Steps to acquire cover art for individual songs

[wedmiston]

Is there any downside to doing it this way (other than maybe some pretty long filenames)? Doesn't seem to be other than maybe having one huge folder to sift through, but you can still probably get to any artist and song using any indexing software. It would n't make any difference as far as MB us concerned and how artists display on MB, right?

[Anti]

That's right. File structure doesn't matter - the only requisite is that the path and filename for each track is unique, so that Windows doesn't overwrite tracks when adding to the library or moving tracks. So you have to decide whether there is any benefit in having tracks buried three or four tiers of folders deep, or whether it's simpler just to have an album artist folder with all tracks by that artist in the same folder.

> one huge folder to sift through

Bear in mind that Vista and Win7 actually uses tags, so the sort and search is very good at filtering an artist's tracks.
In my opinion it would be more difficult to use Windows Explorer and other software if the structure was heavily tiered.

> It would n't make any difference as far as MB us concerned and how artists display on MB, right?

Right. It's up to you how you want to do it, taking into consideration any other software you use.

[wedmiston]

Just so I am sure...you added a \ to your setup, indicating you are still establishing a distinct folder for each artist, then dropping all the songs related to that artist, regardless of album, into that one folder....so for 20 different artists, you'd still have 20 unique folders with each of their names, right?

Or, is it just ONE folder and everyone is in the same sandbox, so to speak?

[Anti]

One folder per artist, with all their tracks in one folder, and long, unique filenames to prevent overwriting.
Each artist folder contains between five and ten albums; roughly 50-100 tracks.

For compilation albums I use an exception rule that uses 'album artist' instead of 'artist' for the folder.
This creates folders such as: 'compilations', 'compilations (jazz)', 'compilations (classical)' with several
compilations inside.

Note that I always collect and work with full albums. If I have a bunch of singles, I create a compilation album
to group them together. I only have 100 different artists in my collection (not including artists in compilations).

However, if you predominantly collect dance remixes and singles, you may have 10,000 different artists and Dj's,
resulting in 10,000 folders each containing just one or two tracks . So you have to find a method which suits
your library size and taste.

[wedmiston]

I'd have to say my present collection (~4300 songs) is 2/3 complete albums and 1/3 smaller bunches of 2-3 songs from a single album and random solo songs collected from various sources, so no one approach will fit all. I can see the benefit of just running everything through MB and not being concerned with how it's structured "behind the scenes," but one folder with 4300 songs seems unwieldy if I ever want to go in and work in it.

I suppose exporting a csv. version into Excel would make working ion it a bit easier...

[wedmiston]

Anti - what about in cases where I have the artist name, but it was part of a compilation album which lists the album artist as "Various?" I can leave it at various, change it to the actual individual artist for that specific song, or go with your "compilation" setup. Seems like using the actual artist would be the most accurate, but am i sacrificing anything by overwriting "various" with the artists names?

Also, any sacrifice by leaving out the disc-track info from the filename? If I'm using artist-album-year-song, I don't think i stand much risk of overwriting....

[Anti]

> Seems like using the actual artist would be the most accurate, but am i sacrificing
> anything by overwriting "various" with the artists names?

For compilations I wouldn't deviate from the standard tagging, which is to have 'artist' as the person performing the track, and 'album artist' as 'Various' (or whatever variations you wish). This will display very nicely in musicbee when sorting by album artist. Actually, I prefer a custom sort: album artist -> year. This groups albums by album artist and then puts each artist's albums into chronological order.

Then, since you have both tags intact, you can choose what you want to do with the folder structure - whether to put all compilations in a parent folder called 'various' or whether to put each track in a matching 'artist' folder. If you had 'artist' and 'album artist' the same for compilations, you'd lose that choice.

I think you're probably over-thinking all this. One extreme is having a folder for every track. The other extreme is only having one folder with your entire library in it. Basically you just need to think of any structure which will provide you with middle ground and just go for it.

As long as you have proper tags in all tracks, you can always organise the files into one folder and start again if you decide that the structure you chose was inadequate.