How do you sort your music files?

[Superflyer]

So I have probably several hundred mp3 files, if not into the thousands, and I am trying to find the best way to store them so I can find what I want faster. I have music from many different genres and different decades. Everytime I try to go one route I find a problem.
For example I went by Genre then by artist but that create to many sub folders with only a few files in each one. Then I went genre and decade but that was to many.
So how do you store your music files?

Also another side question, when naming your files do you name it by just the song title or do you add the artist in there as well?

[Bill Bumface]

I think there is something called TuneUp that I used that was really good (but not free). It rips through your library and cleans up all the metadata (and does a pretty good job of getting songs right that have no metadata).

It let you restrict your genres. So for example, if you had Hip Hop, Hip-Hop, R&B, Rap, Gangster Rap, East Coast Rap in your library, you could restrict your genres to just Rock, Rap, Pop, Blues... etc, and all the Rap sub-genres would get reclassified as "Rap" so it's much easier to browse by genre.

[photon]

Mostly I don't, I just make sure that the ID3 tags in the files is correct, then any music playing software (iTunes, Songbird, MediaMonkey) will let you find what you want based on any parameter that's in the ID3 tags (Artist, Title, Genre, Year, etc).

Then it doesn't matter that they're all in one massive directory.

I use MediaMonkey to do most of my organizing though, and I do place them into directories by Genre/Artist/Album but I never browse to the music through those directories, so they could all just sit in one directory and I'd never know.

[Muffins]

All my sorting is done within Winamp. With the exception of albums, all my songs are dumped into the same folder. With just one folder, you can do a quick search for what you're looking for rather then clicking through a bunch of sub-folders.

Artist - Song name

[cDnStealth]

For bands I sort by Artist then Year. So I'd have a folder for the artist's name and then sub-folders for every album with the title being pre-fixed with the year. So if I were to search on my iPod for say the artist Amon Amarth, an album under that name would look like "2006 - With Oden On Our Side." I like it this way so I can browse my music in the order it was released by Artist. I also re-label the genre tags because iTunes assigns them all over the place. One band can have several different labels for different albums for the same type of music. I don't need 50 different classifications of rock.

[llama64]

I buy most of my music off iTunes now. Been a few years since I ripped a CD and had to manually fill in it's ID3 tags.

Mainly I play albums - just search for the album and play it directly. Otherwise I create simple playlists in iTunes for specific stuff.

I'm really, really lazy when it comes to music. Learned a long time ago that I have very little patience for sorting things - much rather search for them (by title or album). iTunes handles the rest for me, despite being a gong show of a resource hog.

[Rathji]

^
I just let iTunes do it. If something ends up in the wrong place, I fix it but for the most part I don't care.

[Northendzone]

I just keep it simple and file all my music as either bieber or non-bieber.....

I do keep it simple though - rock, rap, mellow, country, pop and metal

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

For bands I sort by Artist then Year. So I'd have a folder for the artist's name and then sub-folders for every album with the title being pre-fixed with the year. So if I were to search on my iPod for say the artist Amon Amarth, an album under that name would look like "2006 - With Oden On Our Side." I like it this way so I can browse my music in the order it was released by Artist. I also re-label the genre tags because iTunes assigns them all over the place. One band can have several different labels for different albums for the same type of music. I don't need 50 different classifications of rock.

If you're using iTunes, you can just put year of release in the Sort Album field and it'll order them by release date. The only real wrinkle is you have to account for multiple albums released by the same artist in the same year to keep the order correct.

[cDnStealth]

Originally Posted by opendoor

If you're using iTunes, you can just put year of release in the Sort Album field and it'll order them by release date. The only real wrinkle is you have to account for multiple albums released by the same artist in the same year to keep the order correct.

This doesn't work for your iPod though. I rename my music files so that I can find them easier on my iPod.

[freedogger]

I listen to the same few songs over and over again until I am sick of them. Then I move on to a few more. Keeps things pretty simple.