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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?"

16 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. itunes does it for me by FiDooDa · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just use it with the option "Keep itunes music folder organized"

    it does a great job for me.

    1. Re:itunes does it for me by node+3 · · Score: 4, Informative

      iTunes could do a great job for me, if Apple didn't miss to implement support for FLAC, Musepack, Monkey's Audio and some other formats.

      iTunes supports FLAC, OGG, and any other format for which there is a QuickTime plug-in. Unfortunately, QuickTime plug-ins are (it's said) really annoying to program. The release of QT 7, though implies that this might change for the better.

      Unfortunately Apple made the design flaw that you can't simply drag audio files in a special folder and they are useable, so I have to install iTunes to put music on my iPod.

      This is intentional. When the iPod came out, the main HD-based player was the Nomad, which suffered from horrible performance. This was because the songs were just stored as files with no database. The reason the iPod can search through many thousands of songs instantaneously is because of its song database, which iTunes creates (you actually don't need iTunes for this--any program can read/write the iPod database).

      You could easily write a program that lets you just drop songs on it from your filesystem, which will automatically copy them to the iPod, and update the database.

  2. Dspace. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://dspace.org/introduction/index.html

    "What Kinds of Content Does DSpace Accept?

    DSpace accepts all forms of digital materials including text, images, video, and audio files. Possible content includes the following:

    * Articles and preprints
    * Technical reports
    * Working papers
    * Conference papers
    * E-theses
    * Datasets: statistical, geospatial, matlab, etc.
    * Images: visual, scientific, etc.
    * Audio files
    * Video files
    * Learning objects
    * Reformatted digital library collections
    "

  3. MP3 Tag Tools by dotgod · · Score: 3, Informative

    I use MP3 Tag Tools. It hasn't been updated for a while, and I'm sure there's newer stuff out, but this does everything I need. You can manipulate both tags and filenames automatically. I don't think it supports OGG though.

  4. The GodFather by Tozog · · Score: 4, Informative

    The GodFather is by far my favorite. It has mass tagging, renaming, organization, and handles mp3/ogg/mpc/ape/flac/aac/apl/wv/mp4/ofr/spx tags, scripting abilities, pull info from online sites, and free, but not open source.

    http://users.otenet.gr/~jtcliper/tgf/

  5. 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.
  6. ID3-TagIt by Winterblink · · Score: 4, Informative

    ID3-TagIt is a FANTASTIC application for managing MP3 metadata, as well as filenames. I used it to completely overhaul my collection so the filenames and tags were what I wanted them to be. Unfortunately it's only a windows application, but it really helped me when I put my collection into iTunes and the browse panes had everything all nice and neat. Best of all, it's free. :)

    --
    "I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
    -Hoban Washburn
  7. 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.

  8. Cantus? by Mad_Rain · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is a tool called Cantus that can be used for mp3 organizing. And of course, once you get them organized, you can set them up to be streamed over the web with Jinzora.

    --
    "What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
  9. MusicBrainz for acquiring and checking metadata by oldbox · · Score: 4, Informative

    Use MusicBrainz!

    I have just started to use the MusicBrainz Tagger to organize my mess of mp3 files. It does all of the normal re-tagging functions, but it will also make an AcousticFingerprint of the music file, and check your it with their database. This solves the problem of tags that are incorrect or missing altogether. It is a little slow, but otherwise a good program. It is available as Windows, MacOS X, and Python. Works with mp3 and Ogg. It's free & GPL'd.

    tagbox
  10. Organizing MP3s and Other File Collections? by Bozzio · · Score: 4, Funny

    Organizing MP3s and Other File Collections?

    Don't be coy Roy. Just admit you have a pr0n collection.

    --
    I just pooped your party.
    1. Re:Organizing MP3s and Other File Collections? by sharkey · · Score: 3, Funny
      Just admit you have a pr0n collection.

      And the best way to organise it is to post it on the web, and let us investigate the best solution for you.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  11. Re:My gripe by node+3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you have a very large collection, iTunes management is a nightmare.

    then (about not using iTunes):

    So of course I have to manage my library by hand.

    I can't imagine how using iTunes can be a nightmare, but doing it by hand isn't.

    You can end up with a music folder with hundreds and hundreds of folder, to the point where it is a headache to deal with. If you never look at your music folder - then it's fine I guess.

    That's the whole point. iTunes essentially *is* your filesystem. Your standard tree-based filesystem is really poor for managing songs (quick, find that one Beatles song, oh, which album is it on again?).

    With iTunes, you can still access your songs directly via the Finder/Windows Explorer (but any changes should be done through iTunes itself). You can even drag a song from iTunes and drop it (this will copy the file) somewhere if you want to do use it outside of iTunes.

    I prefer this structure:

    1st Letter of Artist Name/Artist Name/Artist Name - Album Name/Track Number - Track Name

    That's the trade-off, isn't it? Easier song library management vs. fine-control over the filesystem structure. When iTunes first came out, I wasn't too keen on the idea of not being in direct control of the mp3 files and their folder structure, but *quickly* came to stop worrying and love the bomb.

    Now, the idea of managing, by hand, thousands of songs... <shudder!>.

  12. Re:My gripe by Elektrance · · Score: 4, Informative

    My friend did this a few times on a very large iTunes collection, and decided to write a perl script to fix it... I'll shamelessly promote it on here, cause well, its not my script. It's called iTunes Dupeblaster Source is available as well, so you can modify to suit your needs.

  13. 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

  14. My pr0n example. by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 4, Informative
    I have 59,224 pornographic files (including 879 movies and clips), all organized by category (sex acts performed, races involved, clothing worn, kind of kink, etc.).

    Since I have several of those that span more than one category, I put everything on a Linux server and I put hard links to directories containing the various categories the pictures are into.

    So whenever I crave for a particular kind of kink, I have no problem locating the series of files I want to look at.