How do you sort your mp3s?

Instead of Post-Rock, Jazz, Electronic folders, I'd have a Chicago folder, that way diverse labels aren't pigeonholed....so you have Atavistic, Thrill Jockey, Drag City, etc...

Instead of "Unclassifiable" or Jazz, you just have a Scandinavian folder which would then have Rune Grammofon, Smalltown Supersound, Jazzland, etc...

However, I've let it lapse over the past two years, and now it's all one big ridiculous mess...

I have one big folder for the full albums and another for singles/EPs and individual tracks. Each has subfolders for the letters of the alphabet, each artis has their own folder and (where appropriate) there are folders for each release.

For all of my random one-off mp3s and random tracks, I just have a separate mp3 "bulk folder" which isn't indexed in iTunes.

I'm not sure why I do it this way, but there you are.

-- jimnaseum (takeyourmedicinelikeacham...), March 21st, 2006 12:48 AM.

That's pretty much exactly how I've got my MP3s, too.

All of my single tracks and album/artist/band sub-folders are placed inside the big "My Music" folder, arranged in alphabetical order. Tracks inside each complete album (or EP) folder are sorted by track number, though.

Every individual track in my MP3 library is named like this: Band/Artist Name - Song Title. But I'm not too meticulous about how album tracks are named, so the naming conventions do vary a bit from album to album. Almost all of my album folders are named like this: Band/Artist Name - Album Title [Release Year]. Soundtracks and compilations just get "VA" in place of the Band/Artist Name.

All of the MP3s ripped and encoded with EAC(secure) + LAME 3.97 get tagged automatically, but I do have a whole bunch on my HD that still need ID3 tags. I'm workin' on 'em... foobar2000 comes in *very* handy for that task. You can right-click on a single file and click Properties to manually edit the tag. Or, if you need to tag full albums, you can utilize foobar's ability to query freedb (like EAC can) and get the tags for you. It's so simple. I love foobar. Definitely one of the best music players around for PC, IMHO. :)

ie:

ETHEREAL\SHOEGAZE\pluramon (2003) dreams top rock2 time for a lie.mp3

or

GLOBAL\ARAB\FOLK\va (2001) rough guide to sufi music3 sheikh ahmad al tuni - alam.mp3

Why? I have a MP3 player which is otherwise great, but which doesn't index by ID3 tags (iAudio X5 60GB).

Nesting them this way allows me to rapidly access individual files (since the branching factor only rises to 50 or so for the albums in the subgenre folders) swap in or out entire genres or subgenres for walkabpout study, archive portions of my collection to DVD-R in a coherent manner, shuffle play within genres or more tightly constrained subsets, and play the discography of a particular artist in chronological order. This particular player DOES handle playlist files, but I hardly ever use that feature.

If some of your music comes from P2P apps, I offer my highest recommendation to the shareware Bulk Rename Utility for keeping filenames tidy.