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How to organise a music file collection?

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  • 15-05-2012 3:26pm
    #1
    Bevity
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1 ✭


    Hi Folks,

    Long term reader, virgin poster.

    I have over 100 gigs of music files in just about every format, with 30 gigs of itunes thrown in.

    They are spread across 4 different hard drives, in various efforts to back them up.

    I'd appreciate any advice in recommended software for removing duplicate albums etc across drives.

    Whether I should convert all the files to one homogenous format for easy usage?

    In short, a logical way to process the music files and a recommended media player to use with it.

    If I need to put up more precise info to aid in answering, please outline and I'll put it up.

    If I've posted in the wrong area, my apologies.

    Cheers,
    Bevity
    Tagged:


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    wallaby72
    Registered Users Posts: 52 ✭✭wallaby72


    Hi Bevity

    This recent article on Lifehacker goes through several options.

    Depending on how accurate your metadata is on your files you can use tools like MusicBrainz Picard and MP3tag which will assist you in sorting it out and inserting covers in files.
    I personally use Mediamonkey for playing my music collection on my PC but also use XBMC on my media centre PC.

    All those apps are open source.

    Regards,
    Wallaby


  • Options
    #3
    Shankly Gates
    Registered Users Posts: 251 ✭✭Shankly Gates


    Having just gone through this process let me tell you the steps I went through. This isn't a quick process!

    Firstly you need to software that will find duplicates on all the drives and remove them all except for one copy you designate not to. For this I used Moleskinsoft Clone Remover. It ain't free though ;)

    The thing you want from your music collection is to be application independent so that you can try out any player you want or move the whole collection to a different computer/operating system and not have to worry about it. For this you need to decide on a folder structure and get your id3 tags in shape.

    The folder structure I have is like this
    Music
    /MP3/ArtistName/Year - Album
    /FLAC/ArtistName/Year - Album

    This way you can logically split the music into format. The application you use will then be able to group them together but the collection is application independent.

    To get your id3 tags in shape you need a program like Tag & Rename which is really excellent. Ain't free though again ;)

    I use iTunes purely for cover flow. I have never purchased a song from them but I like the album cover view and iTunes will usually be able to fetch the album cover for you by right clicking on a song.


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