How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

[Sathlin]

Just started using dbpoweramp today. All my cds are ripped from 128k to 320k. I want to get rid of all this and rerip it all in flac.

I currently have everything organized by folders. My singles in a singles folder, bootlegs in a bootleg folder etc..
With itunes and other mobile player software, that all changed.

What is the best way for me to organize all this as i start ripping all my cds again. Is there a Tag that any collection software i may use can pick up and help me sort them?
so for example, my depeche mode cds. I have them all, if i want to just listen to their live albums, how can i set that up in my old ipod classic player, or in a fiio player i plan on buying.

thanks a lot.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

So do you just mean one-off tracks that you're grouping, or whole albums that are live or bootleg collections, etc? In other words, are you trying to create a separate way to search for particular types of albums, or are you making your own albums....?

[garym]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

There is no "right" answer. You should organize however you want that works with all your players. I use the genre tag with multiple values. So I might have genre = Rock; Live Concert (and I can search easily on one or both of these genres). I'm not sure whether ipods deal with multiple value genre tags. ipod does use the GROUPING tag, so one could use that tag to hold a value like LIVE CONCERT or BOOTLEG, etc. One can easily search or sort on that. Do keep in mind that itunes/ipods/ithings can't use FLAC files. (In my case, I use FLAC for home system use and create a mirror library of mp3 files for use on my iThings.)

[Sathlin]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

So do you just mean one-off tracks that you're grouping, or whole albums that are live or bootleg collections, etc? In other words, are you trying to create a separate way to search for particular types of albums, or are you making your own albums....?

Whole albums. so for example, i have the depeche mode albums, i have their singles, bootlegs. In my portable player, how can i tell it to just play the full albums. Artist name will all be depeche mode, genre will all be the same, etc..

How can i differentiate them in my collection software and in the portable player itself.

[Sathlin]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

There is no "right" answer. You should organize however you want that works with all your players. I use the genre tag with multiple values. So I might have genre = Rock; Live Concert (and I can search easily on one or both of these genres). I'm not sure whether ipods deal with multiple value genre tags. ipod does use the GROUPING tag, so one could use that tag to hold a value like LIVE CONCERT or BOOTLEG, etc. One can easily search or sort on that. Do keep in mind that itunes/ipods/ithings can't use FLAC files. (In my case, I use FLAC for home system use and create a mirror library of mp3 files for use on my iThings.)

ok so in your case, if you chose rock:live genre you coudn't then single out a single band for that because it will pull the whole genre.

If i just want to listen to my depeche mode live albums for example, what options do i have? changing their artist name to Depeche Mode (Live) ? a genre tag just for that band? etc.. any other ways?

I personally don't like itunes. I would like to use something else, i have music bee right now. not sure what to use in the future.

[mjt5282]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

I have separate /mnt/media/live for live bootlegs, audio recordings, and /mnt/media/music for CD rips and commercially released audio (HDtracks downrezzed to 44.1/16 because my Sonos network can't play above 48 kHz). Yes, I use Freenas and ZFS (with checkpoints automatically run every hour).

[garym]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

ok so in your case, if you chose rock:live genre you coudn't then single out a single band for that because it will pull the whole genre.

If i just want to listen to my depeche mode live albums for example, what options do i have? changing their artist name to Depeche Mode (Live) ? a genre tag just for that band? etc.. any other ways?

I personally don't like itunes. I would like to use something else, i have music bee right now. not sure what to use in the future.

No, if something is tagged with multiple genres, I can with a couple of clicks get to just the artist (depeche mode) and then just the live albums of that artist. Almost anything you can think of is possible with tags and custom tags assuming your player can deal with it (iThings are stuck with whatever apple allows them to do/use). Be sure you are thinking in terms of metadata (tags) to do what you want as opposed to subdirectory location and filenames. These are different things and most players are designed to use the metadata rather than the filenames.


You might try foobar2000 as a player on a PC. But for your ipod, you are more or less stuck without some "hacky" workarounds.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

Whole albums. so for example, i have the depeche mode albums, i have their singles, bootlegs. In my portable player, how can i tell it to just play the full albums. Artist name will all be depeche mode, genre will all be the same, etc..

How can i differentiate them in my collection software and in the portable player itself.

