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Organizing digital music
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| ambient_chris |
Hi all,
Ive got to a point where my digital files are so unorganized. When doing a spontanious mix I have so many files that its hard to find I'm looking for. At the moment I have my files stored in genre folders and then the key of the track but, I'm thinking its time for a re-think.Has anyone got any good suggestions on how they organize their music?? |
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| Rebel Brown |
I just keep my files in a folder by month, so November 2010, October 2010 etc.
All of the genre/playlist sorting is done within iTunes. |
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| Polt |
| I don't know what gear you have, but as a Traktor user I don't really care about folder structure. I have all of my tracks in one big folder. The key for me is having a standard metadata format that I use for all of my files. I can easily search by genre, key, release date, etc. |
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| Kenny Rogers |
| all my files are in one folder called "Music". |
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| n3lly |
+1
So a search for this. It's been covered many times over. |
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| Ygrene |
I actually just have my digital files organized by Artist - Title and by genre folder.
However, in Excel I keep a list of all my music and organize by key, bpm, artist - title, artist, title, genre, and I add columns as necessary (date purchased, date produced, anything that helps me reference the track). When I'm at home I use Excel exclusively. If I'm playing out, I can take my laptop or print out the list I'm going to use. I have such an easier time searching in Excel than just scrolling through files. |
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| ambient_chris |
thanks for the feedback...
also thanks for posting the link for the other thread. I tried to do a search but didnt come up with anything. |
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| Stu Cox |
My post in the other thread only covered CDs / vinyl as I hadn't started playing around with laptops yet, but now that I do... (in case you care)
I'm still an advocate of chronological order: when you get something new, it goes on the end. It's usually fairly easy to remember roughly how long ago you bought something (up to a point) and the longer you've had something the more likely you are to just remember which folder it's in anyway.
It also means a track will always be surrounded by the same other tracks: "Ultimo" by Evil Nine will always be next to "Alter 9" by Etostone in my collection as I added them on the same day, so if I couldn't remember the artist or title of "Alter 9", I could look for Ultimo because I happen to remember it's next to it (which happens to me more than remembering the name of the track I want to play, for some reason) - I generally need as many clues as I can get! Adding another track won't break this relationship, like it could do in just about any other organisation method.
I don't rely on searching for anything recent because I can never remember the names of things, but I'm more likely to remember the name of an older track so rather than trying to remember exactly when I got
it I can just search if I like.
I hate scrolling, so I now group my MP3s into folders which will fit on one screen in Traktor, which is about 15 with the font size etc I use. It ends up being very similar to how I used to arrange my CDs (~10 per CD) and in fact I still think of each folder as a 'disc'. The main benefit of this are I can just flick through 'pages' and a particular track will always be in the same position on its page (in the middle, or 2nd from bottom, or whatever) so I usually know where to look for it... again, my brain has funny ways of remembering things like that rather than the name of the tune.
Reasons I shied away from other organising methods:
- By key would encourage me to choose by the key rather than the track: I just like to know what key the track I've picked is in but I don't let it have much influence over my track selection - I just use it to help me choose how to mix it in
- Alphabetically would mean knowing the names of stuff, which I'll never be able to do
- All in one folder would mean lots of scrolling or searching, plus more than a couple of hundred files in one folder can slow your laptop down a bit (not usually noticeably though)
- By 'style' would mean pigeon-holing things pretty severely and my opinion of a track can change... what sounds really chilled to me in one mood or environment can sound quite up-beat and groovy in another
- By tempo I think is fairly irrelevant as the original tempo doesn't matter: I sometimes play 120bpm tunes at 135bpm and vice versa and doing that can change the feel of a track, so tempo doesn't really pin down a track's potential in any way.
Most DJ software has the concept of playlists, which would allow you to arrange your tracks in all sorts of different ways simultaneously: you could have a 'tech house' playlist, but some of the tracks in there might also be in the '126bpm' playlist, the 'Abm' playlist or the 'Pryda' playlist - to find it you just go to the playlist for whatever you can remember about it. This isn't something I've tried yet, but I might do!
Hope this helps...
The route you choose to go down might depend on how good your memory is (particularly for tune names), how you remember things best, how varied your collection is, whether you mix in key all the time, just some of the time, or never, etc.
Let us know what you go for, particularly if you come up with a new system which hasn't been mentioned here before!
(Apologies for the length... Sunday hangover is here and emptying my brain onto the page is strangely comforting) |
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