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

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....