Organizing of mp3s

[Neuro]

Every discerning music lover will have their own way of organizing their music, particularly mp3s which, left untouched, will have all sorts of unorganized tags, wrong remixer credits and other annoyances.

My set-up is as follows but I'd be interested to hear how others do theirs!

1) I deliberately don't use iTunes as it doesn't actually organize your music; it just links to them, which is unhelpful - if you have mp3s scattered all over your hard drive in random folders, once any folder structure or folder name changes, iTunes will tell you it can't find it anymore. So, don't laugh, I use the ever reliable Windows Explorer It does the job very well and I like the simplicity of a simple folder on my desktop.

2) I ensure ID3v2 tags for each mp3 are updated with the latest info for my headers below (as per discogs.com).

3) There's hundreds and hundreds of hidden headers you can have. I organize windows explorer top headers to show:

Bitrate (always strive for 320k but I will do with 192k as a minimum)

Filename (which will always be in the format: Artist - Title (Remixer))

Copyright (label name goes here, ideally original release, else first UK label)

Length

Year (when first released)

Size (this is just the filesize,

Comments (Cat# goes here)

Album (I rarely use this but sometimes its necessary)

4) mp3s - these formats will play on every single device. If I download an ACC, OGG, WMA file or anything else, I'll go and convert it to mp3, and remove any DRM (shhhhhh......).

5) Cover Art - I lift the image manually from the correct release on discogs.com and embed into the mp3 using TagScanner below. Then when the mp3s go on my portable player or iPhone, I have some colourful record sleeves for each track.

TagScanner is my preferred bit of freeware for renaming all your mp3s in a uniform style, adding cover images and organizing the ID3v2 tags properly.

Ripping from MiniDisc:

I read somewhere that Sony's ATRAC encoding is pretty efficient and is apparently is the equivalent of roughly 225-256kbps mp3. That's pretty amazing considering how small they are compared to a normal CD. So generally I'll rip any MiniDisc straight to my laptop in WAV and then encode it with WinLAME at 256kbps.

Ripping from vinyl:

I'm still mastering this but you need good cables, super-clean vinyl, a top-notch ripping cart/stylus (Shure's M97xE or Ortofon's Arkiv are supposed to the best for electronic music but I've yet to test them!), a high-end PC soundcard, good PC audio software and a lot of patience to get the perfect rip. I can see myself doing this for many many years.....

Ripping from CD:

CDex - efficient little CD ripper for ripping CDs straight to your computer in WAV. It can rip it straight to mp3 too but I gather the mp3 encoder doesn't use the latest LAME version, so I use the below program for the final stage. If it's a commercial CD it will download all the track titles for you too from the freedb.org music database which saves you labelling each track.

WinLame - is a great mp3 encoder using the very latest LAME codec. I use it all the time for converting huge WAV files into the best quality 320k mp3s. Select Custom settings > encoding quality to "High", and constant bitrate to 320. Thanks to @Simcut many years ago for pointing me to this!

I'd love to know if this is helpful to anyone and of course do share your own organisation methods! As I said, everyone has their own music collection and everyone will be different in how they like to organise it

[Number2Fan]

OCD much!!!

Most of you would hate my music collection, not because of what's in it, but how it's kept.

I recently lost my entire computerised collection again, and it pissed me off no end, so... I have now resorted to using Winamp and not iTunes.

Plus my friend asked me to provide music for his radio station and specified it had to be mp3 of 128 or better, so I'm working on that basis now.

All IDtags are artist and track names with mix or remixer, no other info, as I would prob know from memory once I have the basic info reminder.

I am using tangible music CDs wherever possible and burning to CD for anything else. I like to have a proper copy, I'm a happy hoarder, and prob due to my age, mp3s just aren't enough for me!

Plus other than WAV and MP3 I dunno what anything else is?

[Chewbs]

I atually find this quite useful info 'cos I don't know anything about things mentioned; or only just a bit to get by on :redface: ....so I use basic windows as nowte else seems to play in my car. 'tis a reason I've stalled from uploading any other mixes I have (plus the fact I'm sure full program versions will be uploaded by someone else - don't want to clogg the system with random bits!)

[Quadrant]

Jesus I wish I had time to be so meticulous, sir!

My mp3s are a mess in many folders. But my vinyl is all neat and tidy on my shelves.

That's the thing though - when you had proper CDs and vinyl, you take care of them. The covers were special, even the little paper inlay was cool. You don't get the same "ownership" feel with mp3s and that's probably why I don't organize them as well.

[Number2Fan]

Here here to that!

Also my CD's and vinyl are increasingly taking over my house, whereas my MP3's regularly get lost forever

[Max Kane]

I'm nowhere near as organised as Tim!

All of my mp3s (in glorious 320 or .WAV by the way) are saved to a single folder with accurate filename Artist - Title (Remix) [Label] and then sorted into date order, most recent at the top.