As garym said, there's a lot of tag manipulation you can do, but your question is really about player functionality as much tagging. In your original post, you mention both iPod Classic and FiiO players. Approaching this task really has to start with understanding your specific player(s)' navigational behavior, and frankly, I'm pretty sure those two players are apt to be quite different in this regard. For all the pluses of its durability and massive capacity, the iPod Classic has a fairly rigid UI that doesn't work quite like other iDevices. Apple devices don't play .FLAC files and they generally don't recognize multiple tags. So the way you'd accomplish what you want is likely different for the iPod Classic and for the FiiO player.

The key point of this is that there's no "standard" way every playback device uses metadata and navigates your library. From my experience, don't expect portable players to accommodate multi-tag searching....i.e., search on ARTIST=DePeche Mode and GENRE=Live...so you'd need to really customize a single, searchable tag to identify album types so specifically. The obvious candidates would be GENRE, ARTIST, and ALBUM ARTIST.

ok so in your case, if you chose rock:live genre you coudn't then single out a single band for that because it will pull the whole genre.

If i just want to listen to my depeche mode live albums for example, what options do i have? changing their artist name to Depeche Mode (Live) ? a genre tag just for that band? etc.. any other ways?

Exactly. You'd have to fundamentally change a basic tag. Manipulating GENRE would get a little messy, but it could accomplish what you want. I'd probably opt for ALBUM ARTIST, as that's one that is most often used to categorize albums. But again, you need to have a good understanding of how your player uses ARTIST vs ALBUM ARTIST tags to determine which will work better.

I personally don't like itunes. I would like to use something else, i have music bee right now. not sure what to use in the future.

If you're using an iPod Classic, you'll still need to use iTunes to load the player (assuming no 3rd party OS hacks), but you can do all your library management and tagging outside iTunes.

[Sathlin]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

As garym said, there's a lot of tag manipulation you can do, but your question is really about player functionality as much tagging. In your original post, you mention both iPod Classic and FiiO players. Approaching this task really has to start with understanding your specific player(s)' navigational behavior, and frankly, I'm pretty sure those two players are apt to be quite different in this regard. For all the pluses of its durability and massive capacity, the iPod Classic has a fairly rigid UI that doesn't work quite like other iDevices. Apple devices don't play .FLAC files and they generally don't recognize multiple tags. So the way you'd accomplish what you want is likely different for the iPod Classic and for the FiiO player.

The key point of this is that there's no "standard" way every playback device uses metadata and navigates your library. From my experience, don't expect portable players to accommodate multi-tag searching....i.e., search on ARTIST=DePeche Mode and GENRE=Live...so you'd need to really customize a single, searchable tag to identify album types so specifically. The obvious candidates would be GENRE, ARTIST, and ALBUM ARTIST.


Exactly. You'd have to fundamentally change a basic tag. Manipulating GENRE would get a little messy, but it could accomplish what you want. I'd probably opt for ALBUM ARTIST, as that's one that is most often used to categorize albums. But again, you need to have a good understanding of how your player uses ARTIST vs ALBUM ARTIST tags to determine which will work better.


If you're using an iPod Classic, you'll still need to use iTunes to load the player (assuming no 3rd party OS hacks), but you can do all your library management and tagging outside iTunes.

Awesome post. You explained it well. I think album artist would be the easiest way to do it as you suggest. It easy to get to in the ripper as well.
I guess i'll have to figure it out based on the player.

Is it safe to assume all android portable music players will act the same way? And that with them the album artist tag will solve my issues?
I'll figure something out for my old ipod classic. That is the only apple thing i own and i dont' plan to ever buy anything else apple.

[garym]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

Is it safe to assume all android portable music players will act the same way?

Not necessarily. but Album Artist is typically handled quite well.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

Is it safe to assume all android portable music players will act the same way? And that with them the album artist tag will solve my issues?

Not necessarily. but Album Artist is typically handled quite well.

The variations in navigational behavior amongst players isn't a function of the primary OS category...Android vs iOS vs proprietary...but of each particular player's UI design. So no, you can't assume all Android-based players will share the same UI features, just as you can't with iOS devices. (The Classic behaves differently from other iPods.)

