Author Topic: Where do you keep your music files and how are these organized?  (Read 35307 times)

jbercx

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Hello

I would like to know, at what location you are keeping your music files / collections?
I have them on 2 different external discs, both 4 TB (in fact both have the same content, Disc 2 is a backup of Disc 1)

Since I am using MB, for about 1 month now, wheereby  I am very impressed with MB.
It is the best software package that I have tried util now. It is  now my standard software package for managing my music files.

I am thinking to make a new setup to organize my files
Now I have them in folders A-Z and then per artist or band a separate folder. Probally this is oldfashion, but I know at least where a band or artist is stored. Any other suggestions are welcome, whereby I am very interested on how you guys are organizing your music files.

I am very interested in very old music, I mean, I am looking for the 1st ever recordings done. I have some recording from the early 20th century (1905).  If someone has some interesting stuff, please let me know.

Then, I am not sure yet if it is on this forum, would be nice to have a toppic where we could discuss music itself, like as before, very old recordings, or new releases comming up etc.etc.

best regards
J

AnonGuyy

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Now I have them in folders A-Z and then per artist or band a separate folder.

If this means what I think you're saying, then I do the same thing.  Since I'm on Windows, I have "Libraries" for Documents/Pictures/Music/Videos.  And ofc, my music (or any audio files for that matter) go into the Music Library.  But it doesn't just end there.  In "My Music" I have many folders.  One folder for music from Youtube, unsorted in anyway, just thrown in there.  Too lazy to do that.  Two folders for music I need to sort, one folder for artists that I can easily get the info for, the other for the newer artists that don't even have album art...  *gag*  For these files, I change the dB to 90, I remove the genre tag and clean the file names as well as tags.

And last but not least, my "Music" folder.  This is where all my Music is, sorted, clean tags and good to go.  This is the folder I put things in once I'm done cleaning the files to my liking, and only then.  This is the folder I'll select to sync with devices or for example, the folder I told MusicBee to use.
Inside this folder I have folders 0-9/A-Z titled as the Artist/Band.  In those folders I have folders 0-9/A-Z of the title of the Album.  And in thooose folders I have the .mp3 files themselves.

Maybe it's crazy or something, but to me, music means a hellovalot.  So I like to keep it all nice, neat, and tidy.  :3

dylstew

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The '"F'' Partition is where I store/install most of my stuff.
In there I have a folder called ''Docs''
In there is ''Music'' ''Music I should tag'''and also ''Video Game Music''.
In Music I have a seperate map for each artist, each artist has folders for their albums, with only the albums name(No year or whatever)
In Video game Music it's sorted by Game Series, than the game.
In Music I should tag there are genre folders, than in those band folders, and in those albums. These are albums I still plan on tagging correctly, but since I use musicbee now I don't use the folder often. Musicbee has the awesome Inbox feature ^.^.

The things I hate though is that sometimes when I click an album folder, there's another album folder I have to click to get to the songs. I ususally remove one when I come accross those. I also remove all of the non music files in each album folder(No images, no playlist files,etc).
The thing that really annoys me is that the filenames are ususally done wrong ,but I don't feel like renaming every damn song I have.

Katzz

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I am just crazy.... well not really but I was very ill a couple of years ago so I worked on my music collection quite a bit to keep busy.

I have a 2 TB hard drive, with a music folder in it.  I then have folders named A-Z with an additional one I named # which used to be a number sign (LOL).  Within those folders I have a folder for each artist and then album.  Every album and song I have re-tagged, put in proper art at 300x300 (which is large enough for me), created a playlist for the full album, and created a folder icon for.

I have placed a toolbar on my taskbar next to the windows 7 start button so I can easily access it all.

I also keep 2 copies on my server.

End result looks like
(click to make larger)


MichaelJ

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I have my music in two NAS's in the cellar. One is for Blues and Jazz (separated)
One the other one I hace Albums (which is everything but jazz and blues) Classical and Collections.
Classical is dived into composers and artists and Collections in genre,
All then has subfolders A-Ö (I'm Swedish)
When naming individual folder I use: Artist Name (year) Album title (Flac), then I get all the albums in continious order.
New Years ressolution 2009: If it aint FLAC it's WHACK ;D

Sharita Creason

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I have my music in my laptop and usb flash drive. I also have them on my phone. :)

judgmentalastonished

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That is my biggest problem LOL. I re-organize EVERY time. I get confused if I want it by genre, album, singer, title of the song. Whatever way I choose I always end up having a difficult time finding songs.

homertx

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I'm on a windows platform and foolishly decided to just drop individual files into folders organized by Folders named from A to Z. I would use what ever tool I could to complete the tags and name the files by Artist - Title. The A to Z Folders all live within My Music / Prime Collection. I also have Folders under My Music for Staging and Cleaning Required.

