Author Topic: musicbee auto organize libary, leaving itunes, serato  (Read 3391 times)

theebriano

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hi all

i'm trying to leave itunes behind for good and clicking musicbee's auto organise option is terrifying to me.

i'd like to rename my music library folder to something other than "itunes" and be done with the app all together, but i've got a large library and have done hours and hours of work on organizing, upgrading files, artwork, etc.

to be more specific, i use itunes to organize playlists that i then use in serato, a dj app.
serato works seamlessly with itunes intergration, and i'm looking for the same thing with musicbee.

would anyone be willing to do a bit of hand holding with me and talk me through transitioning to musicbee without my file pathways becoming all garbled?
would be very grateful.

psychoadept

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Hi, welcome to the forum!

The good news is that you don't have to go from no organization to auto-organization in one giant leap. If you select, say, one album and right click on it, you can use the send to > Folder (Move) > Move Files to Organized Folder command. That will open the File Organization window, which works exactly the same as the auto-organize settings in terms of setting a template using tags, etc.

Come up with a template you like and test it on a few albums. Then, once you're happy with the results, you can copy it over to auto-organize and let it run on the whole library. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/File_Organization
https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Templates
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frankz

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You don't need to organize your files at all.  You can leave them where they, are and everything will work just fine.  If they're set up the way you want them, why would you change it anyway? 

theebriano

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Hi, welcome to the forum!

The good news is that you don't have to go from no organization to auto-organization in one giant leap...

thank you, adept, but this is exactly what's kept me from adopting musicbee far earlier...
i don't want to mess with ANY of this. i'm sure this interests plenty of people, but there are far too many choices to make (and things that can go wrong) and i simply cannot have my library pathways be destroyed. not only would i have to fix my music library, i would have to do the same to my serato libary, and it would simply take too much time. i have too much work depending on this all going smoothly.

franz, i hear you, but i do like my files in one location. maybe we're referring to different things. if i import new music, i'd like to be able to do so and not have to worry about mantually moving folders around.
when importing music, itunes creates a copy for itself and neatly organizes it by artist, album, etc.
all i'm looking for is musicbee to act the same way.

psychoadept

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So I'm not sure, based on your comments, if you expect MusicBee to access different copies of your files from serato or the same copies. More information about what you want the result to be for serato would be helpful.

In any case, MusicBee's default organization settings should get you pretty much the same result as iTunes organization. However, MusicBee does not copy files when adding them to the library so you'd have to do that part manually.
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frankz

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franz, i hear you, but i do like my files in one location.

when importing music, itunes creates a copy for itself and neatly organizes it by artist, album, etc.
all i'm looking for is musicbee to act the same way.
These are opposite desires.  Copies and having all your files one location are opposite things.

You can have MB leave your old files alone and only monitor an "incoming" folder and then organize things from that into your existing structure.  It doesn't need to monitor folders that already exist or touch them in any way.
Last Edit: April 17, 2019, 05:03:31 PM by frankz

theebriano

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serato doens't make/use its own copies of files. it just reads them for its purposes.

i'd like to know if musicbee's organiziation settings work similarly to itunes...naming pathways, etc.


with musicbee and the library settings you're referring to, i'd have to move the files to the library folder...but once i did that, musicbee would take care of the rest and move files where they need go to stay organized?

theebriano

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franz, i hear you, but i do like my files in one location.

when importing music, itunes creates a copy for itself and neatly organizes it by artist, album, etc.
all i'm looking for is musicbee to act the same way.
These are opposite desires.

no, they're not. once itunes creates its copy and it's filed and organized and easily reachable, i trash the other file. it's worked perfectly for 10+ years.

frankz

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franz, i hear you, but i do like my files in one location.

when importing music, itunes creates a copy for itself and neatly organizes it by artist, album, etc.
all i'm looking for is musicbee to act the same way.
These are opposite desires.

no, they're not. once itunes creates its copy and it's filed and organized and easily reachable, i trash the other file. it's worked perfectly for 10+ years.
Read my addition to the post you replied to.  I think you're misunderstanding what will happen to files that already exist. (nothing, if you don't want it to).