But like Gary suggests, ALBUM ARTIST is typically handled well by most players. I believe it's the most commonly-used "grouping" tag, which is why I said I'd explore using that one first. The problem with using GENRE for this purpose is that your GENRE list (when scrolling through for something like "DePeche Mode (Live)" will be filled with a crapload of other stuff, especially if you're not really diligent about imposing consistency in that tag. (The online databases are particularly awful with GENRE tagging...) And the problem with using ARTIST is that it can be a track-specific tag. For example, on my "Rattle and Hum" ALBUM, the ARTIST is "U2 with Bob Dylan" on track 11 but it's "U2" on all other tracks, and the ALBUM ARTIST is "U2" for the whole album. (This is what keeps all the tracks listed together as one album.) If I wanted to differentiate this live album from other U2 albums, I could do ALBUM ARTIST = "U2 (Live)". Then when I'm searching in my artist view, assuming it's using ALBUM ARTIST as the primary grouping tag, I'd see separate listings for "U2" and "U2 (Live)."

[RoyalEF]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

I keep my collection on a NAS (like an external drive). This is easier to do on OSX than Windows. The Windows version of iTunes has less ability and seems to have lost features as years go by.

I established my digital library prior to iTunes existence. So mine had to be traversable by humans in a file explorer (or even web page or FTP). Keeping directories within limits was and is important.

In iTunes preferences I TURN OFF
"Keep iTunes Media folder organized"
"Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library"


FILE ORGANIZATION

I divide up artists by their sortable names. After 17 years, I wish I broke up artists into more folders instead of just four. The goal is not to have 500+ subdirectories in a single directory. Some programs handle a lot of files+directories in one directory VERY poorly. FTP clients and HTTP style file-access can suck at that. I have very little bootleg. However, for me those belong with the artists. We look to hear an artist, not I wanna here some bootleg.

I'm religious about naming schemes. Unlike Apple (02 - Hello.aac), I think each file should include artist & title at minimum. If I moved the file to a USB drive I should be able to ID it easily by filename. I file albums under the album artist. I files singles and mixes for that artist in the artist folder. Whatever your organization I believe it should make it easy for a HUMAN find music files, not one specific software. Good ID3 tags and embedded artwork will take care of that. Eventually we will all use a different piece of software.

Here is a general layout from my music share root:
(artwork jpgs, named exactly as folder; I'm lazy, copy/paste; -cover, -liner1)

\! Artists(A-E)
     \Collins,Phil
          \Collins,Phil-...But Seriously (1989)
               Collins,Phil-...But Seriously (1989).JPG
               Phil Collins - All of My Life.mp3
               Phil Collins - Another Day in Paradise.mp3
               &*8230;..etc.
          \Collins,Phil-Hello, I Must Be Going! (1982)
          \Collins,Phil-No Jacket Required (1984)
          Phil Collins - Sussudio [12 inch mix].mp3
          Phil Collins + Marilyn Martin - Separate Lives.mp3
\! Artists(F-L)
\! Artists(M-R)
\! Artists(S-Z)
\! Various Artists
\! Books
\! Christmas
\! Classical
\! Soundtracks

Various artists would be for odd collections like Red Hot and Blue, etce.

I used to be more detailed on name of the sound file--including Album and Track**. I often consider going back to it. When I had my music in MY MUSIC and microsoft made that C:\Documents and Settings\My Username\My documents\My Music; filename and directory depth lengths became an issue (1990s). I started waffling.

Phil Collins + Marilyn Martin - Separate Lives [White Nights Soundtrack-01].mp3

This would easily distinguish (within the name) different versions sourced form different albums or singles. CDs with long titles became ridiculously long. But I like aspects of that naming scheme to this day.

I have a ! SOUNDTRACK folder for all soundtracks whether a Various Artists, like Footloose, or orchestral score.

! Christmas has become debatable for me. Sometimes I want to move a christmas album by a single artist into their own folders. For now, if it is christmas music, it is here--regardless of artists. My logic, is if I went looking for christmas music it is all together. Otherwise I would have to hunt throughout folder. See, I fall back to how would a human find the files they want.

For singles where I don't have an Artist folder I hvve done it this way:

! Oldies
! 1970s
! 1980s
! 1990s
! 2000s
! 2010s

There are about 1300 files in those folders.

