What do you use to organize your mp3s?

D

dep01

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 24, 2001
Messages
175
I'm looking for new software to organize my Mp3 collection. I've been using Winamp for ages, and though it's a nice, lightweight player, it lacks real organizational functionality.

It'd be neat if I could tag and rate individual tracks. That way I can see all of my downtempo glitchy mixes with a couple of clicks. I have so much stuff now it's hard to wade through to find what I'm in the mood for... I'm tired of maintaining the directories of all my individual mp3s and albums. Sometimes it seems better to just throw all my mp3s in one huge directory and do all of the organization with software.

Also, quick ID3 tag editor capability would be a plus.

Ideally I want all of my music on one, single external firewire 1-Terabyte drive... Cause right now its spread all over the place.

So... What do you use to organize your stuff?

dep
 
Firstly, I'm organized with my folders and filenames - but I use Winamp because I love it and have no desire to change to anything else.

My skins are beautiful, it's low resource, works without being in the taskbar at all, remote features, on and on...
 
Yeah, MediaMonkey is pretty cool. I've been trying it out for a couple days. :) Will try Foobar.

edit: Tried it. MediaMonkey is much better.

dep
 
dep01 said:
Yeah, MediaMonkey is pretty cool. I've been trying it out for a couple days. :) Will try Foobar.

edit: Tried it. MediaMonkey is much better.

dep
Click to expand...

Foobar is only as good as you make it. If you're looking for something y ou can just pick up and use then media monkey might be better for you. Or you could grab a pre-packaged foobar that's already been modified and includes everything you need.

Foobar is also great for people that love to tinker with everything.

here are a few of the foobar setups I've used. They all do everything you could want a music program to do (I think). Including auto-grabbing lyrics, retagging, album art, etc.

Current:
foobar-playlist.jpg


other:
myfoobar.gif

foobar.png
 
Where do you get those per built foobars? the last one looks pretty nice. I use foobar only to play APE and other lossless ones. I simply can't bother to tweak up to those pre builts since WMP is pretty good by itself already.

Mainly use WMP11 since the library interface is pretty nice and I have been using it since 9. MP3tag for tagging.

Word of advice - no matter how good your library manager is if you didn't tag the files right it will still be shit. Make it 2nd nature to tag songs the moment you archive them.
 
Hypernova said:
Word of advice - no matter how good your library manager is if you didn't tag the files right it will still be shit. Make it 2nd nature to tag songs the moment you archive them.
Click to expand...

QFT big time.

As for the last skin, it's not totally pre-built (as in you have to download like 5 plugins and copy&paste them to your plugins directory).

If that is too much work, I could rar up my foobar directory I suppose.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=53703
 
dep01 said:
I'm looking for new software to organize my Mp3 collection. I've been using Winamp for ages, and though it's a nice, lightweight player, it lacks real organizational functionality.

It'd be neat if I could tag and rate individual tracks. That way I can see all of my downtempo glitchy mixes with a couple of clicks. I have so much stuff now it's hard to wade through to find what I'm in the mood for... I'm tired of maintaining the directories of all my individual mp3s and albums. Sometimes it seems better to just throw all my mp3s in one huge directory and do all of the organization with software.

Also, quick ID3 tag editor capability would be a plus.

Ideally I want all of my music on one, single external firewire 1-Terabyte drive... Cause right now its spread all over the place.

So... What do you use to organize your stuff?

dep
Click to expand...

I too am having the same Issue. I have music files on my desktop, media drive, docs settings, everywhere. I would like to find a program that can organize it well, and look nice while doing it.

]|[ Mar']['in ]|[;1031505884 said:
QFT big time.

As for the last skin, it's not totally pre-built (as in you have to download like 5 plugins and copy&paste them to your plugins directory).

If that is too much work, I could rar up my foobar directory I suppose.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=53703
Click to expand...

Hi Martin.

I did try that guide and I had this result
foobar2000screeny.jpg


If you could post your rar'd director that'd be awesome...because mine turned out like crap. :(
 
If you go to Preferences > Display > PanelsUI, under the layout drop down menu, does it show Dark 1.5c.pui as the selected layout?

If so then it looks like you may have the images in the wrong directory. Make sure the dark1 folder is in the main foobar directory.

edit: after looking, there's another skin that looks like that one but seems to be more maintained, and a little more refined that includes very step by step guide on installing it.

