Music Management and File Structure Advice Needed

[Scribbl3]

I personally organize my music in folders (dance, edm, rock, etc). That way I can go from computer to computer and switch between drives with ease.

I also make sure each file is named "artist - title" and that the genre tag has the genre and the year, and the key is in the comments.

[Tw1x]

is there nobody using beatport pro?
because i will move to it in the next days...

[mostapha]

When I buy songs, they go in a folder based on the date, as in

/.../Music/YYYY-MM-DD/...

and they're completely flat in there, just dumped as they came from the store. iTunes is set to use that /.../Music/ folder and to not keep it organized. They get put in a YYYYMMDD playlist in iTunes and if the bought files were flac, alac, or wav, they immediately get transcoded to aiff and all the metadata is set properly (the originals are deleted). A quick listen or two and they're either put into my 000-CURRENT playlist (now also in iTunes since Traktor caught up with the times) or deleted. I have a few "sound" playlists (funky, tech-y, trance-y, etc.) that are based on how the track feels and are pretty manual as well as a smart playlist for tracks that are in 000-CURRENT but not in one of those (called current_unsorted) and smart playlists for tracks that are in more than one of those sound playlists.

I pretty much never interact with the files themselves again...just via iTunes and Traktor.

[ImNoDJ]

When I buy songs, they go in a folder based on the date, as in

/.../Music/YYYY-MM-DD/...

and they're completely flat in there, just dumped as they came from the store. iTunes is set to use that /.../Music/ folder and to not keep it organized. They get put in a YYYYMMDD playlist in iTunes and if the bought files were flac, alac, or wav, they immediately get transcoded to aiff and all the metadata is set properly (the originals are deleted). A quick listen or two and they're either put into my 000-CURRENT playlist (now also in iTunes since Traktor caught up with the times) or deleted. I have a few "sound" playlists (funky, tech-y, trance-y, etc.) that are based on how the track feels and are pretty manual as well as a smart playlist for tracks that are in 000-CURRENT but not in one of those (called current_unsorted) and smart playlists for tracks that are in more than one of those sound playlists.

I pretty much never interact with the files themselves again...just via iTunes and Traktor.

Any particular reason you use AIFF and not ALAC?

[mostapha]

The media players I use on my linux computers (that I use for everything except PT and Traktor) don't play ALAC, and I don't care to figure out how to make them.

Also, I don't care about drive space at all. Storage is really cheap.

[calgarc]

i have a folder called DJ for the current tracks i play, and thats inside a folder called music with various tracks/discographies i enjoy listening to

[ImNoDJ]

The media players I use on my linux computers (that I use for everything except PT and Traktor) don't play ALAC, and I don't care to figure out how to make them.

Also, I don't care about drive space at all. Storage is really cheap.

Does AIFF Tag properly, both in Itunes and Traktor?

Now that NI has completely misled the community about ALAC support, I need an alternative for my 20,000 track library.



http://www.native-instruments.com/en...7.0-or-higher/

[mostapha]

More or less, yeah. The inconsistencies seem to be entirely that iTunes just ignores certain fields regardless of file type.

iTunes doesn't read/write the Intial Key (traktor calls it Key) or Key Text fields, so I just put that information in comments1 and put actual notes about the songs in comments2 (which iTunes also ignores). Sometimes I wish I could listen in iTunes and make notes, but neither MiK nor Traktor will write the key to comments2, so I deal with it.

I also don't have nearly 20,000 files, at least not on my laptop (I have no idea how many are on my NAS). So you might actually have to think about storage costs. For my more reasonable ~300 record "crate" that I keep on my laptop, storage costs are trivial. And the 16TB NAS that cost about 40% what my first macbook did takes care of the archives (and everything else).

[ImNoDJ]

Heres my process:

I only ever buy 320k mp3, CD or WAV/FLAC tracks. All lossless/wav/CD gets ripped to ALAC with dbPoweramp.

I tag them with mp3Tag&Rename.

- Add the buy date to comment or another field that is searchable.
- Correct Genre, label, album art.
- Change track filenames to TrackNo - Artist - Album. The only reason I even do this is a backup so i can re-extract tags from the filenames if the metadata gets corrupted.


I keep them in a folder structure that is just Genre/Artist/Album.

I then import to itunes, by using ItunesFolderWatch, which updates the library based on a folder of your choosing. I never have to manually import, just add the tracks to folder structure, and they import automatically via folderwatch.

I listen to the tracks again in Itunes, and make sure I really want them in my DJ collection.

I then import to the collection, into a playlist with the date.

I dont set manual beatgrids ever, but I do check the auto gain level, and hit the tap tempo to check the tempo is correct.

When I finish for the night, I close Traktor and run a script on my desktop that backs up my Itunes profile, my Traktor profile and my actual music library, and then automatically shuts the machine down when finished.

I have two Traktor computers. The desktop has an internal drive with the actual music files on it, with the drive letter M.

The laptop has an external usb with the music files on it, and it is also assigned as M.

The external usb gets mirrored from the M drive on the desktop.

This means I can finish my session on the desktop, run my backup script for the external, then plug the external into the laptop, open Traktor, and everything is exactly the same as it was a minute ago on the desktop.

This only works as data only flows one direction. I never copy new things to the external until they have been through the process, and the external is always written over.

This means I just have to backup my history on the laptop with a script in case I want to refer to it later.

[Glitchwerks]

is there nobody using beatport pro?
because i will move to it in the next days...

I'd love to try it out, but Mac only.