Tags:

As said ALBUM ARTIST is being used heavily to group music across multiple software packages. Although an interesting idea, I disagree with the ALBUM ARTIST="U2 (Live)" since that requires the entire album to be live or breaking the album into two. I always amend (Live) onto each song title to separate from a studio recording. (Bootleg) is similar for me--belongs with the title. The ones I have trouble with are soundtracks. Some players (Plex and the one in my car) may only display ARTIST - TITLE. This can be vague with Soundtracks. Most of the time I try to make those two (ARTISTS-TITLE) very differentiating. So within there need to be things like (Live), (45 edit), (12inch Extended Cut); in the title. Any guest artists/duets SHOULD NEVER be in the title of the song, but in the Artist field.

But orchestral/movie score soundtracks become vague:

Howard Shore - Axe of Sword
Howard Shore - Many Meetings
Howard Shore - Breath of Life
Howard Shore - A Storm Is Coming
Howard Shore - Main Title
Howard Shore - Main Title

The context of the movie is lost and in some cases completely unidentifiable. Here is my solution for ARTIST when it is a orchestral soundtrack, but NOT for ALBUM ARTIST:

ARTIST field - TITLE field
(The Hobbit-1) Howard Shore - Axe of Sword
(LOTR-1) Howard Shore - Many Meetings
(LOTR-1) Howard Shore - Breath of Life
(LOTR-1) Howard Shore - A Storm Is Coming
(Scanners) Howard Shore - Main Title
(The Fly) Howard Shore - Main Title

I feel this works pretty well for me. With just these two fields showing on my mp3/flac player of choice I've ID'd the music sufficiently.

I populate YEAR with the Original release Year of the song. This means for greatest hits compilations I have to manually set year per song. I do not want the Jackson 5 songs to play in my 2000s smart list because the Jackson 5 Greatest Hits CD was re-issued/pressed in 2007. They should play in 1970s. (1969 for I want you Back)

GENRE is useless in my opinion except to ID and separate instrumental, orchestral, soundtrack, podcast, speech, comedy, audio books, sfx & christmas from typical songs. Some would also separate musicals from regular songs, but I don't. This is helpful in smartlists in iTunes. I create a SONGS smart list where I EXCLUDE all those other "genres". My other smartlists then use SONGS as the starting point for all other searches. I may use smartlists more than an average user so I see value in all this. Personally GENRE is a PER SONG designation. Most artists cross genres within their work.

I fell in love with dBpoweramp when I saw it populate Composer (which is really used as Composers + Lyricists). I've been hand typing these in since the late 1990s.

I also include producers, since some are the REASON why a song is as good as it it. Since there is no production field I use COMMENTS and do "produced by ".

And, like dBpoweramp, I always believe in embedding the cover in every music file. The back, liner notes, etc can be files in the Album folder.

Next I'm looking to populate LYRICS with some OSX iTunes add-ons.

I find most players are shite at letting me select outside of playlists. If you search by ARTISTS it uses the ARTIST field, not ALBUM ARTIST (iPod!!). So I have thousands to scroll past. And I can't get whole albums if there were guest artists. I have not seen a player that search via ALBUM ARTIST except PLEX. And even then it has some weird ones I can't figure out where it got them from. And Plex will show me a list of everything by an ARTIST broken up by album. But if I start playing it stops playing at every album break.

Really, until these players and UI grow up and offer more than what was easy for the programmer to crank out, we're going to have issues. I hesitate to change TAGs radically to make things work in one player or another.

I think using GENRE for bootleg or live is a good idea. It doesn't serve another purpose--might as well put it to use for ourselves.




(had to edit post--what is up with all the broken apostrophes/codes)

[garym]

Re: How do you separate your singles, live cds, from your albums, etc.

Nice post. Useful information for folks seeking info on how people do organization of files, etc. A couple of thoughts on some of this.

I keep my collection on a NAS (like an external drive). This is easier to do on OSX than Windows.

Not sure why that is the case. I have no issues with windows and a NAS and about 100k tracks, 6,000+ albums, mostly FLAC. But I'm not primarily using iTunes, so maybe your point is true with iTunes.

And, like dBpoweramp, I always believe in embedding the cover in every music file.

This is just a selectable option in dbpoweramp but not required by dbpoweramp. It can embed, or create cover.jpg or folder.jpg, or other named jpg files within the album subfolder.

I have not seen a player that search via ALBUM ARTIST except PLEX.

Logitech Media Server with Squeezebox players or SONOS will all use ALBUM ARTIST. Or Foobar2000 running on a windows machine as a computer player. And as an aside, PLEX is not that great as a music server. I use it for serving movie files however and it works nicely for that purpose.