Check This One Out
http://www.fooblog2000.com/2007-06/fofr-version-09

And the Guide
http://www.fooblog2000.com/fofr-configuration-guide

Once you've done one skin, it becomes pretty easy to grab any skin you see as you'll likely already have all the plugins it requires, and already know the basic steps.
 
]|[ Mar']['in ]|[;1031506915 said:
If you go to Preferences > Display > PanelsUI, under the layout drop down menu, does it show Dark 1.5c.pui as the selected layout?

If so then it looks like you may have the images in the wrong directory. Make sure the dark1 folder is in the main foobar directory.

edit: after looking, there's another skin that looks like that one but seems to be more maintained, and a little more refined that includes very step by step guide on installing it.

Check This One Out
http://www.fooblog2000.com/2007-06/fofr-version-09

And the Guide
http://www.fooblog2000.com/fofr-configuration-guide

Once you've done one skin, it becomes pretty easy to grab any skin you see as you'll likely already have all the plugins it requires, and already know the basic steps.
Click to expand...

Okay well I did end up getting Dark1 working...but not entirely. But I guess I'll just have to live with an ugly player.

I followed the instructions in that guide by the letter and it refused to work. But it was worth a try, and thanks for trying to help a simpleton such as myself ;)

To OP: I hope you find something that works. I enjoy Foobar even if at times it is ugly, it still is very fuctional.

Thanks again,
~FIDS
 
I'm uploading my rared foobar directory right now.

I'll edit this post with a link as soon as it's done.

Delete your old foobar Directory and use mine.

When you first open it it should ask you if you'd like to use Default, ColumnsUI, or PanelsUI. Choose PanelsUI.

After that ctrl+P (for Preferences). Display > PanelsUI > Layout Dropdown menu. The Dark config, FoFr , and Gaia skins installed.

If you get an error for one of the DSP plugins on startup, that means you need to download .net framework. However if you do anything with your computer, you probably already have that.

edit: Link
 
]|[ Mar']['in ]|[;1031507837 said:
I'm uploading my rared foobar directory right now.

I'll edit this post with a link as soon as it's done.

Delete your old foobar Directory and use mine.

When you first open it it should ask you if you'd like to use Default, ColumnsUI, or PanelsUI. Choose PanelsUI.

After that ctrl+P (for Preferences). Display > PanelsUI > Layout Dropdown menu. The Dark config, FoFr , and Gaia skins installed.

If you get an error for one of the DSP plugins on startup, that means you need to download .net framework. However if you do anything with your computer, you probably already have that.

edit: Link
Click to expand...

Wow. Thank you so, so much. I was struggling so much with it.

This was a bit of a stretch for me too, but I got it figured out I think.

43 Play lists later, sheesh. U never really know how much music you have till you have to organize it all. >.<
 
used winamp for years until hard drives got cheap and all of a sudden I have 60gigs to deal with. I really gave foobar a try for a couple of months and while it is very customizable it is an added thing to do to get it to where you want it. I had a cool panelsUI going until I changed some part of the code and it would then crash every so often. Couldn't be bothered to find the problem and tried MediaMonkey.

I think that mediamonkey is for people who want something like itunes, something more than winamp, not as complicated (same features but mediamonkey is easier for me) as foobar.

-It has a tag editor which lets you stay in the editor and skip through files. This is most useful when you first sort your collection and update all the tags. It can grab stuff automatically from the net but I never tried it as I went through and grabbed the info from the filenames instead for the tags.
-Uses winamp classic skins for the player which you can detach so you don't have the full interface if you don't need it.
-Supports music players and ipods for playlists/sync and party mode is the shit. Lots more options once you get into it too.
-Sleep mode. Small things make something rock. This is another one of them.
-I stopped caring about how my player looks since media controls and lcd on my g15 keyboard. This is another reason I left foobar behind. Foobar has the sexiest layouts created by the community hands down.
 
I was all for iTunes until I made the switch to Vista, which all but rules out iTunes because it runs so terribly. WMP11 has been fine for me for my library organization.
 
I like the iTunes library, but beware letting it sort your mp3s, it destroyed my library once and luckily I had it backed up.

