music library - main folders organization

[urfausto]

how do you organize your library folders: directly by artist or by genre first?

[psychoadept]

There have been some other discussions about this:

https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=14088.0

[urfausto]

ok thanks.
i'm undecided if use one or the other, i think i will have to check the genre tagging managment whitin musicbee because i have much stuff that's quite borderline with genres (like trip-hop, jazz-hop, dream-rap or something like these). i kinda set my personal state about genres and don't always agree with an official tag.

[psychoadept]

One useful feature MusicBee offers in that regard is the configurable "genre category" that you can use to group genes

[urfausto]

One useful feature MusicBee offers in that regard is the configurable "genre category" that you can use to group genes

how do u configure such fuctionality? and one more question regarding this: can you configure the folder name view too?

[psychoadept]

Genre Categories: https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/Tags_Preferences

Sorry, I don't know what you mean by folder name view.

[urfausto]

awesome.

in the left panel there is a grouping option named 'Folder Name' and it organises the list by folders in which album are placed.

[urfausto]

ok i found it myself lol: you can add the little file explorer box below and right click to rename folders and so on... wow it's really packed full of options and so it is quite hard to manage hehe...

[urfausto]

anyway i think i'm decided to resort back to the artist name folder sort fashion, because in a case i have some releases which are classical music collection with more different key instrument based sub-collections/directories inside, then as from other forum threads there is case of artists with different genres per album.

or is it better to have just the album folders and skip artist folder without getting too much confusion? i would have anyway a huge amount of them in my library.
so i could still sort genre with directly album folders in them and rename the folders to artist-album-year or something alike.


i will use genre from inside MB because it's the best choice.
and to have less confusion i will put album folders inside in folders by artist name (eventually it doesn't change much to have artist folders or not, just slightly better organization)

now i have some problems:

1) where do i put compilations? do i put them in various artist folder hence having completely different genres and artists in one folder only or do i put them in folders by genre generating folders that are not by artist?

2) how do i batch modify tags of multiple albums shown inside an upper category sorting within MB?

3) where do i put single tracks and how are they managed within MB. if i put them in the main artist folder how is the structure viewed by MB if my sorting option is 'every album is inside its folder'

[psychoadept]

A lot of this you'll have to figure out based on your own preferences. I'll just recommend that you not over think file organization. MusicBee can handle things like genre "folders" internally, with a column browser or filters or whatever makes sense to you.

For files, do something that's easy to maintain, easy to navigate, and doesn't take a lot of manual input. The default album artist/album/track is a good start. I add first letter folders to keep things from getting too cluttered, except for compilations and soundtracks which get their own folders based on their unique album artist value (set automatically by Picard). Single tracks go in the root album artist folder (an exception based on Track Count = 1). If you're using the album-per-folder option, you could just as easily put them in a "Singles" folder or something like that. MusicBee would then treat them as one group.

If it's really important to you to use genre in the file structure, think about how you organize them as physical media. Maybe you could use a custom tag like "album genre" to make multi-genre albums easier to handle. (You might also be able to do this with a virtual tag, setting a different
value based on album artist for compilations.)

My organization template uses a fair number of exceptions and virtual tags to handle special cases, but generally once an album is run through Picard and organized, it never moves again no matter what I retag or reorganize in MusicBee.

[urfausto]

compilations and soundtracks which get their own folders based on their unique album artist value (set automatically by Picard).

ok this answer my 1 point, i will put them too aside artists main folders.

Single tracks go in the root album artist folder (an exception based on Track Count = 1). If you're using the album-per-folder option, you could just as easily put them in a "Singles" folder or something like that. MusicBee would then treat them as one group.

this answers my 3 point, i think i will leave them in the main artist folder because i have already other folders called singles with other folders in it, so it's fine like this.

If it's really important to you to use genre in the file structure, think about how you organize them as physical media. Maybe you could use a custom tag like "album genre" to make multi-genre albums easier to handle.

i guess the standard genre tag is ok, what's different with an album genre tag? think i don't have many multi-genre albums or i can just put my own in the genre tag already by modifying it with right click.

