[dizzyorange]

Do you keep everything perfectly named and tagged or do you just let it hang out?  Personally I make everything lowercase with mp3tag, capital letters give me eyestrain when scrolling through a big list of songs.  I also delete all ID3 fields except for artist, album, title, and track number.  Just wondering if anyone else has OCD like me.

 

[BrownBear]

Very much so. I try to keep everything as organized as possible. I'm not concerned with genre too much, like if something is labelled as 'rock' and it's actually 'metal' or something, that doesn't bother me. I keep the genre tab off in iTunes. But when it comes to songs and artist names and album names, everything is kept neat and organized. I remember looking at a friends iPod awhile back and songs would just be labelled 1 or 2, with no album name, no capitals or punctuation if the title called for it. It kind of bothered me a bit, because I always keep everything tidy. I also don't have album artwork on any albums in iTunes. It's just something I've always done, so whenever I get a new song or album through them, I automatically delete the artwork.

 

[Argyris]

I'm anal to the point of driving myself insane sometimes. I have long tried to come up with a standardized way of labeling individual movements for classical. The system I currently use is:
 
<kind of composition or name> for <instruments> <number in series> in <key> <"nickname">, <opus> <number>, <catalog designation>: <movement number>. <movement designation>: <tempo>
 
Some of these are optional, since there isn't always information to fill in for each item. Here's an example track:
 
Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor ''Appassionata'', Op. 57: I. Allegro assai
 
Notice how I flipped the work and instrument designations. Across my collection there are inconsistencies here, and it drives me nuts. Unfortunately, whereas "Piano Sonata" sounds better than "Sonata for Piano", if you've got something like "Concerto for 2 Violins, Cello, Strings, and Basso Continuo", that definitely sounds better with the composition kind first. So it's a judgment call, and as I organized my library I vacillated between these two orders on a somewhat arbitrary basis.
 
Apart from this stuff, I try to fill out all the categories as best I can given available information. When I find a mistake I'll correct it immediately, even if it means hunting down my portable player and synchronizing its library with the main one.
 
And don't get me started on capitalization rules. I've finally decided to just go with how the back of the album renders it, even if that means that sometimes I end up capitalizing words like "the" and "a" and other times I don't. And numbers? Should one use numerals or write out the words? Again, I just go with what the album officially uses. The prescriptivist rule, incidentally, is everything under ten should be written out, ten is discretionary, and everything above ten should use numerals.

 

[Achmedisdead]

  Do you keep everything perfectly named and tagged or do you just let it hang out?  Personally I make everything lowercase with mp3tag, capital letters give me eyestrain when scrolling through a big list of songs.  I also delete all ID3 fields except for artist, album, title, and track number.  Just wondering if anyone else has OCD like me.

I've gotten more and more organized over the last few years. Some of my earliest rips don't have album art, I poke away at that stuff here and there when I am bored, but anything new I am very particular about.

 

[blueangel2323]

I used to be extremely anal, now I'm just very anal. 

 Using the right type of brackets, never spelling an artist's name in more than one way, artwork all populated...

 

[Achmedisdead]

  I'm anal to the point of driving myself insane sometimes. I have long tried to come up with a standardized way of labeling individual movements for classical. The system I currently use is:
 
<kind of composition or name> for <instruments> <number in series> in <key> <"nickname">, <opus> <number>, <catalog designation>: <movement number>. <movement designation>: <tempo>
 
Some of these are optional, since there isn't always information to fill in for each item. Here's an example track:
 
Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor ''Appassionata'', Op. 57: I. Allegro assai
 
Notice how I flipped the work and instrument designations. Across my collection there are inconsistencies here, and it drives me nuts. Unfortunately, whereas "Piano Sonata" sounds better than "Sonata for Piano", if you've got something like "Concerto for 2 Violins, Cello, Strings, and Basso Continuo", that definitely sounds better with the composition kind first. So it's a judgment call, and as I organized my library I vacillated between these two orders on a somewhat arbitrary basis.
 
Apart from this stuff, I try to fill out all the categories as best I can given available information. When I find a mistake I'll correct it immediately, even if it means hunting down my portable player and synchronizing its library with the main one.
 
And don't get me started on capitalization rules. I've finally decided to just go with how the back of the album renders it, even if that means that sometimes I end up capitalizing words like "the" and "a" and other times I don't. And numbers? Should one use numerals or write out the words? Again, I just go with what the album officially uses. The prescriptivist rule, incidentally, is everything under ten should be written out, ten is discretionary, and everything above ten should use numerals.

 
I would go bat**** crazy trying to tag a big classical collection. I just have a few "best of" (insert composer here) CDs.

 

[Argyris]

   
I would go bat**** crazy trying to tag a big classical collection. I just have a few "best of" (insert composer here) CDs.

 
I remember the good old days when that was the case for me. I currently have 862 tracks in my classical collection, with a few more floating around that I haven't officially added yet.
 
You folks who don't have to deal with tagging classical have it easy. For one, it doesn't mix well in a standard music library since the most salient selection factor is the composer, whereas for almost everything else it's the artist. So if you have your library ordered by artist, you'll get all the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra tracks clustered together, even if they're playing Beethoven, Holst, and Hooked on Classics.

 

[dizzyorange]

   
I remember the good old days when that was the case for me. I currently have 862 tracks in my classical collection, with a few more floating around that I haven't officially added yet.
 