Mine is all manual, the mp3s are in different folders, "Albums > Artist > Album" "Various Artists > Album" "Singles > .mp3s" "Classical > Albums / Various Artists" "Audiobooks >" and so on.

In iTunes if you have all the mp3s tagged properly you can get 1GB->300GB of mp3s to sort nicely into genres (make sure you have compilations set to on and all the mp3 compilations already set - mp3tag is brilliant application for tagging and you can set a value called itunescompilation = 1)

It certainly feels alittle slow on windows though. Shame because it's a great app.
 
I just tried out a few different players in the last few days and I have to say I'm liking MediaMonkey. Nice look to it, no customization needed (sorry, foobar), and does exactly what I need.
 
Call me crazy, but I don't use any special programs to organize my music. I've got it broken down by artist and then by cd title in folders. Then I made a little menu on the taskbar for "Music" which lets me bring up a menu of all my artists, select whatever I want, etc. etc.
 
Factorxfiles said:
Call me crazy, but I don't use any special programs to organize my music. I've got it broken down by artist and then by cd title in folders. Then I made a little menu on the taskbar for "Music" which lets me bring up a menu of all my artists, select whatever I want, etc. etc.
Click to expand...

I used to do just that, especially because I usually played full albums of a person. But now I like random music, so I can just take songs and throw tem in a playlist or completely randomize all my music.
 
Factorxfiles said:
Call me crazy, but I don't use any special programs to organize my music. I've got it broken down by artist and then by cd title in folders. Then I made a little menu on the taskbar for "Music" which lets me bring up a menu of all my artists, select whatever I want, etc. etc.
Click to expand...

Lets see how well that works when y ou have over 300gigs of music by over 1000 artists with multiple albums per.

I only have full albums and everything is extremely organized. However I still enjoy having something like foobar.

I find myself wanting to browse music by year or by genre quite a bit too, so that's another reason.
 
I keep each album in "artist - album" then all folders in the "music" folder. Soundtrack in "OST - album name"
 
Directory structure. Artist>Album>Songs
No need to piss with annoying play lists and library files.
I can find any album or song in seconds using just about any player. (Except those crappy ones like iTunes which force you to use playlists.) I have about 750 albums ripped to over 100Gb.
Stay organized from the begining and you will not have problems.
 
I assume, that the question assumes, that the music has nicely done metadata, like the album, artist, and genre.

I've tried a few programs and found out alot of my music metadata is messed up. Therefore I abandoned most and use the "folder" method described above.

I have over 120GB of music, and it would be too much of an effort to fix the metatdata. Unless anyone has an idea?
 
dekruyter said:
I assume, that the question assumes, that the music has nicely done metadata, like the album, artist, and genre.

I've tried a few programs and found out alot of my music metadata is messed up. Therefore I abandoned most and use the "folder" method described above.

I have over 120GB of music, and it would be too much of an effort to fix the metatdata. Unless anyone has an idea?
Click to expand...

If all your music is consists of full albums then it's pretty easy with Tag&Rename or Godfather.

If it's not then you're pretty much shit out of luck.

I've made it a habbit to fix all the ide tags and name all my files the same, as well as get album covers, etc. as soon as I get them.
 
Hofy said:
Directory structure. Artist>Album>Songs
No need to piss with annoying play lists and library files.
Click to expand...

Totally agree. That's how mine is organized. If I feel like listening to music I'll open up my music folder, pick whatever artist I feel like listening to, and decide which album/songs from there.
 
blade52x said:
Totally agree. That's how mine is organized. If I feel like listening to music I'll open up my music folder, pick whatever artist I feel like listening to, and decide which album/songs from there.
Click to expand...

This still only works if you've got a small music selection, or if you know exactly what you want to listen to.

I've got mine organized the same way. Artist > [Year] Album > Track# - Song Title.mp3.

But when you have a ridiculous amount of music, it gets tough to know what exactly you want to hear.
 
Don't use folders as your only sorting method, once your library gets large you will regret it.

Proper tagging also enable better functions for play list creating. Eg under WMP11 you can click and jump to any related genre/artist/year/album in one click and also enable proper searching. Or say soundtrack with certain length.
 
I use MediaMonkey strictly for tag and file name editing. MediaMonkey's ability to rename files on the fly makes sorting my collection very simple. Every one of my songs is named: <artist> - <album> - <track#> - <title> Keeps it easy to find what you want using a search function.

