How to organise your music collection?

Posted by: Klout10 on 13 September 2009

Hi,

Currently, I've ripped over 300 CD's to the HDX and the following question arises:

How do you organise all these digital files? I love to brouwse throug all artists and band names, but find it rather inconvenient that a lot of artists/bands are found under the letter "T" because of the word "The" in the band name. E.g.: The Cure, The Cult, The Rolling Stones, The Breeders, The ...

Therefore, I consider to use the DTC in order to rename e.g. The Cure into: "Cure, The". The same applies for e.g. Amy Winehouse, which I've renamed into: "Winehouse, Amy" so that these albums can be found under "W" instead of "A".

How do you guys organise your digital music collection?

Regards,
Michel
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by DaveBk
I use Squeezecentre which has an 'ignored words' list which is used to exclude words which you do not wish to include in the index. Perhaps the HDX has a similar feature somewhere?
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by Klout10
Hmmm, not that I know of. Could be a nice feature...

Regards,
Michel
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by DaveBk
Perhaps Naim have included more flexible indexing in the forthcoming software update. I like Squeezecentre - it has lots of really useful features to fine tune how the library is managed. One adantage of an open source development approach is hundreds of developers working on all the great features that they as users of the software want.
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by Klout10
One further question: do you sort in the way "Firstname Lastname" or "Lastname, Firstname"??
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by DaveBk
I prefer Firstname Lastname, it seems more natural.
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by Klout10
quote:
Originally posted by DaveBk:
I prefer Firstname Lastname, it seems more natural.


In some way, this makes sense...
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by BigH47
PD
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by klotis
quote:
You can search the band name, just leave the the out!Originally posted by Klout10:
Hi,

Currently, I've ripped over 300 CD's to the HDX and the following question arises:

How do you organise all these digital files? I love to brouwse throug all artists and band names, but find it rather inconvenient that a lot of artists/bands are found under the letter "T" because of the word "The" in the band name. E.g.: The Cure, The Cult, The Rolling Stones, The Breeders, The ...

Therefore, I consider to use the DTC in order to rename e.g. The Cure into: "Cure, The". The same applies for e.g. Amy Winehouse, which I've renamed into: "Winehouse, Amy" so that these albums can be found under "W" instead of "A".

How do you guys organise your digital music collection?

Regards,
Michel
Posted on: 13 September 2009 by gary1 (US)
Firstname,lastname makes the most sense to me.
Posted on: 14 September 2009 by Eloise
Last name, First name makes more sense to me :-) It makes sense to me to have Jacob Dylan next to Bob Dylan.

Ask 100 people and you'll probably get close to 50/50 split? I think in HMV they still order artists under their last name as the primary sort (not that that makes it any more or less right).

Eloise
Posted on: 14 September 2009 by Nathaniel
I sort by:

Lastname, Firstname for classical composers
Firstname Lastname for everything else.

E.g.:

Beethoven, Ludwig van
Bob Dylan
Chopin, Frederic
The Cure

Though it seems inconsistent, intuitively it works for me.

iTunes automatically ignores "the" prefices, but it would be nice to be able to configure other exceptions. Examples might be: 'van' as above, or 'de' so that Guillaume de Machaut or Christobal de Morales could be listed as 'de Machaut, Guillaume' rather than 'Machaut, Guillaume de' etc. But besides 'the', it doesn't matter that much to me.

I use the 'Artist' tag for composers since iTunes (like all the media players I've seen) are very heavily biased towards sorting by artist--the 'composer' tag is an afterthought.
Posted on: 14 September 2009 by BigH47
Surname, then First for solo artists , Alphabetic for groups. Can't fathom a decent system for classical, probably Composer surname.
Posted on: 14 September 2009 by winkyincanada
It doesn't matter to me. If I'm after something specific, I just use the search function in iTunes. It takes surprisingly few letters to bring up a particular artist or composer, or track down an album or song. I can't ever imagine going back to physical media.
Posted on: 14 September 2009 by Eloise
quote:
Originally posted by Nathaniel:
I sort by:

Lastname, Firstname for classical composers
Firstname Lastname for everything else.
[...]
Though it seems inconsistent, intuitively it works for me.

I think you hit the nail on the head - you need to decide what is intuitive for you to use. Most people will realise if they can't find Bob Dylan under B it's probably under D if you let them browse your library.

Classical is difficult - though I've just found with iTunes 9 it's best to put the Orchestra / Performer as the Artist, and use the composer field correctly. Then the new "view" for classical works well showing one column for Composer and the second selection column for grouping which is my case is the musical work. I just wish iTunes would add "Conductor" and maybe a couple of custom labelled fields.

Eloise
Posted on: 14 September 2009 by pcstockton
It does not really matter what your nomenclature is provided you always follow it.

I personally leave the "The" in front when applicable. And I go by Firstname Lastname. I suppose I just started that way and set-up EAC accordingly later on.

Basically, my directory structure mimics how I would refer to the artist. Same goes for classical.

The Cure - Seventeen Seconds (1980) {2005 Abbey Road Remaster} [FLAC]

Bob Dylan - Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973) [V0]

Boulez - Pli Selon Pli (2002) {Christine Schafer - Ensemble Intercontemporain} [FLAC]

or

Messiaen - Quartet for the End of Time, Theme and Variations (1991) {Loriod, Poppen, Fischer - Dieskau, Meyer} [FLAC]

But that's just me....
Posted on: 17 September 2009 by mudwolf
Interesting, my vinyl is by group name without THE, but all Beatles are together with solo careers. I'd do Individuals by Last name, First name.

Classical is by composer or artist whichever feels right.

Doing this digitally will present problems. I was even thinking of doing 2 minis, one for rock popular and other for Classical since I have couple dozen operas tho rarely played.
Posted on: 20 September 2009 by Fraser Hadden
For rock on 'hard media': I store by date of release, but with compilations stored alphabetically on another shelf.

This approach:

(a) throws up interesting juxtapositions and prompts listening to all of a collection rather than the favoured 10% played recurrently if all are arranged alphabetically;

(b) makes it likely that newly-acquired material needs insertion at or near the end of the sequence, obviating the bore of shunting n CDs along when you acquire Aaron and the Aardvarks' new release!

Worth considering for advantage (a) with 'soft media'?

Fraser
Posted on: 24 September 2009 by winkyincanada
Didn't the guy in "High Fidelity" simply arrange his collection in chronological order of aquisition, thus augmenting his life-history by way of a "soundtrack". I actually thought it to be a pretty cool idea.
Posted on: 26 September 2009 by ferenc
quote:
Originally posted by winkyincanada:
Didn't the guy in "High Fidelity" simply arrange his collection in chronological order of aquisition, thus augmenting his life-history by way of a "soundtrack". I actually thought it to be a pretty cool idea.


Actually I used to find sometimes tracks this way, just one click away in iTunes.