Where do you keep your music files and how are these organized?

[PASTYL-FLO]

The A-Z root-level folders seems a little redundant to me since you could just press a letter while looking at File Explorer to jump to that section. But I have mine setup in a fairly standard way (Artist > Album > *). I'd like it if the album folders could be displayed in release order, but that's what meta-data is for, I can still sort by release year within MusicBee, so no drama. I have a pretty good memory for this stuff, so I can usually locate any given song in my collection in explorer just by remembering what artist/album the song was on.

[klh]

I have my main OS and frequently used files on an SSD, and then all my music/photos/videos on a 2TB "media" HD. My MB playlists are all exported to a dir within the music library (use the export playlist option whenever creating a new playlist). That drive is synced daily with my NAS which feeds playlists to my Sonos, so all my music is available to the Sonos. I also backup the entire media drive to an external/portable drive and keep that at my office.

The dir structure is mostly artist/album, however I have a "various artists" folder and a "Misc by Genre" folder with genre sub-folders for a lot of stuff that falls between the cracks (especially classical which can be composer/artist/conductor/orchestra driven so "artist" or "composer" don't really work consistently).

MB has very powerful moving and retagging options, so with some time, but really not that much effort, you can rework an entire library into the format of your choosing.

[theta_wave]

On an external 2TB HDD (need to upgrade soon).

Here's my sorting formula under I:\ (work in progress):

$If($Or(<Genre>="Alternative",<Genre>="Rock"),"Alternative and Rock",$If($Or(<Genre>="Anime",<Genre>="Game"),"Soundtrack - "<Genre>,$If(<Genre>="New Wave","80s, New Wave, and Synthpop",$If($Or(<Genre>="House",<Genre>="Acid Jazz"),Dance,$If($Or(<Genre>="Gothic",<Genre>="Post-Punk"),"Gothic or Post-Punk",$If(<Genre>="Rap","Hip Hop",$If(<Genre>="Jungle","Drum & Bass",<Genre>)))))))\$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists","VA - "<Album>,<Album Artist>)\$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",<Track#>". "<Artist>" - "<Title>,$IsNull(<DateCustom>,"("<Year (yyyy)>") "<Album>,"("<Year (yyyy)>.<DateCustom>") "<Album>))\$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",,<Track#>". "<Title>)

Basically:

I:\<Genre>\<Album Artist>\(Year.Month.Date) <Album>\Track#. Title

For compilations (album artist = various artists): I:\<Genre>\VA - <Album> (Year)\Track#. Artist - Title

Soundtracks: I:\ Soundtrack - <Genre>\<Album> (Year)\Track#. Title

[jbercx]

On an external 2TB HDD (need to upgrade soon).

Here's my sorting formula under I:\ (work in progress):

$If($Or(<Genre>="Alternative",<Genre>="Rock"),"Alternative and Rock",$If($Or(<Genre>="Anime",<Genre>="Game"),"Soundtrack - "<Genre>,$If(<Genre>="New Wave","80s, New Wave, and Synthpop",$If($Or(<Genre>="House",<Genre>="Acid Jazz"),Dance,$If($Or(<Genre>="Gothic",<Genre>="Post-Punk"),"Gothic or Post-Punk",$If(<Genre>="Rap","Hip Hop",$If(<Genre>="Jungle","Drum & Bass",<Genre>)))))))\$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists","VA - "<Album>,<Album Artist>)\$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",<Track#>". "<Artist>" - "<Title>,$IsNull(<DateCustom>,"("<Year (yyyy)>") "<Album>,"("<Year (yyyy)>.<DateCustom>") "<Album>))\$If(<Album Artist>="Various Artists",,<Track#>". "<Title>)

Basically:

I:\<Genre>\<Album Artist>\(Year.Month.Date) <Album>\Track#. Title

For compilations (album artist = various artists): I:\<Genre>\VA - <Album> (Year)\Track#. Artist - Title

Soundtracks: I:\ Soundtrack - <Genre>\<Album> (Year)\Track#. Title

Where did you set this formula, I assume, somewhere in Preferences?

[boroda]

either in edit> prefs> library> autoorganize library or file> organize files (in mb 3.0)

[jbercx]

either in edit> prefs> library> autoorganize library or file> organize files (in mb 3.0)

Thank you, got it!

[jasongnome]

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

I currently have mine on a 2TB external drive, which is also used for movies/videos, however, as I have a huge amount to add (from CD rips and vinyl) it will run out of space, so I'm currently looking for an alternative option. The obvious option is to just buy a 5 TB disc, but I'm not sure even that will be big enough. Whatever I buy I'm gonna have to get 2 so I can have a backup.

