Sorting out your music

I’ve decided to take the time to clean up my MP3 tags, but I’ve already run into a problem. How do fellow forum readers sort through their Final Fantasy music? What do you write in for artist? I notice that some just write in Uematsu for the artist, but taht doesn’t quite seem right. Any opinions?

Well, I have two ways of sorting my music. It depends on whether it’s the full album or if it’s a single track.

For full albums, I usually go by album title. Within my MP3 archive, I’d create a folder with the album name and drop every single MP3 from the album into said folder. I’m also experimenting with the idea of having a superceding folder with the artist name (i.e. [Nubuo Uematsu] -> [Final Fantasy VIII Disc 3] -> 01 – Eyes On Me.mp3) but haven’t implemented it across all my computers yet.

For single tracks, I usually go by genre. For example, have a folder for oldies, another folder for country, a folder for jPop, and so on.

i put square-enix as the artist for all the games they made. i have tons of soundtracks from them. its too confusin as far as composers go to remember who did what game.

i put square-enix as the artist for all the games they made. i have tons of soundtracks from them. its too confusin as far as composers go to remember who did what game.

Sounds like a good idea. With exceptions for the likes of Faye Wong and Black Mages, that should work out very easily.

What about others?

Uh….standard procedure for all videogame albums is to look up their credits on Mobygames and look for who is credited with the sound. They go in the artist field. But only up to three, after that I just put "et al" (Latin for "and so on", roughly).

As for how I completely organize my music….You don’t wanna know. Suffice it to say it is a long, arduous, and fuzzy process.

all music goes to my music folder, simple as that.
as long as its not an album (say, an entire ost from a game/movie/etc which will get its separate folder) they all stay in the same place.

I keep my general music separate from my vgm/movie/production/television soundtracks. I have two music folders named "Music Vault I" for general music and "Music Vault II" for the soundtracks. Within each of those I have one folder named "-Single Tracks Only" for those miscellaneous tracks I find here and there. Full albums or soundtracks go in there own separate folder in this order:

General Music:
Artist..Title.(Year)
example: Uriah.Heep..Very.Eavy…Very.Umble.(1970)

Soundtracks:
Title.(Type)
example: Nuns.On.The.Run.(OST)

What I mean regarding the soundtrack types is whether it’s a video game (VGS) a various artists soundtrack (OST) or a score (OS). It’s really confusing in the request threads when they ask for a soundtrack when they mean score. Sometimes I put a music label instead of a type. I realize this more organized than most people really bother with but when my collection began rising in the triple digits I knew I had to do something.

Commercial Releases (COM):
BSX = BSX Records
CBS = CBS
COL = Colombia
EPI = Epic
JET = Jet Records
LSR = Lake Shore Records
MIL = Milan
SBMG = Sony BMG
SCL = Sony Classical
SOM = Sony Music
SRC = Sony Records
VAR = Varese Sarabande
VGS = Video Game Soundtrack
MCA = MCA Records

Limited Film Score Releases (LFS):
FSM = Film Score Monthly
INT = Intrada
LLL = La-La-Land
MSM = Movie Score Media
PER = Percepto
PRO = Prometheus
PER = Perseverence
VCL = Varese Club Limited

Non-Commercial Releases (NCR):
BOOT = Unauthorized Bootleg Recording

Foreign Releases:
GDM = GDM
DMO = DigitMovies
RAI = Rai Trade

Promotional Film Scores (PFS):
OAP = Oscar Academy Promo/For Your Consideration
PRO = Promo Score
WPP = Wrap Party Promo

Unreleased Film Scores (UFS):
COM = Complete Score
COST = Complete Soundtrack
EXP = Expanded Score
MOST = Mini Soundtrack
REJ = Rejected Score
REC = Recording Sessions
UNS = Unused Score
VGR = Video Game Rip

When tagging mp3’s I generally put the song title/composer/name of soundtrack. Some great sites for researching are…

http://vgmdb.net
http://www.soundtrackcollector.com
http://www.discogs.com

I’m completely disorganized.

Needed room for vastly growing photos I’ve taken so I burn stuff onto discs and then a lot of it delete so some stuff is only on the computer while other stuff is only on burnt discs and I even have 2 DVD-R’s as data discs just to store albums I got just because I thought someone might want them someday.

Soon I must get a huge 1TB external drive and then this won’t be a problem.

Anyone know the best program to re-name and fill in track info? Sometimes tracks come unnamed like from a fan assembled ost or burned disc from an older computer; and being able to just copy/paste the track name, composer, & duration so I could just post it would be nice.

