Best way to organize MP3 collection?

The topic title says it all, but how are others organizing their music collection? I was originally going to sort by genre, then alphabetically, but sorting straight alphabetically might be better.

How do you organize your collection?

by genre - then by artist.

I'm almost thinking of going alphabetical, 0-9,A-Z. The each artist will get their own folder and inside that folder will be a sub folder for each album released by that artist. For example, The Who would be under W with a folder name of "Who, The" and under that would folders for each album they have released.

A couple of exceptions would be various artists (VA) and movie sound tracks and perhaps even seasonal albums would get their own folders.

Another thing I'm wondering about now is the actual naming convention. Should I use under scores in place of spaces? Do I include the artist, album and track name in the actual track name?

I sort all my albums in alphabetical order. I would never sort by genre since this changes from person to person. Some think Coldplay should be under Alternative Rock, while others might think it belongs under Rock, Pop, or even Indie. I don't really know what genre to put the band in either most of the time, and if I had the artists listed under category, I would become frustrated when I couldn't find the artist right away. "Did I put Dimmu Borgir under Black Metal or Death Metal?" Hence it is impossible to categorize them correctly.

I list all "The" bands with The in the end such as Beatles, The. This not only because it is easier to find the bands due to consistency, but also because some refer groups both with and without it. One example being The Levellers, where even the group themselves uses both terms.

In the VA category, I have all albums under one single folder, namely VA. This includes soundtracks, tributes, and such.

I list albums with the years first and then the title, like this 1997 - Grand World. I used to have it like this Grand World (1997), but it is easier to read when no parenthesis are used, and when the years is listed first. Especially when the artist has over 10 albums. If Berkley with its Amoeba and Rasputin wasn't so conveniently located for me, I would probably not have this issue But damn I'm weak when entering their used CDs sections....
Underscore is out of the question in terms of ease of reading. Besides, underscores looks incredibly messy and ugly.

All my songs starts with the band name, followed by the track name and last the song title, such as The Levellers - 05 - Barrel Of The Gun. I include the artist name for identification purposes in case I have a random assortment of tracks in a folder outside the collection. But I also think it looks better. Notice that I use The Levellers instead of Levellers, The in the song name. This is because you are already in the Levellers, The folder and don't need to find the band, and commas looks ugly in the band name in files.

VA is a little different, but basically the same. For the songs, I start with the track number. This is a must since there is no way of accurately sort the tracks otherwise. It is followed by the artist and then the song, like this 09 - John Doe - The Loosing Kind.
The albums in this folder follows my old rule where the year comes last within parenthesis. This is because it is easier to find the album that way in this category.

A rule that I use across the board is that I always use capital letters in every word of the song, regardless if it is A, The, Of, and so forth. Again, this is because I think it looks better dues to consistency. One example being Diesel Machine – 12 – Children Of The Damned.

Some people probably don't agree with these methods, but I personally prefer it. So now you got my 5 cents

Most excellent Mocky. That's precisely what I was looking for.

I do have one or two more questions...

1. How do you sort DJs that are nothing more than a compilation of artists? Right now I have all DJs in the 'D' directory in a 'DJ' sub-directory. I'm thinking that I'd like to separate out DJs into respective directories alphabetically so DJ Dan would go in 'D' and DJ Cam would go in 'C'. I'm almost thinking of listing as, "Dan, DJ"...

2. How are you sorting seasonal music that's release by an artist? What I'm thinking of doing here is having seasonal folders (e.g., Christmas) that contain all albums to do with that season and than placing a shortcut to target artist's album in the artist's primary folder.

3. Are you treating artists that begin with 'A' the same as artists that begin with 'The'? There's not too many that begin with 'A' but I'm wondering if I should treat them the same. For example, A Perfect Circle becomes "Perfect Circle, A". Using your logic one could call the artist by simply Perfect Circle...

So as of now I've decided to keep all names as is with the exception of names that begin with "The". For example, Bob Dylan will be in the 'B' directory while The Who would be in the 'W' directory.

I will also use only spaces (no underscores) for naming. As for genre, I will rely on proper tagging. I had previously been sorting by genre however I am really liking the alphabetical filing better now.

i do mine 0-9 and A to Z
what i do for unclassified ones that i dont know what to do with i have a subdirectory Various and under that goes whatever..and another sub directory called Soundtracks you can figure out what thats for
now under the artist i use the year
so say the directory is
Bruce Springsteen
(2003) - Essential
would be listed under him
cause one thing i'd like to see in vibestreamer is a 0-9 and A-z
way to click on the letter instead of having to scroll thru the whole list

cause one thing i'd like to see in vibestreamer is a 0-9 and A-z way to click on the letter instead of having to scroll thru the whole list[/quotesiglz6b6]

What do you mean scroll through the whole list? VS displays the your file hierarchy as it's configured in Windows. So if you have 0-9, and A-Z folders that is what's displayed. No need to scroll...

check out the program Subsonic Music Streamer..it has a bar when you click on the letter T..is scrolls all the way down to the T's if you click on the C same thing again....better than scrolling thru ur list

1. How do you sort DJs that are nothing more than a compilation of artists?[/quoteg570i3es]
I can't say I have a large amount of DJ compilations, but the ones I do have is listed under the VA folder. Since it is a VA album, I use [ig570i3es]01 - DJ Name - Song[/ig570i3es].

2. How are you sorting seasonal music that's release by an artist? [/quoteg570i3es]
If it is released by one artist only (and also is performed by one artist) then I list it as an album under that artist's folder.

