How do you arrange your music folders & files?

[Andrew]

Many people seem to name folders with the company name first, like [Bruton Music], etc.

Do you keep every library release all under one folder?  I was wondering if anyone has had issues or slowdown with thousands of folders in one directory.

I've been creating a folder per company then putting releases in them.  I'm thinking about renaming them all to the [Company] format and storing them all in one directory.

I guess if it starts to become too many folders, I could create ones by letter, like "B\", then put all the releases where the company starts with B.

How do you arrange them?

[Mr]

I do this too to ease loading times,
<label>\<cat.#> - <album title>\<track#> - <title>

Theoretically, I suppose you could put all the files in a single folder using the scheme you mentioned above, but I'd imagine slowdown would be considerable.

[Uvuzau]

It would be nice to see "printscreen" of how you orginize it, i can add pic later.
Btw im interested do you guys keep lets say whole album because of one song you like or you delete others and leave only tracks you like?

[tonyc1971]

Im the same as Mr

Folder ‘library name’. In the case of Bruton, I then have the BRA-BRS sub-folders.

Also, I’ve renamed a lot of my tips with Tag & Rename and added the cover art to each of the albums and tracks. So, the title of the file is the track number and track title, occasionally the artist/composer, but tend to keep them basic and then add the rest of the info including year, composer, track title, album art etc.

Even if I only wanted one or two tracks from the album, I’d rip the entire thing as then over the years been happy to share what I have.

Thanks to this site, I’ve now downloaded some updated versions of my rips and added (FLAC) in the album title at the end.

[stackjackson]

My *single* library folder on multiple HDs is arranged like this:

[Andrew]

That is similar to how I arrange mine. 
(Excuse the system font I'm using at the moment, it's a big large  lol)



The folders with an " x " instead of " - " are ones I don't have yet.
" i " instead means incomplete - missing tracks.

I name the folders:
ID - TITLE - ARTIST - YEAR NOTES

Notes are just things like it's my rip, mp3, incomplete, etc.

I decided to keep labels that are related with their parent first:



I did the same for Music De Wolfe - Rouge, - Hudson, and Italian labels. 

For non-library releases, I name them as:
ARTIST - YEAR - TITLE - NOTES

I like to see an artists releases in order if possible.

[Andrew]

Also, to answer Uvuzau about albums and tracks.

So far I've been keeping everything, but I'm starting to run out of space. 
I have 12 TB of space, with another 12 TB as a backup.

I'm considering deleting the ones that are just plain other-country music, "Russia", "Italy - Well Known Tunes", etc.
There are so many of those across libraries.  I don't need 15 cds of something like "Folk Songs Of Germany" or 20 cds of plain christmas music

Then I'm considering going through the compilation releases that aren't part of a library release, and delete any tracks that I always skip over.

Depends on how much space I need to free up, and just CD releases.  The record/lp releases I'm going to keep all of it.

Does anyone else do this as well, or remove stuff in a different way?

[Greta]

My library folder is arranged like Stack's one.
And no, I never throw anything of what I've downloaded and decided to keep. This is to satisfy my completist side and, as Tonyc says, to be able to share complete rips in the future.

[Uvuzau]

Andrew thats crazy im far away from 12TB, i dont have that much music.
I delete what im sure will not listen again, but most of times i keep whole release.
I like to keep folders clean with cover art which i love, also color and symbols coding for huge labels like De Wolfe.
I also add " ∞ ◯ " in track name mostly to orchestral stuff that is recorded over metronome, also adding 5-8, 9-8 etc. if its some strange measure

[Snowdog]

Hi all.

Well, I'm new here & nobody knows me from Adam, but I thought I'd just chime in here & mention that I have a Dropbox Business account, which gives me unlimited storage space in the cloud for 15 quid a month.

Not sure how you guys feel about cloud storage but it certainly takes the ball ache out of finding drives that are big enough.

Now, if some kind soul could tell me how to post pictures on here, I'd love to share my filing obsession with the group!

[Snowdog]

unlimited storage space in the cloud for 15 quid a month.

It's a little bit more complicated than that, but I didn't want to go rambling on if there was no interest.

[Andrew]

Hi snowdog,

You can post pictures in your messages just by typing this



ex:



If you put a link from imgur, you have to put the extension .jpg if it doesn't have it.

Press the Preview button to make sure your pictures appears.. and that's it 

[Snowdog]

Ah, cool. I found the tags, it was the "(link to your picture)" part that was the unknown.

Thanks!

(I had been wondering if I could link from my iCloud or Dropbox but I'm not sure whether or not I can make a folder public so that anyone can view it.)

[Snowdog]

I find that different categories of music demand different sorting protocols...

(That said, Each album ends with the file format & each album - where possible - has the lossless rip that I keep in the cloud & the high quality lossy rip for my iTunes library.)

Soundtracks are sorted by movie title or franchise > release year > composer > any additional detail so that, as with Alien 3, all the different releases are sorted chronologically:

[Snowdog]

Trunk releases are sorted by Album Title > Year > Artist: