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Comment by dj2stein9 | Hacker News Reader

Use hierarchical directories. They work. I sort my mp3's into two distinct music collections:

  /Albums/
  /Singles/

Then I sort by genre:

  /Albums/%GENRE
  /Singles/%GENRE

In Albums, I then sort by artist, then by album:

  /Albums/%GENRE/%ARTIST/%ALBUM/# - %SONG.mp3

Whereas in Singles, I organize by:

  /Singles/%GENRE/%ARTIST - %SONG.mp3

This system scales very well. I have a 100GB collection and can nail down any song or album in my collection in a few clicks.

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I can see few issues with this that wouldn't work with me:

1) How do you deal with songs that have multiple genres?

It is a standard part of the TCON (content type / genre tag) to separate multiple values through either coma, slash.

For example this allows you to select songs that are tagged as both 'Ambient' and 'Rock'.

2) how do you deal with album that has songs of varying styles?

For example: "Prodigy - Music for Jilted Generation" has a dance track like "Voodoo People", and a chillout track "3 Kilos"

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Prodigy/_/Voodoo+People/+tags

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Prodigy/_/The+Narcotic+Suite:+3...

3) Compilations

Let's say we have a compilation made by a group called 'Air'. This compilation is called 'Deck Safari'. Do you use Album Artist instead of artist if it is a compilations (aka: if TCMP flag exists, use TPE2 instead of TPE1?)

Checkout the album:

http://www.discogs.com/AIR-Deck-Safari-Part-1/release/215068

4) I don't understand how you handle singles.

Let's say you have a single ""Wamdue Project ‎– King Of My Castle"" released in 1999 by Urban (563 891-2). Your formatting doesn't store album at all?

http://www.discogs.com/Wamdue-Project-King-Of-My-Castle/rele...

And then, how do you combine it with the fact that a year later was a different mix released by Avex Asia Ltd. (AVTCDS-235) with different set of songs?

http://www.discogs.com/Wamdue-Project-King-Of-My-Castle/rele...

To me it looks like your singles folder is intended for random songs, not to handle actual CDS/CDM style singles.

1) How do you deal with songs that have multiple genres?

In "Singles" I sometimes copy individual MP3's into both Rock and Metal. It comes up less often than you'd think.

2) how do you deal with album that has songs of varying styles?

I just pick the one genre that makes the most sense. As long as I know, or can quickly find which genre an artist is in, that's what matters. How long does it really take to check if I put an AC/DC album in Rock, or Metal?

3) Compilations

I either place it in /Albums/Soundtracks (if it's a soundtrack), or make a "Various Artists" directory in /Albums/Electronic or whichever genre makes sense. Almost all of my compilations are dance or electronic music.

4) I don't understand how you handle singles.... To me it looks like your singles folder is intended for random songs, not to handle actual CDS/CDM style singles

I actually removed most of the EP's and CDS rips from my MP3 collection because I found I never listened to them. I would take the individual MP3's that I really liked and placed those into my /Singles/ directories. Otherwise I could treat them just like I do my Albums.

I guess I enjoy putting more tags into collection. I try to fit few from last.fm , and few that came with the tagging. So a single track can have multiple tags (I think I average 10 tags per track). It is normal to have things like like 'Symphonic' and 'Rock' and '80s' and 'Krautrock' as separate tags on one song. Or in case of some electronica (like ones found at http://ektoplasm.com ): 'IDM', 'downtempo', 'goa', 'psy-dub'.

For compilations I try to keep track of who made compilation, especially if it is a mix by a DJ. I do have many that are just VAs too.

In the end, I have three types of music plays:

- everything by an artist -- this is why I keep CDS / CDM / EP to have remixes, and to track them with covers, etc

- specific album -- this works great for movie scores, or albums that have songs tailored to go one to another (Jean Michelle Jarre work from 70s and 80s is awesome in this)

- party mode -- something like pandora -- last.fm is queried about tracks similar to current one (and past one), and sets up playlist of similar songs to play. See http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=83915

> I can see few issues with this that wouldn't work with me:

And then, good luck with classical pieces, who's your artist of the composer, the orchestra (or group), the conductor (if any) and the soloist (if there's one)?

Yeah this is essentially what I did (before giving up and starting my own music database model and management software), except I have a few more collections (Albums, EPs, Singles, Live, Mixes, Best Of), no genre folder, and years/labels in the folder names..

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