3. Are you treating artists that begin with 'A' the same as artists that begin with 'The'? There's not too many that begin with 'A' but I'm wondering if I should treat them the same. For example, A Perfect Circle becomes "Perfect Circle, A". Using your logic one could call the artist by simply Perfect Circle...[/quoteg570i3es]
Since most, if not all, artists that starts with an a, also uses that letter in pronouncing the band name as well as in writing, I list them under A. I don't refer A Perfect Circle to just Perfect Circle.

So as of now I've decided to keep all names as is with the exception of names that begin with "The". For example, Bob Dylan will be in the 'B' directory while The Who would be in the 'W' directory.[/quoteg570i3es]
I list artists by their first name first. Tome Petty is listed under T, and not under P. So I list them just like you mentioned Bob Dylan under B, and The Who under W.

I will also use only spaces (no underscores) for naming.[/quoteg570i3es]
If you ask me, that is the only way you should name your songs and bands. Most modern file systems handle spaces in the file names, so why make things ugly with underscore when you don't have to?

Thanks for your input Mocky. I think I'm all set now.

I use about the same system as Mocky but i put my 'The' artist in a seperate folder. Althoug I do consider changing it.

I think the most important thing is correct tagging. You can always search for your music. And once correct tag there are utilities to set up your folder structure based on that

I always fill in track, title,artist,year,ablum,album artist,genre. and disc.
For arbums not specifically from one artist I add a tag isCollection with value true, and if its part of a larger collectioni add a tag CollectionGroup with the name of it.
For SoundTracks I also add an IsSoundtrack tag with value true.

Once filled in i use the renaming and scripting capabilities from foobar that does all the work for mewith one buttonclick

Soundtracks go in the soundtrack folder, collections in the collection folder, albums from artist go in an 0-9-A-Z structure. When there are multiple discs there is a subfolder for each of them ...

It takes some time to set up but once in order its pretty effective.


(I wonder what a shrink would find about the work I've put into this

by genre - then by artist.[/quote28yvdqmm]
I would like to add

Genre - Artist - Album

I use about the same system as Mocky but i put my 'The' artist in a seperate folder. Althoug I do consider changing it.

I think the most important thing is correct tagging. You can always search for your music. And once correct tag there are utilities to set up your folder structure based on that

I always fill in track, title,artist,year,ablum,album artist,genre. and disc.
For arbums not specifically from one artist I add a tag isCollection with value true, and if its part of a larger collectioni add a tag CollectionGroup with the name of it.
For SoundTracks I also add an IsSoundtrack tag with value true.

Once filled in i use the renaming and scripting capabilities from foobar that does all the work for mewith one buttonclick

Soundtracks go in the soundtrack folder, collections in the collection folder, albums from artist go in an 0-9-A-Z structure. When there are multiple discs there is a subfolder for each of them ...

It takes some time to set up but once in order its pretty effective.


(I wonder what a shrink would find about the work I've put into this [/quote266w76mz]

Foobar huh? I'll have to give that a go once my tags are up to par. Thanks for your input.

Discussion may be outdated but the way I sort my multi-language mp3s by creating main folders according to language in my case, English, Tamil, Hindi, Spanish. Within English folder I would have several sub-folder, Techno/Dance/Trance, Hip-Hop & RnB, Soca, Chutney, Dance Hall, Reggae Riddims, Miscellaneous Single Track. These are my main music genre.

within Hip-Hop & RnB folder i would have albums named such as Rihanna - A Girl Like Me (2006) [b1w4nlia2]Artist - Album Title (Year)[/b1w4nlia2]

The track would be named according to the Mp3 Track Title (NO UNDERSCORES) Underscores many return weird search results. For example the system would see "Hello World" is two words or phrases, "Hello_World" is one word or phrases according to the system.

I use a program called Tag&Rename. It's a great program to edit ID3v1 & ID3v2 for mp3/wma,ogg,flac etc. Once you learn the program it's very fast to edit multiple files at same time. Any ways, I keep all the Mp3 ID3 tags updated accordingly. For example, Track Title, Artist, Album, Year, Track Number, album cover etc.

Dj Mixed Albums format
I rename the files as Artist - Title
If I want to sort by track number then i can do that by using ID3 Tag


Benefit 1 Searching
this setup, does a global search for a specific artist, album track or what ever by just right clicking root folder and selecting "search" and by choosing "search all file and folder" then entering search word in the second box ("A word or phrase in the file") for a dept search scanning even the ID3 tags in Mp3s.

Benefit 2 Permissions
Since I use Vibe Streamer to manage my Mp3s, It's easy to set permission to folders using vibe streamer group & user function. For example, a buddy of yours who speaks only English, shouldn't have to go through other language mp3s. Therefore, they need to see what they are suppose to see.

Benefit 3 Formatting
I don't know if you guys know or not, TAG ID3 best way to format the way the mp3s should list. Even in the windows explorer you can bring up the Artist, Track number, Title etc without opening the files. Since ID3 TAGs are variables, you can format the listing by modifying the variables, even in VibeStreamer, or any in html, asp etc.


Keep in mind, Vibe Streamer 3.0.0b6 searches Folder & File Name. (I believe) My standard for renaming which I've implemented many years ago works excellent & finds mp3 just fine in Vibe Streamer, Windows default search feature and any other third party programs. Even in Windows Media Player (which uses ID3 to display/organize mp3s)

Good Luck in organizing, I highly recommend Tag&Rename , an organized mp3 is a fun mp3 to listen too!

I create a directory for each ARTIST and then create subdirectories for their albums.