As for organization, it's organised the default way. I folder for each artist, and then a filder for each album. I embed album art in the file. I used to check tags with mp3 tag, but since switching players to MusicBee now have to use it very rarely as MusicBee does pretty much everything I want wrt tagging.

[askaray]

I keep my music in D:\Music, but only sorted and tagged music. The rest sits in my download folder, regardless if I burned it or downloaded it or whatever.
I also like only MP3s in my active library so I try to convert them before adding them.

Then I sort by: Artist\[year] - [album]\00 Track Name.mp3
The only files in here are the tracks themselves and one "Cover - Front.jpg" (or whatever extension). Nothing else.
Discs are separated into "Disc 1", etc. if that applies

Artist name is always the English version for folders (I have a lot of Japanese artists so this is for easy searching in Windows). Filenames I TRY to have a Latin-alphabet version but sometimes I get lazy.. oh well. (the "artist album" field i also use for anglicized artist name, while the "artist' field has the artist in the original language)
All soundtracks are in a Soundtrack folder, and random compilations that don't belong anywhere are in a Various Artist folder.
Soundtracks are further divided into Anime, Games, TV, Movies. Games are even further divided by the game series (or else this folder would be a living hell).

I've been using MB's Inbox feature to double check newly added files for tags I don't want. It's so nice... I really love that feature. I manually tag all my music. It's a hassle, I know, but I just think it's better for my library... especially since auto taggers like to really mess up anything not in English, I have to fix it anyway. I'm very particular about it ever since I started collecting MP3s... at first it was an utter mess but I knew if I was actually going to collect stuff like this I better think of a sorting system or else I'd never find anything ever again. Also by manually editing all my files myself I can check what I'm adding to my library.  I don't usually use more than one playlist at a time and that's for sleeping. I mostly just put either my whole library on shuffle/auto DJ, or listen to an artist or album all the way through.

It honestly took me years to come up with my tagging/sorting system but it was worth it; I can find anything in my library or on my computer in seconds.

[theta_wave]

I manually tag all my music. It's a hassle, I know, but I just think it's better for my library...

I did so too for the longest time until I rolled up my sleeves and decided to learn MP3Tag scripting.  MP3Tag + StrokeIt (mouse gestures) make tagging much faster now.

https://youtu.be/JrXekn8N_PE

[askaray]

I manually tag all my music. It's a hassle, I know, but I just think it's better for my library...

I did so too for the longest time until I rolled up my sleeves and decided to learn MP3Tag scripting.  MP3Tag + StrokeIt (mouse gestures) make tagging much faster now.

https://youtu.be/JrXekn8N_PE

Ah well I use mp3tag; I love that program. (Especially for English releases, it's so easy... in the end I usually have to change foreign language tags anyway.)
That's the first I've seen it used with mouse gestures, though. That's really cool.. I never even thought to do that.

[theta_wave]

I manually tag all my music. It's a hassle, I know, but I just think it's better for my library...

I did so too for the longest time until I rolled up my sleeves and decided to learn MP3Tag scripting.  MP3Tag + StrokeIt (mouse gestures) make tagging much faster now.

https://youtu.be/JrXekn8N_PE

Ah well I use mp3tag; I love that program. (Especially for English releases, it's so easy... in the end I usually have to change foreign language tags anyway.)
That's the first I've seen it used with mouse gestures, though. That's really cool.. I never even thought to do that.

Here's documentation on how strokeit implements keyboard inputs (PDF from archive.org): https://www.mediafire.com/?y4upl4avdv65j7m

For example, I have mp3tag's discog's source file (with my own edits) set to D and then A (filename: %AppData%\Roaming\Mp3tag\data\sources\&Discogs#&1 Search by &AlbumArtist + Album.src).  Note the filename where "&" sets the key mp3tag selects the source file.  "D" for Discogs submenu and "A" for Album Artist source file; the "#&" denotes a separation for a submenu: Tag Sources > Discogs > 1 Search by AlbumArtist + Album

MP3Tag's keyboard shortcut for the above source is "Alt+S d a" (without quotes; Alt+S brings up the tag sources menu).

Under stroke it, this input sequence is "[ALT_DOWN]s[ALT_UP]da" (without quotes) under Strokeit's configuration menu for "Keys - Send Keystrokes".  I've been using strokeit and mp3tag for many years and, until about two months ago, it didn't occur to me to use them together.