I use Winamp to play my music, and sometimes iTunes. The only reason I still keep iTunes around is the fact that I tag all my albums with their covers using iTunes, so that they show up on my iPod.
 
crazjayz said:
I use MediaMonkey strictly for tag and file name editing. MediaMonkey's ability to rename files on the fly makes sorting my collection very simple. Every one of my songs is named: <artist> - <album> - <track#> - <title> Keeps it easy to find what you want using a search function.

I use Winamp to play my music, and sometimes iTunes. The only reason I still keep iTunes around is the fact that I tag all my albums with their covers using iTunes, so that they show up on my iPod.
Click to expand...

With my minimal use of MediaMonkey, cannot you do the same with it?
I know that when you autotag the mp3's it downloads the artwork to it as well, doesn't it?
 
Rusky said:
With my minimal use of MediaMonkey, cannot you do the same with it?
I know that when you autotag the mp3's it downloads the artwork to it as well, doesn't it?
Click to expand...

I'm EXTREMELY picky when it comes to tags, so I don't auto-tag mp3s. What I will do is compare the tag information to one another (usually I compare wikipedia and Amazon), tag it myself (which is really quick and simple), then get the artwork myself. Next I import the tagged mp3s into iTunes, attached the artwork, and send the songs over to my iPod. Voila, perfectly tagged mp3s with matching artwork to boot! Sounds complicated, but I've been doing this from the beginning, so it only takes about 5 minutes per album. I'm now closing in on 1000 albums, all ID3 tagged with artwork.
 
crazjayz said:
I'm EXTREMELY picky when it comes to tags, so I don't auto-tag mp3s. What I will do is compare the tag information to one another (usually I compare wikipedia and Amazon), tag it myself (which is really quick and simple), then get the artwork myself. Next I import the tagged mp3s into iTunes, attached the artwork, and send the songs over to my iPod. Voila, perfectly tagged mp3s with matching artwork to boot! Sounds complicated, but I've been doing this from the beginning, so it only takes about 5 minutes per album. I'm now closing in on 1000 albums, all ID3 tagged with artwork.
Click to expand...

You should seriously check out Tag&Rename, downloads tags for you, and you can look at them and edit them before you apply them. Same for album covers etc.

If I spent 5 minutes on each album I have, well....it wouldn't be possible to have everything tagged.
 
I use folders and add a toolbar to the folder to the taskbar :0 Eg Music, <genre>, <artist>, <cd>.

I know, scary, but it works for me :) I can right click on the folder from the toolbar and play or q in music for Winamp. Plus it also makes it nice and easy to access my music from any PC in an uniform and organized way without dealing with stupid software for it.
 
]|[ Mar']['in ]|[;1031513400 said:
You should seriously check out Tag&Rename, downloads tags for you, and you can look at them and edit them before you apply them. Same for album covers etc.

If I spent 5 minutes on each album I have, well....it wouldn't be possible to have everything tagged.
Click to expand...

That's why you need to make it a habit to tag things as they come in. I spend on average 10min on every album (often more as I search for composer/lyricist). Auto tagging is a no go for me since most of my stuff in not english so no database for those. Sometimes I even embed lyrics.

For cover art I usually resize a copy to 450*450 to tag and another copy saved as folder.jpg so you get album views in explorer.
 
I like the job Media Center in Vista has done organizing my music
 
Hypernova said:
That's why you need to make it a habit to tag things as they come in. I spend on average 10min on every album (often more as I search for composer/lyricist). Auto tagging is a no go for me since most of my stuff in not english so no database for those. Sometimes I even embed lyrics.

For cover art I usually resize a copy to 450*450 to tag and another copy saved as folder.jpg so you get album views in explorer.
Click to expand...

I do tag things as they come in, a lot of stuff I have is either not english, or extremely rare. And while, I may have exaggerated the possibility of doing it, it certainly wouldn't be feasible.

Obviously if it's working for you know big deal. I prefer saving time and having the same end result as you. I just don't feel like spending 10 hours a week on tagging my music, even if it's spread throughout the week.

For someone with less music who gets it less frequently, I can see how this wouldn't be an issue.

As far as embedding lyrics. My foobar setup shows time stamped lyrics (highlights the current line of lyrics it's actually on) without me doing anything at all.
 
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