How to organize your music using windows explorer (and winamp)

[Brian loves music]

You may think I'm crazy but for most of my music listening career I've been organzing my music just with a series of folders in windows explorer. Yes that's right, I select the music i want to play from folders filled with actual mp3/flac files.

I think it orginated from me using winamp like 5-10 years ago for flac files (which I just happened to come across). I never did discover/care for the winamp media library cause I've always liked to play individual songs/albums one at a time via creating (very efficiently may i add) a winamp playlist on the go.

Most recently, I tried to switch over to foobar and didn't want to spend the time figuring out how to custimize it just like I wanted. So I decided to spend about 2 hours revamping my windows folder method I've been using for such a long time. By unselecting all the auto-arrange preferences in view> arrange icons by..

Here's an example of how I play Radiohead's Motion Picture Sound Track for example. (I have a folder titeled music on my desktop and start menu shortcut.) Open up my music folder...click on radiohead...click on the album... click on the songs. I attached pictures to show how it looks with all my custom pics. To make your folder look like a picture you go to folder properties>custimize>choose picture.

So is this crazy or what? Anyone else do it? In my opinion, this orginzation scheme beats the hassel of foobar, the low quality of itunes, and looks better than winamp's media library. Now i challenge you to try it!

[ueyteuor]

what your saying is, you click start, programs, and you have a music folder?? thats pretty clever

though my music is not in my c drive

[Brian loves music]

i have a music folder on my desktop and because I have selected it enough it's in the start menu quick links (the ones next to your internet browser/ms word. I use xp by the way.

[monolith]

Yeah, that's the only worthwhile way of organising music, I've found. There's always some glitch or annoyance with using library-style organising programs.

To play music I usually navigate to the artist's folder and drag the album I want into Winamp's playlist, or alternatively, while in Winamp press "insert", which opens up a small browse window and from there use the keyboard to get to the folder I want (using the first letters of whatever artist and album).

The former method is much easier than browsing a library if you're not sure what you want to listen to, and the latter method is substantially faster than using the library for quickly accessing what you want.

The only time I ever use the library feature is to put music on my iPod.


Of course, I never listen to music in anything other than album (or, rarely, compilation) form, so I never have need for playlists or any such nonsense (except when iPods can't figure out how to deal with compilations or multi-disc albums).

[mojo]

I use WinAMPs library, but all my songs are still organised into directories:

music\Artist\Album\01 - Track Name.flac

I use Tag&Rename to make sure all my music is tagged and then use it's rename feature to automatically put the files in the right directory. It makes new directories for you automatically.

This way it's very easy to find files when you want to burn them or to send them to a friend. It works well with USB mass storage type MP3 players as well, and XBOX Media Centre.

There are only two downsides to using Tag&Rename. First, it doesn't remove directories that are empty, so if for example you make a spelling mistake you have to go and remove the misspelt directory yourself. Second, it doesn't automatically copy album art, which is a major pain in the ass for me. It can embed it in the music files, but that adds bloat when a single JPEG file would do.

[cerbie]

Artist/Year Album/Track Name

I use the equivalent of details, regardless of file manager (but, columns in Finder)

To listen, I use flat playlists, and shuffle by album (if possible, of course).

[Brian loves music]

cool...one of the things i like about this method is that I could put custom pics on the folder for each artist and have specialized location of folders in certain windows. For example, I have little good themes for organizing albums like...(see attached...i don't know how to just make the pics show up)

oh ya, in case anyone was wondering..ya i have a lot of time on my hands

[mojo]

Nice.

Try ImageShack for putting images on forums.