I'm curious why you're anxious to leave something behind that has worked perfectly for 10+ years, though.  Usually when people find perfect things they don't want to "leave it behind for good."

psychoadept

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serato doens't make/use its own copies of files. it just reads them for its purposes.

i'd like to know if musicbee's organiziation settings work similarly to itunes...naming pathways, etc.


with musicbee and the library settings you're referring to, i'd have to move the files to the library folder...but once i did that, musicbee would take care of the rest and move files where they need go to stay organized?

What are you concerned about happening with serato if the file path change? Does it not get all the file info from tags?

Yes, MusicBee's default settings are almost identical to iTunes.

For MusicBee to handle organization automatically when files are added to a folder, you need to configure it as a monitored folder. Otherwise they will be organized when you add them to the library manually.
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theebriano

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frankz, for one, apple is about to split itunes up into multuple apps, and there's a lot of unknowns there. itunes might not work the same as it has for the last decade.

but other than that, itunes is the last part of me in the apple ecosystem, and I want to leave. never wanted an iphone, got rid of my macbook a few years ago, etc. and couldn't be happier.

re: monitering an incoming folder, are you suggesting i can basically have two different library folders?


Right now, itunes orders music like below
C:\Users\Name\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\The Cure/ETC...

I'd just like to make sure that
1. when I start renaming folders, that MB will make the necessary changes to the track file names (that serato will then read and function from)
and
2. Moving forward, for new music, that as long as I'm moving the files to the correct, general library folder, that MB will organize the files similar to itunes...


Also, completely unrelated but while I have the attention, itunes has a small but great option to click on a track and see which playlists that track already is in...does MB have this feature and I'm just not seeing it? and if not, is there a way to enact?

Thank you both for the discussion.


psychoadept

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re: monitering an incoming folder, are you suggesting i can basically have two different library folders?

I'm not sure what you're thinking of here. There's one library folder, although you can have a separate folder to put new files in, which MusicBee will then move into the main library folder.

Quote
I'd just like to make sure that
1. when I start renaming folders, that MB will make the necessary changes to the track file names (that serato will then read and function from)
and
2. Moving forward, for new music, that as long as I'm moving the files to the correct, general library folder, that MB will organize the files similar to itunes...

This is why I suggest you test it on a small sample of your library before you turn on auto-organize. I think it will work the way you want, but you still shouldn't go whole hog until you've seen it for yourself. Also, if something doesn't work as expected we can help you troubleshoot.

Quote
Also, completely unrelated but while I have the attention, itunes has a small but great option to click on a track and see which playlists that track already is in...does MB have this feature and I'm just not seeing it? and if not, is there a way to enact?

Right click > Search > Locate in Playlist

It may take a moment to load the auto-playlists.
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Pingaware

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We also need to make clear the difference between a library and files for MB purposes (as I think there may be some confusion on OP's part - apologies if I'm wrong).

The library for MB is a distinct set of files that govern the database. These are saved in a separate folder that I'd advise is in a separate folder structure to your music files (i.e. somewhere you won't scan for files). Playlists are also saved here by default (I think).

Your music files, while you may think of them as your library, are not the same thing. They are effectively independent of your MB library, and can be saved anywhere. Unlike iTunes, MB doesn't care where your files are saved and won't move them to be near the library. So long as the library knows where the files are and you do file moving using MB's functions wherever possible, you'll have no issues.
Bold words in my posts are links unless expressly stated otherwise.

frankz

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re: monitering an incoming folder, are you suggesting i can basically have two different library folders?
Yes, which sounds like what you're doing now except MB doesn't leave a copy behind for you to manually delete afterward.

In other words:

1. You rip, download files
2. You put them into a temporary folder
3. You import them into MB (usually your "Inbox").
4. You organize them into your existing file folder structure by template and add them to the library

3 and 4 can be automated by monitoring the temporary folder in step 2 and turning on auto-organization for files in that folder.

If you want to check your tagging, artwork etc before organizing them into your existing file folder structure, you can automate 3 with monitored folders and do 4 manually.
Last Edit: April 18, 2019, 12:07:37 AM by frankz