You folks who don't have to deal with tagging classical have it easy. For one, it doesn't mix well in a standard music library since the most salient selection factor is the composer, whereas for almost everything else it's the artist. So if you have your library ordered by artist, you'll get all the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra tracks clustered together, even if they're playing Beethoven, Holst, and Hooked on Classics.

 
Maybe it's because I'm not familiar with classical music performers but I just list the composer as the artist and delete the name of the performer.  

 

[Argyris]

I have the composer set as the album artist, with the performer set as the artist, and sort my library by album artist. The reason I want to maintain a distinction is because there are cases where I have multiple performances of the same piece or set of pieces but by different performers.
 
Where it can get tricky is when an album has music from several composers. In this case I take the "main billing" composer and list them as the album artist, then list the composers of each individual track as the artist. If it's one of those compilations of many different composers, I set the album artist to Various and then list each composer as the artist.

 

[Smeckles]

Once you get above a few thousand tracks, you gotta have some kind of system otherwise, you'll never find anything!  And relying on any online tagging database system? Therein lies madness.
 
For non-classical, it's pretty easy:  Artist => Album => Disc # => Track #.  Compilations and soundtracks are ripped by the artist, following the same formula.
 
Classical tagging is a mess, and I really need a more consistent method than I currently have, especially since I am rapidly building my collection up.  I could not work with Argyris' system.  No offense, but that is gonna be too much effort.  But I still can't decide whether to lead with Conductor (from say Karajan's SACD set) or Composer, but I do like the compromise you have of
album artist vs. performer artist.  I may steal that.  Thanks!

 

[linglingjr]

I also agree tagging classical music sucks.  I'm anal with my tagging specifically when it comes to album art.  I try to make sure the art for each album is at least 1600x1600 if not as big as I can get.  I think I have a couple 5000x5000 resolution album covers lol.  I have probably around 2,400 tracks with at least 2,000 of them being FLAC.  I try to keep the tagging simple, I only do Title, track #, artist, album, year, genre.  Whenever I download/rip an album or discography I tag everything right when I get it.

 

[Lady Stoneheart]

I'm not really all that fussed. I don't require my tags to be spotless on Foobar to be perfect as long as I know at least what album I'm listening to. Couldn't stand having untitled or albums named as something else though.

 

[kmj2587]

Tagging for me comes in two formats: The easy (non-classical) way and the hard (classical) way.
 
For non-classical stuff and classical style that isn't full pieces from standard repertoire (stuff like Canadian Brass) I just make sure I have album, album art, artist, album artist, date, genre (I use a small number of broad genres to organize my collection so that it's actually a useful way to sort), track number and disc number. 
 
For classical material from the standard repertoire my tagging is... excessive.  It's very much tied to J River and the fact that it has a tag for everything.  The tracks all have to be named <piece> in <key>, <Opus #> - <movement>, for example: String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96 "American" - II. Lento.  From there I include artist (the performing orchestra), album artist (either the performing orchestra or "various artists" in the case of a disc with multiple orchestras), the album art, conductor, composer, date of recording, location of recording, recording producer, publisher, a separate "orchestra" tag, a separate tag for a choir if one is involved, track number, disc number, and a tag for soloists where available.
 
That isn't the end of it however, I have a couple tags that I use specifically to sort music to make it easier to find on J River's android app, which is how I most often access my music.  For box sets I always put the box set and disc number in the Comments tag (for example: The Decca Sound: Disc 23).  This way I can just pull up a box set and flip through it like the box was in front of me.  In addition, I use the "Notes" tag for abbreviated versions of piece names so that I can sort through pieces separate from how they may be divided up by albums (For example, the one above would just be Dvorak: String Quartet 12).  This way, if I know I want to listen a specific piece, I can just go find it rather than try to remember who performed and/or conducted it.

 

[nick_charles]

I used to tag/name all my classical stuff by Catalog type (opus, BWV, Hob etc) , Catalog number, I used not to bother much with performers, now I put all performer stuff in the comments tag, I have a separate folder for every composer and I used to have a folder for every single work (or part of work if it spanned multiple CDs)  with some baroque and medieval music a folder might only have a few MB, for major works such as Symphonies/ larger Concertos I still do this otherwise I tend to catalog stuff by CD. If it is a boxed set I have a master folder for the set and sub folders for the individual CDs or sets of CDs - some works though being very short and some composers only have a single work in my collection. Generally before ripping a new CD I get the initial tag info from freedb (if available) and do a quick global edit for the album info
 

 
then when I've ripped the files I use MP3Bookhelper to add track-numbers and fix any oddities
 

 
My folders now look like this
 

 
Opera is a pain as tracks often run into each other and some devices do not do gapless well, when that happens I sometimes do a single CD as one track or a single Act as one track, even multiple movements sometimes, it is a real nuisance as each track has to be tagged separately and many rippers wont let you do ranges (I use EAC for these nuisances, but EAC is painfully slow, but it does correct some errors that others leave behind)
 
I am slowly ripping my Complete Bach (Brilliant Classics) collection, 156 CDs (over 1000 works) , I'm on CD 15 and had to take a break, there is only so much Bach you can handle at a time...so I'm diverting myself with the Handel ( a mere 40 CDs) 

 

[wtaylorbasil]

just as a tidy catalogue, would this do for you? http://www.collectorz.com/music/ . The tracks from your folders can be linked to the database and playback directly (HDMI or other audio connection to the playback system required).
 
I have approx 6,000 tracks catalogued.