I’m completely disorganized.

Needed room for vastly growing photos I’ve taken so I burn stuff onto discs and then a lot of it delete so some stuff is only on the computer while other stuff is only on burnt discs and I even have 2 DVD-R’s as data discs just to store albums I got just because I thought someone might want them someday.

Soon I must get a huge 1TB external drive and then this won’t be a problem.

Anyone know the best program to re-name and fill in track info? Sometimes tracks come unnamed like from a fan assembled ost or burned disc from an older computer; and being able to just copy/paste the track name, composer, & duration so I could just post it would be nice.

I archive my music on both external hard drives and dvd-roms. (lol I am up to 71 discs of soundtracks & scores alone!!) a good program for tagging is MP3Tag. If the tracks are tagged and you want automate the album info I suggest Post Assitant.:)

http://www.mp3tag.de/en
http://www.xs4all.nl/~mfaas

I also bumped my entire library onto my sister’s computer as a going away present before she left for Europe so everything I has before then is safe on a 2nd computer.

I have a folder called "mp3s" which contains 48,072 files between 4,777 folders. A good sorting method is pretty critical for me. Consider what Zoran said; it’s pretty good advice.

Here’s how I personally keep track of it all:
Within "mp3s" I have two different types of folders: artists and exceptional categories.
The artist folders are pretty simple. If I have at least one complete album by a band that doesn’t fall under one of my "exceptions", it’s sub-folder is just the artist name, followed by a folder for each album labeled Band – (Year) Album. This causes them to sort by release date, which I highly recommend as the best means to sort albums. I also leave a small bitrate tag (say, (-V0)) at the end of the folder if it’s personal rip, something useful to keep in mind if you’re into sharing music. Any other miscellaneous tracks I have by that artist I put in the artist parent folder, NOT my miscellaneous track folder, to keep the latter from getting unwieldy.
In the case of multi-disc albums, I’ll create separate folders with (1), (2), etc and, in the case of a single long work (as opposed to a bonus live or rarities disc) I’ll make a playlist in the parent folder to easily queue up the whole thing.
In the case of split releases, I tend to actually split the recording between the two bands, so I’ll have say, an "Agoraphobic Nosebleed – (1999) The Poacher Diaries" folder with tracks 1-9 and a "Converge – (1999) The Poacher Diaries" folder with tracks 10-15, each under their respective artists. (If I want to listen to both, a quick search on the album title will do the job.)
In the case of tribute albums, I use tagging software to pull the individual artist for each track from the track name and get rid of that nasty "Various" tag, then sort it under the artist being covered as though it were their own release.
All else fall under exceptions.

For the "exceptions", rather than having a completely separate parent folder they’re sorted in "mp3s" as "aaCategory Name". I think this is significant; it keeps everything centralized and still lets me easily access what I’m looking for without ever touching my mouse. (Scrolling through thousands of artist subfolders by mouse is impractical.) So I’ve got aaChristmas, aaClassical, aaCompilations, aaLectures, aaSoundtracks, aaUnsorted, and aaVideogames.

Since I almost always download complete albums and place individual artist tracks alongside them, the Unsorted folder is kept to a bare minimum (537 files at the moment.)
In Compilations I created a few rough sub-categories based on what I have the most of (metal, chiptune, Chinese, etc) and then sorted them therein as Album Title (Year). This could prove problematic if you have a bunch, but with 112 compilation albums it’s still quite manageable for me.
For all else, I aim as close as possible to following the same format as my artists sort: Composer/Composer – (Year) Album. For example, you would find the FF4 soundtrack under mp3s/aaVideogames/Nobuo Uematsu/Nobuo Uematsu – (1991) Final Fantasy IV. Since many soundtracks are collaborative efforts, this can get messy too. In the case of two equal contributing artists, I’ll sort them as one artist (e.g. "Masaharu Iwata & Hitoshi Sakimoto" for the FFT soundtrack). If there are many contributors but one dominate one, I’ll sort it under just that one artist. In every case I’ll tag each track artist as its individual composer, leaving it ambiguous if the information is not available rather than giving credit to the wrong person. You’ll get a few problems this way (My Sonic 3 soundtrack has the hopeless artist tag line "Jun Senoue, Tetsuyuki Maeda, Masaru Setsumaru, Tomonori Sawada, Masayuki Nagao, Sachio Ogawa, Howard Drossin"), but by and large the system works. In these latter cases there is often a group name available for the parent folder. For my WoW soundtracks for example I treat "Blizzard Entertainment" as the artist name on every level except the actual file tags. Where even this isn’t realistic I follow my compilation format (album title (year)).

