Is it worth to maintain a folder structure?

[Peke]

That is indeed addressed to pah68.
~1500-1700 Songs 175VBR MP3s on old radio station Backup MDB that are Classified as reggae mixture, saved on one DVD-R DL + Top 100 on CD-R.

[pah68]

heh heh, picture me (a chisled good looking adonis, if you need help with the image), stiring a very large pot, air guitar style

Taking the piss out of a genre is always good for a bite.

[PromisedPlanet]

The only reason I organize my MP3s into folders (Artist\Album) is because I sometimes play my collection through the Tivo interface, and Tivo displays songs in a folder-based hierarchy, not tag-based.

[qualitycontrol]

mine goes...(I'm quite anal with my collection) ':o'

for the root:
Z:\My Music\[ Albums ]
Z:\My Music\[ Tracks ]

then:
for full albums, i use:

[ Albums ]\AlbumArtist\AlbumTitle\AlbumArtist - AlbumTitle - TrackNumber - TrackArtist - TrackName.ext

this goes well with all types of albums (or at least the ones i have)

this way OST's and Compilations, album artist just becomes 'Original Motion Picture Soundtrack' or 'Various Artists'

for incomplete albums or singles..

[ Tracks ]\AlbumArtist - AlbumTitle - TrackNumber - TrackArtist - TrackName.ext

I keep all playlists, lyrics, album art and album reviews on individual folders, although the last three are already embedded on the mp3's, thery're just for backup in case some program messes up my tags. And I use the long filename format because some players cant read tags and just rely on filenames for sorting... also for easy fixing of corrupted tags.

...I also have a folder for [ Unprocessed ] mp3's where I haven't got to fixing their tags and filenames yet.

[Son of Spam]

Is there a way through MediaMonkey or some other app that would automatically arrange your music collection into specified parametres? I know there's a program called "The Godfather" which I used to have, but I wasn't so sure of.

I have a lot of folders that are indicated by just their album name, because when I ripped them with AudioGrabber, I mistakenly selected the "Album As Folder" option instead of the "Artist As Folder".

Aside from compilation albums, I want to rearrange the files into selected folders automatically.

I think an easy way to this would be to set the parameters as preferred: eg. Artist/Album/Song Title/Genre and Presto!!! Your files would be sorted in a matter of seconds!

Of course, if Media Monkey doesn't have this feature, you guys should develop it soon before anyone else does.

[trixmoto]

Try the Auto-Organise feature in the Tools menu!

[Morten]

I actually thought he was joking. MediaMonkey is the most extensive library-sorting programs out there.

[Son of Spam]

Try the Auto-Organise feature in the Tools menu!

Thanx, trixmoto!

But will this feature actually "create" new folders based on the structure parameters if they're not there?

And if it's an automatic thing, how can I ensure that so-called "Various Artist" compilation albums won't be restructured to individual files via Artist?

(Sorry if I seem clueless here...I just don't want to do anything that would wreck my mp3 collection).

[onkel_enno]

If your "Various Artist" Albums have "Various Artist" as Album Artist, then MM can create <Album Artist> as folder instead of <Artist>. No Probem! Or you put in Conditions.

[Son of Spam]

If your "Various Artist" Albums have "Various Artist" as Album Artist, then MM can create <Album Artist> as folder instead of <Artist>. No Probem! Or you put in Conditions.

Cool!

I'm liking this little proggy more and more!

[onkel_enno]

I'm liking this little proggy more and more!

You'll love it

[trixmoto]

And yes, new folders are created if they are needed.

[larsmark]

mine goes...(I'm quite anal with my collection) ':o'

for the root:
Z:\My Music\[ Albums ]
Z:\My Music\[ Tracks ]

then:
for full albums, i use:

[ Albums ]\AlbumArtist\AlbumTitle\AlbumArtist - AlbumTitle - TrackNumber - TrackArtist - TrackName.ext

this goes well with all types of albums (or at least the ones i have)

this way OST's and Compilations, album artist just becomes 'Original Motion Picture Soundtrack' or 'Various Artists'

for incomplete albums or singles..

