by captain paranoia » Wed Jun 28, 2017 5:47 pm
I prefer my physical storage to reflect the actual CDs in my collection, or the source I got them from (if downloaded). This means I can re-rip if necessary, or know exactly where a track came from.
So, since most of my music is from CDs I own, I keep most of it in a directory with my name as root. If I have music I have downloaded, it goes into a folder at the same level as my folder, named with the source.
Below that, I have a fairly standard
<Album Artist>/<Album>/<Track#:02> Title.ext
So the full path is
<root>/Media/Music/<source>/<Album Artist>/<Album> [Disc #]/<Track#:02> Title.ext
There is no need to break this into date, genre, etc, as those can be addressed with metadata sorting (the Logical view). All good media managers support Physical and Logical views of your library.
For the the track filename, I use a 2-digit, leading zero track number, as this helps poor DLNA clients get album track order right.
I keep individual discs of multi-disc albums in separate folders, rather than using a disc prefix in the track filename. Again, this reflects the physical disc collection.
For 'Various Artists' albums, the Title consists of <Artist> - <Title>. This reflects the fact that I had hand-typed lists of CD track titles entered by hand dating back decades, and I used these to name ripped tracks (using my own unix scripting system), and then extract metadata from the path and track name, before I was online and able to access the likes of FreeDB.
Most online metadata databases have nonsense for genres. I prefer to override them with my own genres. Genre is subjective, and mostly nonsense anyway...
ps. Whatever you do, rip to a lossless format. You only want to rip once. Do it right. Do it lossless. HDD is cheap. Your time is not. Your physical health is important (back pain)... I'd suggest FLAC.
I prefer my physical storage to reflect the actual CDs in my collection, or the source I got them from (if downloaded). This means I can re-rip if necessary, or know exactly where a track came from.
So, since most of my music is from CDs I own, I keep most of it in a directory with my name as root. If I have music I have downloaded, it goes into a folder at the same level as my folder, named with the source.
Below that, I have a fairly standard
<Album Artist>/<Album>/<Track#:02> Title.ext
So the full path is
<root>/Media/Music/<source>/<Album Artist>/<Album> [Disc #]/<Track#:02> Title.ext
There is no need to break this into date, genre, etc, as those can be addressed with metadata sorting (the Logical view). All good media managers support Physical and Logical views of your library.
For the the track filename, I use a 2-digit, leading zero track number, as this helps poor DLNA clients get album track order right.
I keep individual discs of multi-disc albums in separate folders, rather than using a disc prefix in the track filename. Again, this reflects the physical disc collection.
For 'Various Artists' albums, the Title consists of <Artist> - <Title>. This reflects the fact that I had hand-typed lists of CD track titles entered by hand dating back decades, and I used these to name ripped tracks (using my own unix scripting system), and then extract metadata from the path and track name, before I was online and able to access the likes of FreeDB.
Most online metadata databases have nonsense for genres. I prefer to override them with my own genres. Genre is subjective, and mostly nonsense anyway...
ps. Whatever you do, rip to a lossless format. You only want to rip once. Do it right. Do it lossless. HDD is cheap. Your time is not. Your physical health is important (back pain)... I'd suggest FLAC.