How do you organize your music collection?

[Miktar]

Being a Virgo, I'm constantly fussing with my music collection - how do you organize your collection?

I tend to have:

Band Name (folder)
- Album Name (Year) (folder)
--- Track No. - Song Name (file)

Do you use any apps to help you organize your collection?

[brazed]

I do the exactly the same, but then, I'm a virgo too.

And no, I don't use other programs to help me organise.

[Miktar]

I'm actually exploring Media Player 11 right now, just for kicks, and it's not bad in terms of finding track info.

[Antharias]

Folders of # - Z
- Band Name
--- Album Name
----- Each song labelled according to the official album names.

[wisp]

i use media player 11, can find my music either via song or artist but still is taking me ages to sort it all out , tried as per genre but that got complecated so gone back to per artist
:)

[Squid]

I just pile it all in one folder and search through it using the library. Bah, I'm so lazy.

[Chippit]

Mine is organized as Artist\Album\Artist-Track Name.mp3
Windows Media Player 11 is heaven once you've got it all set up to sort out your tracks for you. And the sync system is divine

The online album search is also handy to update your track info, but it's a bit questionable sometimes.

[PloPshoP]

Per genre is a fool's errand! Sometimes artists can't even define their own genres!

I have a very haphazard way of organising my music. I tend to put it in folder indicating when I got it eg:
2007 - 1 (folder, the "1" meaning January)
-Artist (folder)
--Album (folder)
---Artist name - Track name

The point of having a folder indicating the year and month, is so that I can easily find my newest music in order to be put on an mp3 cd for my car. It's also easy then to find music that I am yet to listen to for the first time.

[CaptainCrunch]

Album folders:
Artist name - Album name (release year)
Track files:
Track# - Artist Name - Song title

Not the best, but it works well enough.

This (http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm) works great for renaming/tagging.
It even retrieves full tags from Amazon.com, previously AllMusic.com

[Frozenfireside]

I use iTunes to orgonise my MP3's.
It puts them in their own folder and sorts out everything by it's self.
I love WMP11-It's not heavy on resources like iTunes is and it gets album artwork automatically which iTunes doesn't do unless you setup an account.

[Miktar]

I'm finding WMP11 quite capable so far, except with the songs I really don't expect it to get (obscure Jap stuff). I'm happy with how it's sorted my collection so far, odd.

[Toi]

Virgo, so all my stuff needs to be 100%.

I just have a basic folder with all my music inside which is then sorted by a folder with the artists name and album and that's it, all the songs for that album in there.

I hate unorganized stuff, in general.

I love MP11.

Nowadays I love making playlists, either on my ipod or using MP11 for my PC and just let that run.

[dammit]

I just have to have all my mp3s with the correct title [ artist - title ]...incorrect titles drive me banannas.

other than that its all just shoved into a single aptly titled folder : "music"

PS: WMP 11 does rock :)

[Karuji]

Artist>Album>Track (i normaly like to keep it how the cd says

[MrDeVil_909]

I used to just have artist/album folders and then Artist and track names in the titles, never using ID3 tags in the past is kicking me in the ass now with several gigs worth of 'unknown albums' in iTunes. I hate the program, but I have an iPod so it is essential until I get the hang of Songbird.

And I concur with the masses MP11 is brilliant.

[Garson007]

I just let iTunes sort everything (based on default setting). 90% of all my music are (is?) albums which help iTunes a lot.

[Chippit]

I used to just have artist/album folders and then Artist and track names in the titles, never using ID3 tags in the past is kicking me in the ass now with several gigs worth of 'unknown albums' in iTunes. I hate the program, but I have an iPod so it is essential until I get the hang of Songbird.

And I concur with the masses MP11 is brilliant.
I know how you feel about iTunes. However, know that there are other ways. A WMP11 plugin called dopisp can allow WMP to sync to a standard iPod. I swore by it for a long time.

If you're feeling more adventurous, rockbox is also an additional solution, making your iPod work a little more like a standard mp3-player. However, I do not recommend it unless you -seriously- know what you're doing. It's theoretically possible that it can have rather disastrous consequences. But, besides that, it's rather nifty. ;)

[MrDeVil_909]

I know how you feel about iTunes. However, know that there are other ways. A WMP11 plugin called dopisp can allow WMP to sync to a standard iPod. I swore by it for a long time.

If you're feeling more adventurous, rockbox is also an additional solution, making your iPod work a little more like a standard mp3-player. However, I do not recommend it unless you -seriously- know what you're doing. It's theoretically possible that it can have rather disastrous consequences. But, besides that, it's rather nifty. ;)

Checking out dopisp now, thx. Tried out Anapod manager, it is quite cool, but the fully featured one is a little on the pricey side. It basically makes your iPod accessible like a drive.

[Ruandre]

I use iTunes. I usually sort by artist and listen to all the music I have by that particular artist, other times I just leave it on shuffle and skip any tracks that irritate me (I can't listen to really heavy stuff while I'm concentrating on something, it gives me a headache).

[Garson007]

Agreed. Soft stuff just seem to fade away when you concentrate; it is just background music you do not really notice until SOAD, as an example, comes up from nowhere and irritates you as you try and read. Actually, there is an interesting article about this in the Augustus Men's Health.

[Pietersielie]

I normally just just sort it to what songs I like most.

[wisp]

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn162/wisp13/necropost4ko.png

[KFC]

Normally its
-Artis Folder
-Album Folder
-Tracks (01-,02-,03- etc)

And one folder called "Unsorted" with all that
other kak that is not worth putting in a folder

[James Donaldson]

Band Name, then, Song Name

I let Media Player 11 search for the extra info, but usually I have to do a manual search and rarely I have to type in all the info myself.

I then download a Album Cover image from the tracks Album and use it as the Tracks Icon (to replace the default MP3 icon) by using the Advanced Tag Editor.

My collections is made up of single songs, so no folders so I usually delete songs I don't like, after ripping my CD's.

[Domanskip]

Mine is all just thrown into My Music and imported to ITunes where it usually does the work for me...... I don't know if me being a Libra has anything to do with it.

[Machine]

I sort my MP3's manually (via windows explorer). My folders setup is pretty much the same as Miktar's. I have various playlists (m3u's) that I load into Winamp depending on my mood.

[ReinHer]

I throw all my Music into the Vista Music folder. I used to have an MP3 folder of my own, but Vista finds Album art if I put them into it's folder. I use Winamp Media library to listen to specific bands if I feel like it, I don't have playlists.