How do you name your MP3's (and what tools do you use for them)

[WeeboTech]

The other related thread on movie naming conventions got me interested in finding out how others organize or name their mp3s.

Also what tools do you use.

 

How do you name your movies?

 

 

For me I use mp3tag. http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html

 

I normally structure and name my Mp3's by collections (genere's or usage for dj'ing)

 

Then it is

 

Artist/Album/Artist - Album - Trackno - Title.mp3

 

For compilations

 

Compilations/Album/Album - Trackno - Artist - Title.mp3

 

It does make for long file names, but it also helps when I move files around since I have 4 major pieces of information in the file name.

 

For DJ archives I do it by genre/Artist/Album,  Genre/Compilations/Album or just Genre/Artist - Title.mp3

 

I'm curious about other naming/organization conventions and tools used to make them.

 

[ccruzen]

It took me a long time but I finally settled on the following:

Artist/Year - Album/Track # - Title.ext

Various Artists/Album - Year/Track # - Artist - Title.ext

I use Tag&Rename on everything.

I like that going into an artist folder the albums are then listed chronologically.

Also, since everything is fully tagged my foobar and xbmc don't care how they're set up.

 

Edit: Oh yeah, I also remove "The" from the beginning of all artists in their tags and folder names.  I've found it way too tedious to determine which artists "The" is technically part of their name and which aren't.

 

Sent from my Evo3D using Tapatalk

 

[lionelhutz]

I tend to do Artist\Album\track## - Title.ext for my file names. Some car decks seem stuck on having to use the filename to pick songs instead of the metadata even though they'll display the metadata while the song plays and to make it worse they also will only display so many characters of the file name. So, using say Artist-Album-Track##-Title.ext for the file name makes it impossible to see the track number or title.

 

Peter

 

[betaman]

+1 for Mp3Tag.  I use one of the default naming conventions (something like Artist - Album - Track No - Title).  This works well except for compilations where I tend to just switch album and artist.

[PhoenixNZ]

Use Tag & Rename, but will look into MP3Tag for the lookup function.

 

As for how I file them I use  Artist\Artist - Title.mp3

 

All the other info is in the id3 tags which can be displayed in Explorer.  Plus most MP3 players use the id3 tags to display the songs info, not the filename.  No Album images cause I listen to my music not look at it.  LOL

 

Also with so many artists releasing many albums, it's highly likely to get more than one copy of the same song, so I don't file by album.

 

This allows me to ensure i don't duplicate the same song.

 

PS, Also drop everything to 128kbps CBR to keep a common format of MP3's.

 

Open to any ideas as my music collection is passing 150Gig.

[WeeboTech]

PS, Also drop everything to 128kbps CBR to keep a common format of MP3's.

 

Open to any ideas as my music collection is passing 150Gig.

I would be the last person to help in this respect. LOL!

 

I have 2-3 archives.

One in

Artist/Album/Artist - Album - Trackno - Title.mp3

 

Another in

CDROMNAME/Artist/Album/Trackno - Title.mp3

 

Another (for DJ'ing)

Genre/Artist - Title.mp3

 

I have over 4-6 TB of music and I may dedicated a single unRAID server to must the music archive since there are so many files.

 

These days, I rip to FLAC and store in the longest file name format.

 

Then use mp3fs to transcode on the fly when needed or copy to another archive when needed.

After that I'll use mp3tag to rename it according to the archive needs.

One of these days I'll get mp3fs running on unRAID. Right now it's just on my XBMC.

 

Since I have good hearing (Which is why I'm bringing this up) 128K CBR just won't cut it.

It becomes especially evident when you are DJ'ing with 2000 watts of power.

 

These days I encode with Lame -alt-preset-extreme or CBR320KB/s since my software and hardware requires mp3's.

i use Virtual DJ Pro and a Numark HDMIX.

[WeeboTech]

+1 for Mp3Tag.  I use one of the default naming conventions (something like Artist - Album - Track No - Title).  This works well except for compilations where I tend to just switch album and artist.

 

Totall agree. See my prior post.

[PhoenixNZ]

PS, Also drop everything to 128kbps CBR to keep a common format of MP3's.

 

Open to any ideas as my music collection is passing 150Gig.

I would be the last person to help in this respect. LOL!

 

I have 2-3 archives.

One in

Artist/Album/Artist - Album - Trackno - Title.mp3

 

Another in

CDROMNAME/Artist/Album/Trackno - Title.mp3

 

Another (for DJ'ing)

Genre/Artist - Title.mp3

 

I have over 4-6 TB of music and I may dedicated a single unRAID server to must the music archive since there are so many files.

 

These days, I rip to FLAC and store in the longest file name format.

 

Then use mp3fs to transcode on the fly when needed or copy to another archive when needed.

