at the moment i've got a folder for stuff ripped from my own cds, one for downloaded albums, one for individual downloaded songs (divided alphabetically by artist), and one for miscellaneous stuff (like radio shows, "podcasts"(ugh), mixes and whatnot)
but i think i might just change it to have a folder for each artist and everything of theirs under that. it seems a bit stupid to make some arbitrary distinction between albums depending on how they were obtained, and then to have all the random single tracks floating around somewhere else isn't great either. i think tbh the only reason i still have it like that is because i like using the thumbnail view in windows and having each album folder icon display the artwork.
but how do you do it? something like that? or some completely different way? do you just let a program like itunes organise everything for you? or do you just chuck everything in one place and hope for the best?
my directory tree is fileformat -> artist -> album (although, since my collection is mainly flac, i only bothered to sort those; the mp3s are songs that are unavailable in high fidelity etched plastic, and so usually lack an album anyway)
/Mainstyle/Subgenre/
Then either /misc/ for random unsorted stuff or /Artist/ for artists for whom I've got more than around 5 tracks.
And then either [date] Album/track - title.format for albums
or artist - title.format for lonely tracks
I know the mainstyle/subgenre might be subject to debate but as this classification is destined to myself alone I don't care. I just put them in the most suitable one, even if there is some margin of error.
The [date] tag is useful for chronological sorting through alphabetical sorting.
In my root music directory, there's three directories: Artist, Compilations, and Soundtracks. Everything else is usual sorting methods.
A sample directory path would be: Music/Artist/Moi Dix Mois/2007.03.28 DIXANADU/07 Neo Pessimist.ogg
I kind of want to resort my stuff by style/genre, since its slow to find a specific album in my correct system; but I get easily overwhelmed when dealing with subjective things, so its a bit too daunting for me.
iTunes, grouped by albums (with heavy use of cover art). It's nicer than you think.
I agree with >>5, iTunes has a very acceptable method of organizing music. But I'm on a Mac, I've heard the application isn't as good on Windows.
mine is disgustingly organized
in the general music collection i can organize by song name, album or artist.
then i have it organized by genre, you know country, rock, metal, opera, etc.
There are also playlists of music given to my by friends
then there is also a playlist of the last 200 songs put onto my computer, either through cds, or the Itunes store, or from ripped from my friends
and then i have playlists by mood... like happy party music, relaxing, feeling all emoish...
some songs could be in more then one playlist depending on where it fits
>>6
yeah it's crap on windows
although i've never used it on a mac, so i don't know how different it is, but the windows version completely rubs me up the wrong way
I organize mine on my own, saves recources when you don't have a program do it. A normal directory path is Music/(Artist name)/(Album name)/(Song number) - (Track name). It's clean enough for me.
I have a few playlists for specific artists, mood etc. in their own folder but I mainly just shuffle all my tracks.
>>8
The windows version gave me my first BSoD on XP ever, it's useless. I recommend using Foobar2000 if you want a media library or XMPlay if you just want a simple music player.