Reorganising the music files on my hard drive

[mangocrazy]

I have nearly 200Gb of music files on my PC; a mixture of files ripped from CD and vinyl as well as FLAC and MP3 files that come 'free' when you buy vinyl. I have them organised in a way that made sense to me when I started amassing a digital collection over 20 years ago, but which makes scant sense now. They are organised according to the medium they originally came on, so I have directories named CD, Vinyl, FLAC, MP3 and (in the case of vinyl) there are sub-directories according to the year in which I digitised them; i.e 2005, 2006 etc etc. I know it makes no sense now, but it did then. CDs are organised slightly more sensibly, according to artist.

I'm thinking of setting up a new drive, with every artist having their own directory and working through the collection, copying stuff irrespective of source into the correct artist directory. I'll probably have sub-directories for where I have more than one album by any given artist.

Is there a way of using links from the 'new' directory structure to point to the 'real' files in my convoluted old directory structure, thereby saving on disc space, or am I setting myself up for a maintenance nightmare? Or should I just bite the bullet and make duplicates of all the files, but arranged logically and sensibly?

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

You could create shortcuts in a directory to the existing files, or you could just cut and paste them into your new directory, this doesn't actually move the file on the hard drive but just changes the file header so that the operating system thinks it's in a different place (that's a really bad description of what it does btw)

[DefTrap]

I believe that you can modify the properties of each file (there are numerous parameters) or entire folders at a time. So then whatever music software you are using can do the sorting / filtering for you. So your own file structuring is moot really
I play my ripped music from auld Cds using MusicMonkey but tbh that's a bit passé and I tend to just use Spotify for laziness

[A_morti]

Are the mp3 files tagged with data like artist, album, title? I assume the ones you've bought will be, but if you've ripped it yourself then it depends if you did it yourself or just let it import with "track 1, track 2, etc."
If that data is there, you can let iTunes at your music folder, and it will "consolidate" everything into its own library folder (which could be on a different external hard drive), organised into subfolders like you want. You can tell it to leave the originals alone, too.
At the end if you don't want iTunes, you can delete it and just keep the neatly organised folder structure.
Pretty sure you can get iTunes free. Maybe get it, and let it at a sample of your music, see if it works like you want?
I guess other software might do the same too.

[mangocrazy]

You could create shortcuts in a directory to the existing files, or you could just cut and paste them into your new directory, this doesn't actually move the file on the hard drive but just changes the file header so that the operating system thinks it's in a different place (that's a really bad description of what it does btw)

Yeah, understand that - it's all OS smoke and mirrors, basically. I'll probably do a complete dump of my 'Music' drive to a couple of spare HDDs I have knocking about as backups, then go ahead and move everything into a sensible structure.

[mangocrazy]

Are the mp3 files tagged with data like artist, album, title? I assume the ones you've bought will be, but if you've ripped it yourself then it depends if you did it yourself or just let it import with "track 1, track 2, etc."
If that data is there, you can let iTunes at your music folder, and it will "consolidate" everything into its own library folder (which could be on a different external hard drive), organised into subfolders like you want. You can tell it to leave the originals alone, too.
At the end if you don't want iTunes, you can delete it and just keep the neatly organised folder structure.
Pretty sure you can get iTunes free. Maybe get it, and let it at a sample of your music, see if it works like you want?
I guess other software might do the same too.

None of my stuff is bought, I've ripped all of it. And I really, really distrust Apple and all their protectionist, monopolistic, anti-competitive works. I have no intention of using iTunes, I've heard so many stories about iTunes locking access to stuff that people have bought and paid for. If I use any such product it will be fully open source.

[A_morti]

None of my stuff is bought, I've ripped all of it.

You specifically said some of it came as a package with buying the vinyl.

[Horse]

None of my stuff is bought, I've ripped all of it.

You specifically said some of it came as a package with buying the vinyl.

I read that as accidentally supplied with a digital copy, after connecting the appropriate cables

[Count Steer]

None of my stuff is bought, I've ripped all of it.

You specifically said some of it came as a package with buying the vinyl.

I've bought a few CDs that offered a free download as well. Amazon do or did that a lot. I assumed that was what was meant too.

[Horse]

None of my stuff is bought, I've ripped all of it.

You specifically said some of it came as a package with buying the vinyl.

I read that as accidentally supplied with a digital copy, after connecting the appropriate cables

None of my stuff is bought, I've ripped all of it

[mangocrazy]

Good grief. Talk about picking up on minor details. The first sentence of my initial post in this thread read "I have nearly 200Gb of music files on my PC; a mixture of files ripped from CD and vinyl as well as FLAC and MP3 files that come 'free' when you buy vinyl." I have never specifically bought any downloads be they from iTunes, Amazon or whatever.

[Count Steer]

Good grief. Talk about picking up on minor details. The first sentence of my initial post in this thread read "I have nearly 200Gb of music files on my PC; a mixture of files ripped from CD and vinyl as well as FLAC and MP3 files that come 'free' when you buy vinyl." I have never specifically bought any downloads be they from iTunes, Amazon or whatever.

But did you get any as part of a purchase? That's why I thought you said 'free' in inverted commas ie not 'specifically' bought but included as part of a purchase.




Or.....to put it another way.....bought.

[mangocrazy]

I buy vinyl, quite a lot of it. If it comes with a digital download I don't refuse it, but unless it's in WAV or FLAC format I rip it anyway (in WAV format). If it doesn't come with a DD I just rip it as usual.

But I don't buy digital per se. I buy physical media and create digital copies thereof.