Music organization theories and workflow
Published on February 22, 2009 by Noel Madali
I have to make this post to make me sane. And I have to mention that I am eating Korean food (yummy!). Okay, so I am sure everybody has their IPods, Zunes, etc etc. I have a phone, and that is all I need to carry around for music. Oh, and my flash drive for my car’s USB. Of course you would say, “My music player can hold more than your phone!” but really, would you listen to all that music on that trip to the grocery store?
My solution? I have it so that my playlist syncs to my phone, in which the playlist caters to my own personal music tastes for that day or days. I recently just finished reorganizing my music, and it was not easy.
Some things to consider when organzing music:
- Have each folder be by Album Artist - Album Title
- If you happen to have Original Soundtracks, I usually do it like so:
Eg. Various Artists - Movie Title Soundtrack or OST - For other things like Singles, EP, and other stuff you may come along, (like Anime Soundtracks), I do it according to Wikipedia’s information on Soundtracks for that Artist
Eg1. Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu! OST
Eg2. Macross Frontier OP2 ED2 Single - Lion (OP = Opening, ED = Ending) - If you have more than one CD per album, merge them all under that album and rename the Album as that Album title
Eg. Foo Fighters - In Your Honor has two CDs
All your tracks in that album will have the Album title = In Your Honor, as opposed to In Your Honor CD1, CD2
- If you happen to have Original Soundtracks, I usually do it like so:
- When doing Meta data (ID3 Tags), Always make sure you edit Album Artist, Artist(s), Title, and Album
Album Artist is important because if you have more than one artist in an album, sometimes in Winamp or other media players, you would see more than one instance of that album in the “Album View” (which to me is very annoying).
Eg. The Matrix Reloaded has more than one artist, and is a soundtrack.
Folder: Various Artists - The Matrix Reloaded
Album: The Matrix Reloaded
Album Artist: Various Artists
Artist: (insert artist for each individual track)
Title: (insert title for each individual track) - Use MediaMonkey to edit your collection! I use this program all the time when I organize my music. I use a few simple keystrokes to get what I need:
- Open up a folder of music
- Ctrl + A (Select All)
- Ctrl + L (Find Music Info on Web)
- Find respective Album with good Album Art and information
- Click Auto Tag
- Ctrl + A again
- Ctrl + R (Reorganze File Names based on Meta Data)
- Done!
- For any other needs, I manually do it by hand. For example, my Anime Soundtracks, I create Album Art for them on Photoshop on a 500×500 canvas size.
Need anymore tips? Feel free to ask in the comments.
Okay, I know a whole lot of you who have always came to me to ask if I can download a video for them from YouTube for a presentation or project (referring to students in CHS). Well good news folks, I’m unveiling the secret right here in this post. And all you people have to do is click that link that says “Read More,” and no more will you have to ask me, Adelbert, how to do such an amazingly simple thing. The “How to” after the jump.