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Organizing MP3s and Other File Collections?

Posted by Cliff on from the virtual-file...filing dept.

Anonymous Coward asks: "After trying to merge several sets of media files that I've had laying around across several PC's (and looking at the short-comings of my own Perl script), I began looking at some commercial products and was overwhelmed. Does Slashdot have advice for organizing MP3 collections and what software works well for them?"

9 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. foobar2000, CDex, and some spare time. by Nicolae · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I keep my music organized in seperate folders, like so:
    Artist\(Year) Album\Artist - Album - Tracknumber - Title
    Orginizing it at first took a while, especially with bad tag info and weird filenames, but fb2k and it's masstagging and freedb lookup took care of that. Now, whenever I get a new CD, I've got CDex set up to automatically rip to the proper folder, so it's pretty easy to keep it organized.

  2. How about by hey! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Mac OSX Tiger + Spotlight?

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. What I do... by pjl5602 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is something that I started a long, long, long time ago and it's worked well for me. I have a "Music" directory. In that directory, I have directories 0-9 and a-z. In these, I put the artist by last name. So, if it's Lenny Kravitz, there is a directory (also, I remove all characters that aren't a-z, 0-9, -, _ and replace them with _): /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny

    If the album is Circus I make a directory: /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus

    Then to know if it's the complete album or incomplete, I append a '(c)' (complete) or an '(i)' (incomplete) on the end of the album name. So we end up with: /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)

    Each track is the song name and playlists for XMMS , WinAMP and XBox Media Center are generated.

    When all is said and done, I've got:

    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/beyond_t he_7th_sky.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/can_t_ge t_you_off_my_mind.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/circus.o gg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/don_t_go _and_put_a_bullet_in_your_head.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/god_is_l ove.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/in_my_li fe_today.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/magdalen e.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/playlist
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/playlist .m3u
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/playlist -xbox.m3u
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/resurrec tion__the.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/rock_and _roll_is_dead.ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/thin_ice .ogg
    /content/music/k/kravitz__lenny/circus(c)/tunnel_v ision.ogg

    Compilations are put in /content/music/c/compilations. Soundtracks go in /content/music/s/soundtrack___theme (Soundtrack & Theme.)

    This has served me well for years and I can pretty much find anything in a matter of seconds and I can immediately tell if it's the complete album or not.

    1. Re:What I do... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      No kidding. An excerpt from my music directory is:
      /usr/share/media/music/The Crystal Method - Vegas/The Crystal Method - Vegas - 01 - Trip Like I Do.ogg
      /usr/share/media/music/The Crystal Method - Vegas/The Crystal Method - Vegas - 02 - Busy Child.ogg
      /usr/share/media/music/The Crystal Method - Vegas/The Crystal Method - Vegas - 03 - Cherry Twist.ogg
      /usr/share/media/music/The Crystal Method - Vegas/The Crystal Method - Vegas - 04 - High Roller.ogg

      Graphical programs don't care about the spaces, and I haven't used a CLI that wouldn't tab-complete spaces by escaping them in years. Given that every tool I've used in this millenium can handle the above without any problems, I don't understand the drive to remove innocent (and helpful) whitespace from filenames.

      --
      Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  4. Re:Finally by Albigg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I agree, but hopefully the cream (of the crop) rises. Apps like http://www.id3-tagit.de/ are good ones to consider. The main thing is just figuring out what your requirements are. There are dozens that typically fit the bill once you figure out what you need done.

  5. as a related question -- SQL v. LDAP v. whatever by Shaleh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ideas on some form of database / directory / foo? Clearly SQL is a well trodden path, but is it the "best" choice?

  6. MusicBrainz Tagger by Bammel · · Score: 5, Interesting
    An amazing program that allows you to not only modify the ID3 tags of your mp3s, and rename them accordingly, but does so automatically, by creating an acoustic fingerprint (TRM) of the song, and comparing that to other TRM's from its online database. The more people use it, the better it gets, as there are more TRM's to compare your own against.

    From the description on its homepage:

    The MusicBrainz Tagger application allows you to automatically look up the tracks in your music collection and then write clean metadata tags (ID3 tags or Vorbis comment fields) to your files. As you tag the files in your collection that MusicBrainz didn't recognize, you submit the acoustic fingerprints (TRM ids) of your files back to the server. Submitting acoustic fingerprints will allow MusicBrainz to automatically identify these tracks in the future, so that other people using the Tagger can benefit from the work you have done.

    Don't let that discourage you, though. The program is fully usable right now.
    From the Statistics page:
    Artists 155884
    Albums 261790
    Disc IDs 124538
    Tracks 3211514

    It's a gem.

    For now there's only a Windows version out, but the program is GPL'd, and the source code is available to everyone.

    Download it here:
    http://www.musicbrainz.org/tagger/download.html

  7. Re:as a related question -- SQL v. LDAP v. whateve by sporktoast · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Boy, there's the itch that I want scratched!

    Stop storing music as files in a disk directory. Craft up a database that keeps the music AND ALL the metadata (artist, title, album, track #, date, album genre, song genre, lyrics, album cover, liner notes, producer, guest artists, record label, drugs the band was on while recording, etc.). Work up file-system API's into the database to present the data as if it were actual files with appropriate filenames/ID tags. Plug in an API appropriate to your OS and configure whichever output filename format (Artist/Album/Artist-SongTitle.foo) you and your player software prefer.

    --
    In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
  8. Re:My pr0n example. by slaker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Porn is normally self-organizing. You have to work pretty hard to find random collections with no central theme.

    Several years ago, while I was learning Delphi, I wrote a simple program that basically lets me browse directories of pictures and videos and tag each directory with metadata (girl-girl, softcore, transexual midget porno etc) that gets saved in a text file with those pictures. With that metadata in place I've rearranged my collection several times. Whenever I'm particularly bored I can take some time to tag some more of my porn.

    --
    -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K