Hello!
This question is mainly directed to people who use navidrome or similar software. How do you organize your music library in regards to files? Do you keep them all in one folder? Or folders with author names? Or folders where music belongs based on genre? I can’t get the right way to organize my music library, hence this question.
Thanks in advance for all the answers!
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I tag metadata on everything with MusicBrainz Picard, and then store it in a
/{Album Artist}/{Album}/{Track}hierarchy.Seconded. Precisely how I organize things. I use MusicBrainz Picard to clean up metadata before adding music to my collection.
I tried both Lidarr and Beets before, but their automation tended to pick matches with a “eh, close enough” attitude, so I just decided I’d do it properly myself.
Well, I can say Picard has been pretty well flawless for me. And in those few instances where it misidentifies something, you can always do a manual search and match.
Nine times out of ten my process is to load the tracks into Picard, cluster them, look them up, do a quick scan to confirm it looks good, and then save the updated metadata. For those few times it messes up, I just reload the files, cluster them, then do a manual search to find the appropriate release. It really is very good at its job.
Beets is my favorite tagger since I prefer CLI. Match making policy can be adjusted and discogs plugin can be added I recommend the folder structure /artist/album/track
Music folder > Artist name > Album Name > Numbered tracks.
Since all the files contain metadata, any music player I use can automatically sort my collection however I like.
Honestly, keeping the actual folder structure simple is more than enough. You aren’t playing tracks from the file manager.
My thought process exactly
Wait, you guys are organizing your music files?
This is a copy of an older comment of mine:
Everything is tagged and organized using Picard. I use a modified version of https://community.metabrainz.org/t/repository-for-neat-file-name-string-patterns-and-tagger-script-snippets/2786/156.
I’ve been meaning to write a guide for how it works. My current WIP script can be found here: https://gitea.baerentsen.space/FrederikBaerentsen/DataHoarder_scripts/src/branch/master/Picard.txt
My files is setup like:
~/Music/A/Artist/(YYYY) Title [Type - Format] [MusicBrainz ID]/[side] Title [length][Bandwidth].exteg:
/Music/Q/Queen/(1973) Queen [12 Inch Vinyl - FLAC] [1783da6a-9315-3602-a488-1738eb733a0f] /A1. Keep Yourself Alive [3m48s][320+ 48000KHz VBR 2ch].flac /B1. Liar [6m26s][320+ 48000KHz VBR 2ch].flac /Music/B/Bruce Springsteen/(2019) Western Stars [CD - FLAC] [a50ffce7-0532-41a7-b85b-7d02f8c7af00] /01. Hitch Hikin' [3m38s][320+ 96000KHz VBR 2ch].flac /02. The Wayfarer [4m18s][320+ 96000KHz VBR 2ch].flacif the album isn’t a studio album, theres an extra folder. eg:
/Music/B/Bruce Springsteen/Compilation/(1996) The Lost Masters I_ Alone in Colts Neck (The Complete Nebraska Session) [CD - FLAC] [8531e427-495a-443a-8fc3-0dd2ef459c93] /01. Nebraska [4m27s][320+ 44100KHz VBR 2ch].flac /Music/P/Phil Collins/Singles/(1981) In the Air Tonight [7 Inch Vinyl - FLAC] [e805dd53-9257-4c78-8bff-a95f0cdd767e] /A. In the Air Tonight [5m29s][320+ 96000KHz VBR 2ch].flacI have special categories for:
Compilations Cover Tribute Singles Live EPIf an album contains multiple disks, there’s an extra folder. Eg:
/Music/M/Michael Jackson/Compilation/(2004) The Ultimate Collection [CD - FLAC] [2d37b204-ed26-3795-9710-1514f0fd931a] /Disc 1 /01. I Want You Back [3m00s][320+ 44100KHz VBR 2ch].flacFor soundtracks it’s:
~/Music/Soundtrack/T/(YYYY) Title [Type - Format] [MusicBrainz ID]/[side] Title [length][Bandwidth].exteg.
/Music/Soundtrack/L/(2001) The Lord of the Rings_ The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings [Digital Media - FLAC] [cad73ae7-5966-4de1-bad4-4a603891fd27] /Disk 1/01. Prologue_ One Ring To Rule Them All [7m15s][320+ 48000KHz VBR 2ch].flacBeen using this for 3+ years and it’s solid.
I’ll try and make a better write up at some point and share my script.
This setup also works flawlessly with Plex + Prism. I run Picard in a docker container and access it over web, so it can run on my headless Debian server.
reworking the whole library, I had 1.5 TB of mp3s, but they were super messy organized. Sure, I could have gone through organizing it but still mp3s suck.
So I’m starting over with a FLAC only music library. I use Navidrome on a local server and with a Subsonic client on my phone I can choose to download certain songs or playlists to use when I’m away.
CD quality FLACs are the minimum for me. They are nineties technology and still most digital music isn’t even close to that. I find it hilarious how Spotify is still serving mp3s.
Spotify serves mp3s because it uses less bandwidth and most people can’t tell the difference on their 30€ Bluetooth headset.
Spotify serves mp3s because it uses less bandwidth and most people can’t tell the difference on their 30€ Bluetooth headset.
I think this highlights a bigger issue when it comes to this discussion.
The issue isn’t the mp3 format – for the most part, the format of any lossy encoder can sound good with the right settings. The problem is that, unlike flac, all encoded lossy files are essentially untrustworthy audio formats. So when people say mp3 sounds bad, it’s only a half truth in the same way that it’s a half truth to say that people cannot tell a difference. You are putting trust in the person who encoded the audio to make the right choice and the encoder is putting trust in the idea that the person consuming the media can’t tell the difference.
When it comes to being cheap on bandwidth since most users can’t hear it, that’s a huge cop-out being made for a company that can do better. While Apple is pretty notorious for making terrible decisions for arbitrary reasons, even they respect the user enough to allow you to opt into higher audio format quality. It’s decisions like these that cement Apple as the kings of the creative computer user.
Where do you get FLACs?
You rip your cds or buy direct from the artists (he says without suggesting you can easily find everything for free online)
yes, pretty much this.
Bandcamp and Qobuz sell high quality FLACs.
Other way to do it is subscribing to Tidal HiFi tier and using tidal downloaded to legally download FLACs with your account. But this supports artists less than actually buying from them in Bandcamp.
This is the most ethical way of doing it. I respect it
soulseek
Spotify serves OGG Vorbis, not mp3
The lidarr way.
/music/Artist_Name/Album_Name/
Lidarr does the management and either stores soundtracks in
/data/media/soundtrackor music under/data/media/music
Sorted by folder is per artist.Yeah, lidarr just takes care of it, and plexarr for playback.
All my music rips go into the Lidarr indexer, and it handles the rest. Playback handled by Plex
I use musicbrainz Picard to sort it for me and then host it with jellyfin.
/artist initial/artist name/album name(It’s a fool’s errand trying to create a folder scheme that accounts for every classification edge case. Accept the mess!)Tagging is outsourced to the BT tracker community. Playback via cmus or Emby.
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My music library is such fire it’s uncontainable.
beets is a godsend for managing the file layout. If you need to make changes down the line it makes it super easy to migrate
the amount of plugins are also amazing
convert non-lossy files automatically to aac? fetch lyrics? push updates to mpd/sonos/jellyfin?
I don’t know if this will help, but I’ve been using Plex to manage my music and other audio for more than a decade. It pulls in metadata from online sources and allows me to search or apply filters. That is a lot more versatile than anything I could do directly with the files.
If you aren’t interested in running your own server, look at some of the more sophisticated player apps. Many of them can provide similar metadata features. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about how the files are physically organized.