I still have a select few classics which I have saved on my (very) old PC which is in the spare room and is used almost exclusively for recording new mixes (as my decks are in the spare room too).

[lennox2s2s]

This is very informative Neuro. My mp3 collection is a bit of a disaster as I have files saved in numerous formats on numerous hard-drives. This is a job I have been meaning to do for ages to sort out mp3 collection.

I will take this advice onboard.

Bitrate (always strive for 320k but I will do with 192k as a minimum)

Filename (which will always be in the format: Artist - Title (Remixer))

Copyright (label name goes here, ideally original release, else first UK label)

Length

Year (when first released)

Size (this is just the filesize,

Comments (Cat# goes here)

Album (I rarely use this but sometimes its necessary)

Cheers..

[breadbin]

I dont think.anything beats having the physical copies! but all of my mp3's are kept in one huge file by title and artist.

[Number2Fan]

Wtf is an MP4 I ripped some CDs and they're saying they're mp4 now?

[lyndon]

i think it was originally introduced to take over from mp3, but never happened. did you rip the cd in i tunes? don't use it apart for my i phone, but it sounds like it's something that would do.

[Number2Fan]

No it was Winamp, in fact I've now set my iTunes (which I weren't wanting to use) well I've set it to rip as 320 MP3 standard, and also I learned that with it set at that you can also make an MP3 copy of anything that is in your iTunes, so u then get an mp3 version of anything downloaded from iTunes in your 'my music'

So for now, I'm using iTunes to do it.

Coz I'm shit at this stuff, much rather have a 12" in my hand any day!

[Number2Fan]

In fact Neuro, can you just come round one weekend and give me a step by step lesson in what you do with yours.

I'll do you a roast dinner

[Tremor]

It's interesting to see how everyone organises their MP3s.. I tend to use iTunes for all non dance music - ie everything except the full length mixable music I buy. I like to be able to listen to the iTunes library on random without hundreds of full length 8 min tracks coming on with full intros etc. The iTunes music folder is therefore pretty much left as it is - I never open it in explorer but all the iTunes purchases are automatically put in there in folders.

I have a separate music folder for all of my full length dance music. This is broken into sub folders by genre - house, trance, hardcore etc. Inside each of these folders there are more sub folders broken into year of release and each year contains a folder for each month. Each month I download new music into my default downloads folder and then move the files into the current month's folder in the correct genre. I keep the folder structure fairly well organised but I am not so good at sorting all the ID3 tags. It's easy to get lazy since Traktor reads the artist and title information from the file's ID3 Tag and displays them correctly in Traktor, but most of the file names are a complete mess when you download the files from an MP3 store and I rarely get around to changing them. I used to use a program called "ID3-Tagit3" to amend filenames. It can quickly rename multiple files into your desired structure from existing tags in the file.

[Number2Fan]

I went back to iTunes, it's set to MP3 as default and winamp pissed me off. If I download something that isn't fully labelled I just put in artist and title myself, I'm not bothered about labelling the rest of the info, mainly because I am a working mother of three, and have more important things to do and CBA nowadays but probably in my youth I'd have been more OCD about the ID tags, tbh tho, why?!

However Neuro or Tremor are still welcome to do mine for me!

[Tremor]

I can totally understand having way more important things to do. I sometimes go months without backing up or organising anything when life gets busy in the way it does for so many of us. It's when I get a bit of down time and just think - I should really back up my MP3's - and suddenly once I start a task of organising folders I can't stop until it is all done to the same format - I think I do have a bit of OCD sometimes about things like that. Other times I can be quite messy and unorganised so at least I'm not OCD all the time!

In a sense it doesn't really matter that much having all that info there but information does get lost in a sense if you dont put it there. For example my knowledge of Artist - Title - Label was pretty good for anything I owned on Vinyl - I could tell you the label without looking because I'd looked at the detail on the cover many times when getting it out to play. Now we go through MP3's so quickly, many of which are forgotten as tracks very quickly anyway. I find that when I do a mix of tracks I've bought over the last couple of months I remember very few of the details - often just the name of the track or the artist but very often I have no idea of label unless it's one of the major ones because we just dont look at that info when we buy tracks these days. If I produce a detailed tracklist I find myself having to google tracks to find the label info retrospectively because the information is not contained in the purchased item - just a computer file. It has taken that collector's attention to detail away from music buying. But this information can be stored in the purchased files through the ID3 tag - most of the time it wont be visible but it can at least be looked up if needed. I guess that's some justification but I have got lazy - I don't care as much as I used to what label a track is on and many of my files won't contain that information. It's kinda sad but as you say Cheese, most of the time there just isn't enough time in the day to justify sitting there adding this information.

[Max Kane]

I have different ways of sorting non-DJing mp3s which is far less organised - personally I couldn't care less what label Arcade Fire are on, but for dance music it's essential

[Number2Fan]

For me - it's all up here!!