jackofallgeeks | (no subject)

So, I'm trying to re-sort my music. The way I have had it is one big folder (aptly named 'The Library') with all of my files listed as Artist-Title. This is actually a bit unweildy and hard to maneuver, since we're talking LOTS of songs, all filed together, and the names run together after a while; it's easy to misplace songs.

I thought about splitting them up into subfolders of The Library by Artist; unfortunately, there's a bunch of artist I only have one song for (and giving them a whole folder seems excessive), and it seems redundant, as each song is already denoted by artist. I also thought to do them by genre, such as techno, rock, alternative, country... What I'd like to do is sort them by archetype, such as 'Angry', 'Happy', 'Melancholic', but that's almost more difficult than trying to sort out rock, alternative, punk, and emo...

Anyways, I'm curious -- for those of you who have songs laying about, how do you file them? Alphabetically by album release date? Sorted by Record Label? Categories of 'Good', 'Bad', and 'Why Do I HAVE This?' Or are they just randomly placed around where ever you happened to drop them?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

2 Massive folders - Soundtrack/Musicals and Other

Breaks it down a bit.

-laughs-
I think that's the rough equivalent of me putting "Depressive" and "Not".
Well, no... I think you have more non-Musical songs than I have non-Depressive ones...

Hahaha! No... I didn't mean to tell you that you should organize it like that... but that's how I have mine. :-)

-laughs-
I know, that was just meant as a commentary, Dear.

Well, my CDs are sorted by artist/color/sound-similarity.

(color, you ask? it's actually turned out to be an amazingly effective way to sort CDs...)

As for online, as you already have artist, and you can't effectively use cd-color. Sound-similarity works really well for me because I go "well, blank and so and so sound the same, and whosawhatsits gives me the same fun/sad/happy/upbeat/soft/whatever response, so those ones will go together. Or, If I have something that's distinct, that'll all go together.

For example: Eve 6, Weatus, Smashmouth, and Bare Naked Ladies go together because they're all fairly silly, upbeat songs.

Silly Wizard, Celtic Dance, and Riverdance naturally go together, but Pure Moods, Chant, Amelie, and my African Chant also go in this category because on the surface, they are all non-mainstream music that is largely instrumental or non-popular sung songs. Less obvious at first glance, and simpler? They all include some songs in foreign languages. This category got split once I started getting more choral music and chant, which now has its own "choral" section.

I think you can see how it works. It might be worth starting at the top and to sort them into "relevance and relationship" folders, and then resort folders that are too large, and combine folders that are too small. Sometimes, one artist might have so much that it needs to go in its own folder.

er, I wasn't actually going to end it there.

I was going to say good luck, and I'd be interested to know how it turns out.

See, that sounds close to what I'd really like to do -- sort songs into Upbeat, Melancholic, Angry, etc -- it would take a very long time, though, as my bands don't quite split nicely down those lines. Off the top of my head, BNL has both Upbeat and Melancholic songs, and Cruxshadows has Encouraging and Melancholic songs (come to think of it, I think almost every band I have had Melancholic songs...). This is the way I really want them sorted, but I'm not sure exactly what the Categories that I'd have would be, let along what songs went where. I think, though, maybe I can start with some Super-categories, and then sub-section from there....

I don't know if this makes it any easier for you, but here's the way a girl with over 3,000 MP3s (namely, me) goes about keeping them in line.

I start out with four categories:
Comedy
English, Misc.
Italian
Japanese

That sorts the music by music-not music, and then the different languages I primarily listen to music in. English, Misc does contain some songs in Spanish, Gaelic, etc...languages in which I don't typically listen to music. Since I have rather a lot of Italian and Japanese music, I think they're worthy of their own categories.

Under English, Misc. I start setting things up under artists by whom I have more than five songs. Since I have rather a lot of these, I also have the sub-categories of

Celtic
Folk-Rock
Game Music
Oldies (pre-1980's)
Rap, Hip-Hop, R&B
Techno, Electronic, and Dance

In these sub-categories, I place artists that fit in them, ie

Celtic - Enya, Loreena McKennitt
Folk-Rock - Ani DiFranco
Game Music - Silent Hill, The 7th Guest
Oldies - ABBA, Stevie Wonder
Rap, etc - Aesop Rock, Eminem
Techno, etc - Lo Fidelity Allstars, Moby

Also, I like to keep certain soundtracks together, ie, the Matrix soundtracks, so I have a seperate folder for Matrix music, Lord of the Rings music, etc.

A good deal of my music remains uncategorized, either sitting in English, Misc. or in Techno, etc., but I manage to keep everything pretty well organized this way. Hope all that didn't hurt your head.

I have one big folder... Since my mood changes 10 times an hour.
All my cds are even burned as 'Mix', unless they're full albums.

p.s. I've been known to play Usher, then switch to Deicide, so on and so forth. ;)

The way I have mine is split into genres. It's a pretty annoying system, some time a band seems like one thing and sometimes something else, but I can do whatever I want, so it's cool. The problem is so much of my music I’ve never listened to, I just went straight down a ftp site so I have some really random stuff, which ends up in my uncategorized folder being the biggest one I have. The more vague the categories, the easier it is to split them into. Still, despite all the flaws, it works well enough for me, and I have over 5,000 or 6,000 mp3s ^^;