Author Topic: Music file transfer  (Read 1105 times)

NorahM

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I recently downloaded MusicBee and indicated where my music files are located. Under the C:/Music, each artist had it's own file with their songs.  MusicBee emptied all of these files and now they are listed individually under C:/Music and there are several songs that didn't have enough information to indicate who the artist is.  If I attempt to review this file and sort it in any way (about 7,000 songs) my computer slows down to a crawl.  The Name column lists my library name and a number and then the title of the song.  I lost about 50 songs that had the song name in the first column and not the title in my file.  How can I get the original information back?

Mayibongwe

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Welcome to the forum, NorahM
You must have played around with MB's File Organizer somehow.
But if that's the case, then the situation is still reversible...to some extent though 'cause this works flawlessly when all your files are properly tagged.

So using the same File Organizer, you can tell MB to organize your files in C:\Music using the following structure: <Artist>\<Title>.
But before that...

Personally, I would create a virtual tag that sets the artist name to 'Unknown Artist' for all songs without artists.
This is so that, when MB does the re-organizing, the songs without artists would be placed under the Unknown Artist folder.

So steps to take:

1. In MB, go to preferences -> Tags(1) -> under custom tags...define new tags
2. Pick a virtual tag slot and use the following formula to weed out songs without artists....$If(<Artist>="",Unknown Artist,<Artist>)
3. Go to your main library tab and select all the files.
4. Right-click -> Edit
5. In the tag editor, select 'Rename'.
6. The File Organizer will open up and inside it...under the "to folder"...type C:\Music
7. In the naming template....type \<Virtual1>\<Title> (in place of virtual1, use the virtual tag that you picked in step 2)
8. Finally... hit 'reorganize'

After all that, I believe your files should be organized the way you first had them.
Concerning the 50 songs that will be missing title names, we can discuss that later on once you get the reorganizing done.
As a precaution, please attempt this later on (maybe some 5hrs later) when no other forum member has suggested something different and better to what I have.
Favourite song at the moment:   Decode by Paramore

NorahM

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Thank you for your response.  I now realize that Music Bee is way beyond my capabilities.  I have a backup of my old music files that I will restore after I remove Music Bee.

Mayibongwe

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Alright, I understand champ.

My opinion though...
Stick around for a little while longer. Once you get the hang of it, you'll love MB.
MB has got thousands of awesome functions/features. You don't have to use all of them...just the ones that you like.

I've been using MB for a year or so and I probably use less than 50% of its capabilities.
What I use/like most about it is its ability to retrieve movie backdrops while playing soundtracks/scores. That's just beautiful man.

Anyway point being, after a while, you'll probably find one thing that you love about it.
If not accidentally or necessary, you won't have to use the virtual tags, file organizing and all that 'advanced' stuff...just the features that you desire which no other music player/manager can provide.

If you still opt to go, that's fine, I understand.
Peace champ.
Favourite song at the moment:   Decode by Paramore

hiccup

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And if you choose to follow Mayibongwe's good and motivational suggestion:

What you could do:
- create a portable install of MusicBee
- copy (a part of your) valuable music library to a testing folder
- have MusicBee scan that folder to create a library

Then you could try out MusicBee, test its functionality and features, without any chance of damaging anything.

But if you are mainly looking for an easy to use, set and forget music player, there are probably more suitable alternatives.