After that I'll use mp3tag to rename it according to the archive needs.

One of these days I'll get mp3fs running on unRAID. Right now it's just on my XBMC.

 

Since I have good hearing (Which is why I'm bringing this up) 128K CBR just won't cut it.

It becomes especially evident when you are DJ'ing with 2000 watts of power.

 

These days I encode with Lame -alt-preset-extreme or CBR320KB/s since my software and hardware requires mp3's.

i use Virtual DJ Pro and a Numark HDMIX.

 

I thought my music collect was impressive, but over 4TB puts my little collection to shame. :'(

 

As for CBR, Flac VBR, I understand where your coming from.  Better Quality for the high output.  I'm just listening in the car or mp3 player so just set a Minimum level at what comes off normal CD's.  And while I've got a 500Watt RMS system, the wife won't let me crank it past 10%

 

What I am interested in is MP3Tag and getting id3 info from the net, to correct Genre field.  How does MP3Tag do this?  Does it go on the filename or Artist/Title ID3 tag??

[WeeboTech]

I thought my music collect was impressive, but over 4TB puts my little collection to shame. :'(

 

As for CBR, Flac VBR, I understand where your coming from.  Better Quality for the high output.  I'm just listening in the car or mp3 player so just set a Minimum level at what comes off normal CD's.  And while I've got a 500Watt RMS system, the wife won't let me crank it past 10%

 

What I am interested in is MP3Tag and getting id3 info from the net, to correct Genre field.  How does MP3Tag do this?  Does it go on the filename or Artist/Title ID3 tag??

 

Heh.. it's not a contest, I'm a big music lover. I listen and play.. and now DJ on the side for fun.

I remember early on when MP3's were becoming popular. I encoded my enigma CD's in 128K and it sounded like raw sewage even on my computer speakers.

The swishing and loss of presence disturbed me to no end, I immediately went up to 160 then 192. After 192 I could barely hear the difference. But once you put it through high volume it's a different story.

It all depends on the source content too.

 

Now mp3tag.. This is one of my favorite tagging tools. It can grab tags from filenames based on a pattern of meta characters you define. So if some files are in Artist - title  or Artist - album - title, or whatever, it can grab information from them.

 

You can clean up a while directory of files very rapidly, with a few key strokes, then rename them to your favorite convention.

Alt -1 filename to tag,,  alt -2 tag to filename ,etc, etc.

 

I think it can also grab some info from the net, but I've never used that functionality.

 

My friend gave me gigs and gigs of mp3s from the net and I was able to clean all his mp3's in an afternoon.

(But I also type fast) Once you get the most common meta patterns installed into the mp3tag tool... you can insert and rename really fast.

 

Highly recommend this tool.

[Scottathon]

I like MusicBrainz Picard. It uses acoustic fingerprinting to identify songs against their online database. It works pretty well, and has some neat plugins.

[TRiddle]

I'm a control freak (who also loves music) so I have a much longer than needed process for editing my music...but maybe someone will find some use out of the programs I use.

 

1. Download/rip/"borrow" music (whatever your fancy for getting music is)

1a. (Only necessary if you want a common format like me) Use MediaMonkey (the gold version) to convert all .FLAC (or whatever format) into the highest quality mp3 format

2. Load music into TagScanner

3. Embed all the proper "stuff" into the mp3's using TagScanner

4. Re-name music using TagScanner to "Artist-Album-Track #-Song Title" format

5. Load music into MP3Gain

6. "Baseline" all music to 89dB (this corresponds to the sensitivity of my speakers that I use for my main listening purposes)

7. Move music to unraid server

 

I really don't need to use MediaMonkey, but I like the collection management it offers, so I've stuck with it.  I know, probably too many steps involved above to achieve what I'm achieving, but it satisfies my OCD 

 

 

[S80_UK]

I use dBpowerAmp CD ripper for ripping and initial tagging and then use MP3tag for subsequent clean up.

 

File and folder  names generally artist/album/nn - title.ext  (nn= track number)

 

I have a fair chunk (100+ CDs) of Chinese, Taiwanese, etc music which I tag and name correctly with simplified or complex Chinese characters as needed, but for some purposes I need a version with the file and folder names not to have Asian characters.  So I create a second copy and use MP3tag's smart tagging/renaming features to create alternative filenames based solely on the track number while retaining the Chinese tags.  It works for me.

[bigsing]

Another user of Tag&Rename here.  I do Artist->Album->track number - track title

[jeff.lebowski]

Bulk Rename first, if dBpowerAMP did not properly name. That's rare.

 

Mp3Tag for artist, title, track number, year, genre, and my favorite, ALBUMSORTORDER so iTunes will sort releases from a single artist in the order they were released.