How much time do you spend organizing your digital music?

[jazzdude]

How much time do you spend organizing your digital music? Is it worth your time?

I have a relatively large music collection and have found that the organization (ripping, tagging, etc.) is taking far more of my time than I would like and is a bit of a PITA. Isn't the point to enjoy the MUSIC?

In my case, I have most of my collection ripped as FLAC files, plus a bunch of mp3 files I have purchased from e-music and the like. I stream these to a Squeezebox attached to my stereo. I also have converted all of the FLAC files to mp3 for portable use on my Ipod Touch 2G and Sansa Clip. I have to use Itunes for the iPod and I use J. River Media Jukebox for the FLAC files. I did a reasonable job of tagging when I ripped the music, but now I want to change some genres, tag the years albums came out, rate songs (so I can better use smart lists), etc. Each of the software programs does things a little differently and I find myself fixing things for Itunes that then doesn't work as I want it for Squeezecenter (used with the squeezebox) and then again for Media Jukebox.

Honestly, sometimes I want to just go back to using CDs!

What are your experiences? Suggestions welcome.

 

[Joe91]

Thankfully iTunes does everything for me if grabbing direct from a CD (encoding, tagging, artwork).

If the music is sourced "elsewhere" it obviously takes more work, but it's a small price to pay IMO for keeping everything organized and clean.

 

[Elephas]

I've settled on using ALAC and iTunes, primarily on Windows PCs and also a Mac. I use dBpoweramp for format conversions, some ripping, etc. I don't spend much time managing the library. Each disc only has to be ripped once, and I rarely encounter a disc where I have to manually type in the track info, and in those cases, Google and copy & paste to the rescue. Importing some downloaded music files into the iTunes library can be a pain, though, depending on how those files are tagged and your preferences. They're usually OK, such as files from the B&W Music Club.

I used to also use foobar2000, which can play ALAC files, but I find the iTunes interface to be more convenient and its playlist features easy to use. I've experimented with FLAC, WAV, and other music players and iTunes and ALAC seems to be the best solution for me.

I rarely use an iPod and have only synced it once, then left it alone. I've turned off much of the extra functionality in iTunes such as Movies, TV Shows, Store and Genius. I have one AirPort Express but no Apple TV. I use the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" setting.

My ALAC files are stored on a NAS configured in RAID 5 with five 500GB drives. This NAS is dedicated for music files only.

The library is getting a bit large and I sometimes experience sluggishness in iTunes. Putting the iTunes library files into a RAM disk seemed to help a bit, as well as upgrading the PC to a faster processor. With a large library, each playback computer on the network should have its own local copy of the library files in order to minimize slowdowns. I use one PC as the "master" to rip CDs and add or rename files, and sync updated library files to the other PCs as needed. Remember to back up your library files regularly, "iTunes Music Library.xml" and "iTunes Library.itl."

I use an RME HDSP 9632 card to output AES/EBU digital to an external DAC. I think the sound quality is good, but not quite at the level of Redbook or SACD disks played on a disc transport. Adding a master clock generator to the system improved the digital output of the RME sound card, and I've been happy with this system for more than a year.

 

[ph0rk]

I went through and cleaned up genre tags once in iTunes - and may need to do so again soon - but it is quite easy to do, if you are primarily condensing tags.

iTunes is still making me a happy camper - 2 airport expresses and an apple tv cover every room in my (small) condo, though I do have to turn a speaker around to cover the screened in deck when it is in use. I live off of iTunes DJ, and have since it was first introduced as party shuffle.

Plus, the special lady can drive the airtunes nodes with her laptop and her music, and we can both screw around with each others music with our iphones, all with zero fuss.

Don't discount genius mode, it often works quite well, assuming your music is ripped from CDs or otherwise tagged in a way that genius recognizes.

 

[jazzdude]

The thing that is complicating things for me, I think, is using both FLAC and mp3 files depending on whether I am using a portable or my stereo. It would probably simplify things quite a bit if I converted my FLAC files to ALAC and used Itunes integration with my Squeezebox ... that way I could let iTunes handle the organization. The only problem is that the lossless files use so much more space, I won't be able to fit nearly as much music on my Touch. (Plus the Sansa Clip doesn't play ALAC, but since I just use that for the gym, I can probably keep a separate small set of mp3 files for that).

As for Genius, I tried that once and for some reason it wouldn't find any playlists (other tunes) to go with my music. My tagging should generally be fine. I don't know what the problem was there.

 

[iriverdude]

I've got a Squeezebox and portable system managing both is dead easy. Just have lossless on the computer in the database for your Slimcenter Winamp and desktop computers. For lossy have it on another directory not liked to anything

All you have to do is copy the ogg/mp3 files from that directory to your MP3 player in Windows Explorer or Mac/Linux verison of file management.

 

[TubeStack]

Yeah, it can suck up a lot of your time. Sometimes I enjoy it and am in the mood for filing, organizing, labeling, etc, sometimes it's a frustrating annoyance - usually it's the former, though. I generally don't mind puttering around with the files.

I really liked Media Jukebox and switched to it for a while, but now that I'm rebuilding my library with all ALAC music, I've gone back to only using iTunes. It's too much of a pain trying to coordinate/match the two programs (esp. with album art).

 

[ericj]

I have about 105 gigs of music, most of it mp3/ogg/m4a or other lossy format, so i can say quite simply: Not nearly enough. It's a mess.

 

[skudmunky]

Everything I rip goes into this file tree: Lossy / Lossless, Artist, Album, and is properly tagged. Right now my music collection is 90% organized and sorted and its just something I've done forever, so it never took much work. I don't ever sort by genre though.

 

[Emooze]

I have EAC set up so when I rip CD's it puts them in order. Of course tagging stuff that the databases can't find it what takes up my time.

 

[crossmd]

Since I insist on not using ALAC,(Just for for future compatibility's sake..) I rip all of my discs into FLAC using Max (on a Mac) which is sort of an issue for organizational purposes, as the information server Max uses is no where near as comprehensive as that of itunes. So needless to say, I spend a fair amount of time doing organization.

Being able to use FLAC through Songbird while running my library through an external makes up for the hassle, IMO

 

[mbd2884]

I don't.

I just name all my music files in this format:

Artist - Album - Track # - Title

It's been working great for me the last 5 years, no reason to change yet.

I refuse to rip ALAC as I think Steve Job's can shove his demonic mission of proprietary up his @ss

 

[CDBacklash]

I started with what i consider organised, and havnt touched it since. I've seen some other peoples libraries (tracks upon tracks in one folder). Cant imagine it being easy to work with, especially when im of the ilk who listen to whole albums

 

[demoNMaCHiN3]

i spend roughly 26 hours a day organizing

 

[Henmyr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mbd2884 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't. I just name all my music files in this format: Artist - Album - Track # - Title It's been working great for me the last 5 years, no reason to change yet. I refuse to rip ALAC as I think Steve Job's can shove his demonic mission of proprietary up his @ss

Some portable players have problems viewing long filenames (Artist - Album - Track # - Title) so I now organize everything as

Genre\Artist\Album\Track. Title

It's not the best way as it sometimes is a very hard to classify which genre of music it is, but I like it more than having one big folder full of artists.