For the past few months, i've been tackling the daunting task of organizing my music collection. i've already decided on my music format - FLAC. The main reason is that it's lossless, so i can convert the files back to WAV or another format without losing quality. But my decision is less an issue with sound quality as it is with the fact that it futureproofs your music a great deal, so if a new codec comes out that has more advantages, you don't have to go through the process of reripping your music or transcode it, risking audio quality.
i've currently got my music drive divided into the following folders:
\ - root folder contains music using the convention below
\[mp3 dropbox] - files that were downloaded , not necessarily MP3s
\[rips] - rips of discs waiting to be FLACed
\[streams] - ripped audio netradio audio streams
Using brackets ([ ]) places those folders at the top of a folder listing/window, which makes them easier to get to since they're i access them the most.
The problem i've got now is with deciding on a file structure and naming convention for my files. i'm pretty sure i've got it settled on this:
\first letter of artist\artist\album\track number - artist - track title.flac
Example:
\B\Belly\King\05 - Belly - Super-Connected.flac
It works well for those players that don't sort by track title (ahem... Winamp), and it keeps things in a logical format, when i want to browse files manually. i don't need genre information or the other fields in the track info since i can easily pull that up in Winamp.
Is this what you guys are using? Could there be a better way to organize? It might seem like such a simple thing to decide on, but i'd like some feedback before i apply the changes a few thousand files.
Using iTunes is not a solution. The only good that came from using iTunes was that it forced me to tag my older files after it fucked up years of organizing by hand. i'd much rather know where my music is myself.
Edit: i'm using MP3tag for tagging and converting tags to filenames, etc. There's several other programs that do the same thing, but MP3tag's suited my needs best.
www.mp3tag.de/
i've currently got my music drive divided into the following folders:
\ - root folder contains music using the convention below
\[mp3 dropbox] - files that were downloaded , not necessarily MP3s
\[rips] - rips of discs waiting to be FLACed
\[streams] - ripped audio netradio audio streams
Using brackets ([ ]) places those folders at the top of a folder listing/window, which makes them easier to get to since they're i access them the most.
The problem i've got now is with deciding on a file structure and naming convention for my files. i'm pretty sure i've got it settled on this:
\first letter of artist\artist\album\track number - artist - track title.flac
Example:
\B\Belly\King\05 - Belly - Super-Connected.flac
It works well for those players that don't sort by track title (ahem... Winamp), and it keeps things in a logical format, when i want to browse files manually. i don't need genre information or the other fields in the track info since i can easily pull that up in Winamp.
Is this what you guys are using? Could there be a better way to organize? It might seem like such a simple thing to decide on, but i'd like some feedback before i apply the changes a few thousand files.
Using iTunes is not a solution. The only good that came from using iTunes was that it forced me to tag my older files after it fucked up years of organizing by hand. i'd much rather know where my music is myself.
Edit: i'm using MP3tag for tagging and converting tags to filenames, etc. There's several other programs that do the same thing, but MP3tag's suited my needs best.
www.mp3tag.de/
And I just rightclick /mp3 and click play in winamp. 
