Organizing Music -unsorted

[dedos]

Morning everyone,

obviously after registering E-touch, I've been spending hours in organizing my music cause I'm a slob when it comes to folder structure.

I'm following the suggested structure:  \music\artist\album\tracks.mp3
It's working out well but what would be the best way to deal with stragglers? (multiple individual mp3's?) Should I just create the album they originated from OR build an "UNSORTED" folder in each artist? 

Also, how can I structure 80's 90's, compilation albums?  Is freebox smart enough to read this structure:

\music\<decade/Genre>\album\tracks? or should I just let the genre setting take over. 

Thanks in advance everyone.

[fordman]

You havw two choices here:

1) Place each individual song in a folder by itself, make a cover.jpg and coversmall.jpg for each folder.

here is what I did:

2) For singles, such as 90's pop tunes where there are alot of one hit wonders, I placed 18 (more or less) songs per folder. Make the 'master folder', call it 90's Pop Favorites. Then a 'sub folder' and call it 90's Pop Favorites Vol 1. Then places the songs in the sub folder like this: Artist - Song.mp3



In the ID3 tag, Artist, Song title as normal. In Album Title I named it '90's Pop Favorites Vol 1' for all 18 songs and so on and so on........



Made a Generic Cover for them, added them to the sub folders.


(I know, but I cant Photoshop worth a damn!)

I hope this helps!


Fordman

[dedos]

Thank for the reply, it does help.  Why stop at 18 tracks?  Just to give it the authentic look?

Also, how did you handle multiple CDs under 1 album?

Thanks for your help again.

-D

[fordman]

I stopped at 18 to have just 2 full pages of songs (9 per page). Plus if you do only 18, the more albums you have in your E-Touch, looks like there is more to offer. Plus scrolling the same album becomes cumbersome and boring.

If I read your question correctly, you mean an artist that has 2 or more cd's within the album set, like:
The Beach Boys Greatest Hits Vol 1 and 2



Hope this helps again!



Fordman

[dedos]

That's exactly what I mean.  Do I just keep the structure as:

\musicfolder\artist\album CD 1
\musicfolder\artist\album CD 2  ?

Also, as I'm going through the sludge, What would happen if I leave the some files in:

\musicfolder\artist\song.mp3 (no album associated)  

I'm asking cause I'm starting to create unsorted folders for stragglers:

\musicfolder\artist\artist-unsorted\songs.mp3

I appreciate your help.  I'm starting to see some light behind all this mess.  I'm thinking I'm going to finally install E-Touch and start playing with it, but I'm afraid I'll never go back to my cleaning process.

-D

[fordman]

That's exactly what I mean.  Do I just keep the structure as:

\musicfolder\artist\album CD 1
\musicfolder\artist\album CD 2  ?

That should do it!


The stragglers will show up as 'Various Artist' and a selection box will be there for them. If you have 100 stragglers in the same folder then you will have a single selection box with 100 or so choices. Thats why you should take the time, put them in a folder with 15-20 songs per album vs 100 or so in one album.

See Below:



More choices vs. selection with 100 or so songs.



Fordman

[dedos]

Thanks for your time.  I'm going to play with it some more.  I just recieved my touch screen!! elo 19'.  This could be a bad for my dedication to cleaning  =)

[ecbrad]

It took me weeks to clean up my collection. Now I make sure that any new album I add is tagged, gained with coverart before I let it anywhere near my collection. Takes all of about 1 minute now.

brad

[eist1]

Fordman,

Do you by chance have the psd's for the custom made album covers? They look good and would be nice to have a template to use. Thanks

[fordman]

I get my cover art from good 'ole google images. Here is the original and all I did was crop and add the Vol #

Here is the original:



And here is my final product without the Vol #



its 400 X 400. Then I add the Vol # text to it.



They look good to me. I do the same with 50's, 60's, 70's 80's Pop and Classic Rock. I'll post them too shortly.



Fordman