Once the A to Z Folders grew to 1,000's of files each it became painful to watch windows repeatedly attempt to index them.

I'm now trying to restructure my Folders to My Music / Prime Collection / Artist / Album / Title. @Katzz I do like and recognize the value of putting the A to Z folder structure in front like you've done.

My biggest challenge is over the years I've spread my collection across multiple drives. I'd be interested to learn if anyone has found a tool or created a simple process to bulk compare Directories? I realize there a slew of Compare utilities out there, I own a few myself, but I have yet to find one that cleanly points out deltas you want to keep and readiness all the dups for the recycle bin.

Zak

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There was another thread discussing pros and cons of different naming strategies, hyar:

http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=14088.0
Bee excellent to each other...

Zak

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I'm now trying to restructure my Folders to My Music / Prime Collection / Artist / Album / Title.

If you're about to embark on a large scale reorganisation project, the best advice I can give is to spend a little time at the outset to decide on a tagging and file naming structure that meets your needs now, and your forseeable needs in the future. What you want to avoid is tagging 1000s of files, only to decide then that you wanted to set a mood tag for each track, or add release notes for your favourite albums, or realise your folder structure is still confusing... Of course you can go back and fix them later, but your motivation the second time around might wane. :P

Get it right the first time, and with a bit of luck, your music library will still be up to date in 10+ years. :)
Bee excellent to each other...


vpsaxman

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I am just crazy.... well not really but I was very ill a couple of years ago so I worked on my music collection quite a bit to keep busy.

I have a 2 TB hard drive, with a music folder in it.  I then have folders named A-Z with an additional one I named # which used to be a number sign (LOL).  Within those folders I have a folder for each artist and then album.  Every album and song I have re-tagged, put in proper art at 300x300 (which is large enough for me), created a playlist for the full album, and created a folder icon for.

I have placed a toolbar on my taskbar next to the windows 7 start button so I can easily access it all.

I also keep 2 copies on my server.

End result looks like
(click to make larger)


Oh, wow...

Terry Walker

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I have my music on my laptop, phone and external hard drive.  I have a folder for each artist, it's easier for me to pick for my playlist. :)

hawk

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have 35000+ songs at best bit rate i can find some of them are studio version 50 MB for 3 minutes, hmm after years of messy stored music i am now using language/years/month/album i have three different language music why i store it yearly because some songs/albums are duet so where they go :s one female singer have given vocal to 400+ albums on past 5 years almost 300 different male singers yes bitch.i m using mediamonkey when i need to find music in any way like genre/singer/album/years all are there in left side bar or just use search or use column browser and you can also user auto playlist.

but from a week i m trying musicbee hope it will last for decade with me :D




 







azfrankie

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If MusicBee doesn't play a trick on my my library currently spans 121.000+ songs (9.137 albums -> 1.558 GBs). I started collecting digital music in 2005 to have it with me when traveling. I'm not realizing that my 9.000+ CDs collection is practically outdated.
I'm running two external hard drives of 2TB each (drives F:\ and G:\). I have two more discs for monthly backups. This works well for me. As for the sorting I'm strictly going by either the artist's last name, or the band's main name (suppressing "The" in front of a band name). So this would look like this:
F:\Artists from A to L
G:\Artists from M to Z

Example:

G:   \ (...)
   \Rodgers, Kenny
   \Rolling Stones, The
   \Ronstandt, Linda
   \Rose Royce

Within an artist's/band's folder I go by the year if more than one album is available:

Year - Artist - Album name:
1975 - The Rolling Stones - It's Only Rock'n'Roll
1975 - The Rolling Stones - Black and Blue
(etc.)

On top of that I'm taking care that all my files are neatly tagged. In most cases I even take the time to tag the composers, producers, label, catalog number, etc. I guess I'm a freak too  ;)