[ Tracks ]\AlbumArtist - AlbumTitle - TrackNumber - TrackArtist - TrackName.ext

I keep all playlists, lyrics, album art and album reviews on individual folders, although the last three are already embedded on the mp3's, thery're just for backup in case some program messes up my tags. And I use the long filename format because some players cant read tags and just rely on filenames for sorting... also for easy fixing of corrupted tags.

...I also have a folder for [ Unprocessed ] mp3's where I haven't got to fixing their tags and filenames yet.

question,
there are scripts/etc that exist to display list of albums,
1 what ones do you know off?
2 it appears that most of those scripts work by checking MAX track# against number of tracks and finding non-sequential track#
3 what if you took the track#s that were missing looked up the Album to see if what the names of the missing track#s were and search MM database for matches,
populate a list/combo box for each track listing similar to the autotag shows the tracklistings containing the names of the matchs in database (locking the matched tracks IE
ie
TRACK1 <box>
TRACK2 (locked box or text)
..
track20 <box>
<box> contents are unknown as yet other than file name, maybe year???

incase of multiple matches (ie Best of Bowie (2002), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_Bowie
you could offer each albums track name, or a separate dropbox selecting the album version (ala autotag from web)

now the question what to do with the correct list, there a numerous possibilities to be discussed later but to keep this thread on topic purhaps it should create new files (yes actually create duplicates) within a folder structure containing AlbumName and changing the tags??

anybody else have any ideas?

EDIT:
1) it appears Triximoto is now offline
2) your "Just List Albums 1.8" for instance included Total # of tracks/highest track#
3) it appears BEXs Tagging inconsistancies script idendifies what tracks are missing - we just need a way to select "replacement tracks"
4) i suggest for anything like this to work a new folder structure is created "Artificially Created ALBUMS"\<ALBUMARTIST>\<ALBUM>\<title> to avoid confusion with existing files being retagged duplicates could later be handled by existing scripts to users preferance

[Solitaire001]

Like others, I prefer to maintain a basic folder structure for my music. There are a couple of reasons for this: it avoids having too many files/folders in a single folder, and it makes it easy to find my music via Windows Explorer. As far as how my music is arranged, I use MediaMonkey's autoorganize function and store my music library in a folder named "Music Library" and arrange it as follows: <Album Artist:1>\<Album Artist>\<Album>\<Title>

The above avoids having too many folders in a single folder. My music collection contains over 800 album artists, and the <Album Artist:1> creates a set of folders based on the first character of the album artist's name. This puts album artists like ABBA, Annette, and Art Garfunkel in subfolders under the "A" folder, while Carpenters, Captain & Tennille, and Chicago are in subfolders under the "C" folder.

[Anamon]

I organise my music in folders, and I perform the folder creation/management and file placement manually, not using MM's Auto Organize. This is because I want to have the most direct control over how the files are placed, as for example I have a slightly different folder structure depending on what part of my collection something is, what format I have recorded it from, or the basic musical genre. Sounds complicated, but in fact I simply organise everything in the way that makes the most sense for me personally, i.e. where would I look if I were searching for the folder of this particular release.

I'm aware that MediaMonkey would allow me to automate this no problem, especially now with the different collection types in MM4. But I'm the "manual" kind of guy and I think I would spend more time configuring, reconfiguring and testing the MM organisation that I spend now on maintaining it myself. After all, it's basically just creating a folder and putting the files in the right place once for every new release I add to my collection.

I only listen to my music collection at home with MM about 50% of the time, the other times I use foobar2000 and browse to the files I wish to play directly. I also configure my portable music player always so that I browse based on folders and not tags. I use MM to meticulously tag and browse my collection, to classify, create playlists, etc., but I am just as often working with files and folders directly.