(You might also be able to do this with a virtual tag, setting a different
value based on album artist for compilations.)

how is album artist tag retrieved or managed in picard and mbee?


the point eventually is how do i retag all this library if i have many possible variations like artist/singles & ep/blabla single/track x or artist/x collection/cd1/symphonies, etc etc. i can't move everything!  

thanks a lot for your advices!

[psychoadept]

i guess the standard genre tag is ok, what's different with an album genre tag? think i don't have many multi-genre albums or i can just put my own in the genre tag already by modifying it with right click.

If you're sure you're only going to have one genre tag per album, you have a relatively small set of genres (like <25), and you're not going to change your mind later and do something with multiple genres and/or genre categories then by all means stick with the main genre tag. I was thinking of it similar to album artist, where you need a single value for the whole unit rather than identifying each track specifically.

how is album artist tag retrieved or managed in picard and mbee?

I'm not sure what you mean. Either Picard or MusicBee's auto tag by album feature will set a single album artist for the whole album (unless you've messed with the configuration so that they don't).

the point eventually is how do i retag all this library if i have many possible variations like artist/singles & ep/blabla single/track x or artist/x collection/cd1/symphonies, etc etc. i can't move everything!  

Exactly why I recommend staying away from genre for file organization, it gets too complicated very quickly. What do you do when one artist performs in multiple genres, let alone when you have compilations and such? If I wanted to find my files by k.d. lang, I wouldn't know whether to look under Country or Pop or Jazz, and that still wouldn't find the compilations. Whereas within MusicBee I can easily find them all in seconds without caring how they're organized.

If you set up a basic template you're happy with, then add exceptions for singles, eps, multiple discs, or whatever you want done a little differently, once you're happy with the results you can walk away and let MusicBee handle the details. (Although I am assuming you're not often changing the album or artist tags on a track.)

Personally I just use Disc-Track# for multiple discs, which gives you 1-xx and 2-xx, etc, in the same folder - no need for exceptions. I know some people like to have separate folders for albums, eps, etc which I don't worry about but seems logical enough if you know what you're looking for. For me it's all about how quickly I can find the files I'm looking for, if I honestly have to find them the hard way rather than with MusicBee (which rarely happens).

[urfausto]

how is album artist tag retrieved or managed in picard and mbee?

I'm not sure what you mean. Either Picard or MusicBee's auto tag by album feature will set a single album artist for the whole album (unless you've messed with the configuration so that they don't).

ok so this album artist tag is a very popular one and it is always automatically managed depending on the tagged release, if i get this right.

Exactly why I recommend staying away from genre for file organization, it gets too complicated very quickly. What do you do when one artist performs in multiple genres, let alone when you have compilations and such? If I wanted to find my files by k.d. lang, I wouldn't know whether to look under Country or Pop or Jazz, and that still wouldn't find the compilations. Whereas within MusicBee I can easily find them all in seconds without caring how they're organized.

If you set up a basic template you're happy with, then add exceptions for singles, eps, multiple discs, or whatever you want done a little differently, once you're happy with the results you can walk away and let MusicBee handle the details. (Although I am assuming you're not often changing the album or artist tags on a track.)

Personally I just use Disc-Track# for multiple discs, which gives you 1-xx and 2-xx, etc, in the same folder - no need for exceptions. I know some people like to have separate folders for albums, eps, etc which I don't worry about but seems logical enough if you know what you're looking for. For me it's all about how quickly I can find the files I'm looking for, if I honestly have to find them the hard way rather than with MusicBee (which rarely happens).

perfect, the 1 most important thing for me is to tag everything then i can even let the folders unchanged because i don't really care about a perfect storaging i'm fine with the mb's view and messy folders as long as they serve the container purpose, even because mb for what i understand doesn't care about one folder cotaining another folder right? like:

-artist x
-singles, albums, ep
-album y
-track z

[urfausto]

wait a second! i can't even think of moving/copying folders because i have in many cases some files which are not actually managed by mb such as artworks, pdfs, etc. so i'm really fine with actual folder structure and won't mind about names of the folders.

[psychoadept]

wait a second! i can't even think of moving/copying folders because i have in many cases some files which are not actually managed by mb such as artworks, pdfs, etc. so i'm really fine with actual folder structure and won't mind about names of the folders.

Just use the "also move remaining non-media files" option and those files should move with the rest of the album