One last topic before I end my babbling:
Last.fm is, on top of a statistic fan’s paradise, a great way to sync your music, especially when it comes to tagging.
Collaborations: In the case of difficult artist tags (Sonic 3 for example), last.fm will show you the most commonly used tag. I listed its seven contributing artists in the above order (and didn’t put ", and" before the last) because that was the tag most commonly used. Not necessarily right or wrong, it at least keeps your tags consistent with other people’s music collections.
Locations!: Knowing where an artist is from is important, especially when you delve into sub-genres of sub-genres of sub-genres. Last.fm has an artist tagging option that will allow you to sort your collection under one additional field not necessarily available in ID3 or practical in creating a music directory. Most people use this to sort by genre/style, but that’s really not optimal. (What the hell really distinguishes "pagan metal" from "viking metal" anyway?) Musical themes being so frequently region and language-based, tagging by location lets me really get a better grip on things. I tag all of my music by state or country. This lets me, as a basic example, pull "Washington" tags to get a decent list of what grunge bands I have, or as a more useful example, pull "Ukraine" tags to get a list of predominantly folk and black metal bands that tend to share musical traits a more general style/genre tag can’t effectively narrow down.
Transliteration: While I can’t realistically name my folders in kanji or cyrillic and maintain an easy means to sort them, I can still tag the files in their original script. Last.fm is a really easy way to find how a band/album/song should really be written. Thus I have folders like "Nobuo Uematsu – (1991) Final Fantasy IV" with the artist tag 植松伸夫. I can easily tag "Kalevala – (2008) Kudel’ Belosnezhogo L’na/09 – Tam, gde solnce otpravljaetsja v put…" as artist: Калевала, album: Кудель Белоснежного Льна, song: Там, Где Солнце Отправляется в Путь… It’s more respectful towards the artist (if you care about such things), and still readable/able to be pulled on an qwerty keyboard.

I know that’s all way more information than you were looking for, I just got a kick out of writing it since I never really reflected on my sorting system before. Hopefully you can take something useful out of it.

i don’t add the artist. i just leave it as it is.

i sometimes add the album info so i know where it came from.

i think the usual way for a song is to add the singer not the composer. thats how pop music exsits.

ID tags are a bitch, no doubt. But there IS a way around naming each and every single one of them by hand.

First, get ReNamer (http://www.den4b.com/downloads.php?project=ReNamer), a free little app that lets you clean up your filenames in a jiffy.

103_-_finger_eleven_-_other_light
to
103 – Finger eleven – Other Light
in about 2 seconds. Just load ALL of your music into the program.
Add a rule to Clean up "_" "." and conver them to spaces.
Add a rule to capitalize every or just the first word. Voila.

Later on, you can add rules to batch inserting of composers.

That settles the filenames, now to turn those into ID tags.
Most tagging programs should be able to get the tags from filenames. For instance, AIMP2 has it’s own, and the script is let’s say %track% – %artist% – %title%
Of course, you’ll have to change the script accordingly. Some filenames don’t have " – " but have ". " etc, but you get my point.

This is as far as I know the quickest way of taking care of a bunch of music.
I know it took care of my 17000 files in less than an HOUR 😀

Hope I was of some help.

I make play lists myself.
Download full OST and then keep only the songs I like.

Also, I like have File_Names_Like_This.

17000 files? wow. i only have about 3600 myself.

17000 files? wow. i only have about 3600 myself.

Shh don’t mention it, or you’ll awake the demons of the Shrine who got at least one more zero in that number 😀

I’m having trouble organizing my music, too. Although, I worry less about ID3 tags and more about where to put it, how to store it, what formats to use…

Shad seems to have a grip on things, though.

———- Post added at 06:41 AM ———- Previous post was at 06:41 AM ———-

I’m having trouble organizing my music, too. Although, I worry less about ID3 tags and more about where to put it, how to store it, what formats to use…

Shad seems to have a grip on things, though.

I’ve re-tagged about half of my collection (standing at roughly 8300 songs), but as I read Shad’s post about location…

*slaps self*

Shh don’t mention it, or you’ll awake the demons of the Shrine who got at least one more zero in that number 😀

lol

I usually go a-Googlin’ and find out the composers for each FF title. Though I do have FF as its own genre in my collection because I feel it really stands out from other soundtracks or video game scores.