55:24

In the last couple days, I've been trying to reorganize my song collection.  Right now, I'm split down the middle with half my songs in /artist/album folders and the other half in a general music directory with Artist - Title names.  I've been leaning towards moving things into the /artist/album setup, but I've run into a few snags

Last night, I rediscovered some old 80's hits CDs that I ripped years ago, and I really didn't know how to organize this one.  A lot of the artists are one hit wonders that don't really need their own folders.  Between this and Soundtrack albums, it seems needlessly complicated in some cases to put a single song into its own folder.

Additionally, I feel a little paranoid about not knowing which album it came from, should I put it into a folder other than "Mid 80s" (the title of the album).  But at the same time, I'm not going to intuitively know what songs are going to be in that folder.

So I'm curious to know how others organize their music, and how they get around the shortcomings of both setups.  I'll describe both setups below:

• /Artist/Album folders, (e.g. /Pink Floyd/A Momentary Lapse of Reason/05 - On the Turning Away)
  [blockquote]+Cleaner and easier to navigate
  -More difficult/slower to play random songs you feel like listening to, especially for one hit wonders or downloaded songs.[/blockquote]
• General pool (e.g. /Pink Floyd - On the Turning Away)
  [blockquote]+Easier to quickly access the songs you're looking for
  -Can get really messy quickly[/blockquote]

Song organization with Various Artists

Reply #1 – 2007-03-06 22:43:09

I use a folder tree representing the different types of CDs/audio sources. My library's root folder is called "audio", so everything that I can hear fits there. These are its subfolders:

• albums with the usual "artist/year - album/nn - title" for my complete albums.
• games for soundtracks of computer and video games. "game name (year)/nn - [artist - ]title"
• new as a "quarantine" for newly ripped/downloaded files until they are correctly tagged.
• records for self made recordings - quite small.
• sampler for the "Best Of"-CDs you mentioned as well as stuff as CD series like Cafe del Mar. "[series name/]album (year)/nn - artist - title"
• singles for complete Maxi-CDs. I'm a bit unhappy about the separation of albums and this folder but I don't know how I should call a folder containing both albums and singles... "artist/year - title/nn - title (version)"
• sounds for... erm... sounds (e.g. rain.wav).
• soundtrack for OST's. "album (year)/nn - [artist - ]title"
• speech for radio plays, audio books, comedy; each in separate subfolders.
• web for downloaded albums from archive.org.

So in short: I would put the Best-Of-CDs into an own hierarchy next to regular albums.

Song organization with Various Artists

Reply #2 – 2007-03-21 04:22:59

I personally have all my albums in one folder, Albums, and they are named such as:
Rammstein - 2005 - Rosenrot

Artist - Year - Album

For random single tracks, I have a folder called "Singles", next to Albums, in the main Audio folder. Just like ojdo. Now all my single albums (maxi-cd, etc.) are in Albums, and singles is reserved for single tracks, sent from friends and stuff. Now for my Various Artists albums, I have them setup in Albums folder, with the following syntax:
If the album has a general mix artist, such as dj mixes, I have them setup as
MC Mario - 2006 - Sun Factory Seven
(AlbumArtist) - Year - AlbumTitle

Else I just have "Various Artists" setup for album artist.

Now my main problem is in my ipod, all the artists get listed in artists under music, but most of them have only one track, and I get alot of
Ironik
Ironik Feat. Narkoi

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I hope it helped