Music Management and File Structure Advice Needed

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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Music Management and File Structure Advice Needed

So after a lengthy battle with my files and having to remove duplicates and such I think Ive got it under control. Im reaching out for some help. What is the most efficient, easiest way to manage music. Is it easier to just dump all your music into one big folder or label your folders with the artists name then put the file in that folder then let Traktor deal with it.. I posted a screenshot of how my music folder is set up it’s your typical c/mymusic arrangement.

file structure.jpg
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It’s gonna differ between DJ’s, who all have seperate ways of doing things. Personally I have mine in date order, with each genre having it’s own tree.

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I personally think its a waste of time having any other information in a track filename than artist and title.

Everything else should be manipulated through a database like Itunes or similar.

If you build a complicated file and folder structure, you are just building a much less powerful and more manual database.

TLDR: File structure doesnt really matter, metadata is where its at.

4

I use iTunes and love it. I know a lot of people hate it, but it is totally idiot proof for me. I have my whole library, then I make playlists based on genres. But I also have all of the fields filled out; genre, BPM, key, date imported, album etc. in case I need to do a search it is all there.

itunes.jpg

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Drag and drop from iTunes into your impeccably set up traktor playlists :slight_smile:

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Sorry but I dont use iTunes.

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You should. Smart playlists are a MILLION times better than folders.

I’ve only been using iTunes for about a year, and my system now is awesome.

You should definitely look into using iTunes instead of a folder structure.

The answer to your original question:

Yes. But tag 'em well, and use Smart Playlists to build your lists.

8

Foobar is a million times better than iTunes. It’s more powerful and versatile. Foobar will also handle every audio format you throw at it, most importantly FLAC, something iTunes and Apple still refuse to incorporate, and that is quite possibly the biggest reason not to use iTunes. ALAC being broken in Traktor 2.7.0+ is a pretty big example of why proprietary file formats are a really big hassle.

The Discogs auto-tagger component from Foobar is capable of automatically tagging files with complete Discogs data. This means record label, catalog number, and other release data gets automatically added. It’s also been really improved with updates lately, which fix a lot of the previous quirks it had.

With the right theme, Foobar can also be a pretty decent looking player as well. Different components can be added to increase versatility. Foobar’s smart playlists can do anything Apple’s can do, if not more since Foobar is capable of handling metadata iTunes can’t.

Foobar also automatically reads any changes to a file instantly. If I edit a track in Traktor, such as rating it or adding a comment, perhaps adjusting the genre, Foobar instantly sees it. iTunes still doesn’t do this.

On Windows PCs, iTunes is a pretty big resource hog, and was nearly unusable for large libraries. Thankfully, the new version of iTunes has seen a very decent increase in performance and this isn’t the case any more.

Foobar isn’t perfect though. It’s pretty confusing to set up and configure for beginning users. Like iTunes, it has some quirks that can be slightly irritating.

Anyway, as for file structure, I have a Music folder which has folders for every letter of the alphabet, and then artist folders inside those, with everything in album folders. I don’t let Traktor “deal” with it, as one of Traktor’s issues is that it won’t put albums in proper track order if the tags aren’t right.

For example, if you buy/download music from Bandcamp, you’ll see that the music tags are similar to this:

Artist Name - 01 - Track Title

This is fine if the album is one artist. If it’s a various artists compilation though, it will display in Traktor in the alphabetical order of the file folder. This means tracks will be completely out of order.

I use MP3Tag to rename all the files to:

01 - Artist Name - Track Title - Album Title

That is how I organize my music collection.

If you choose to organize your files manually, I recommend coming up with an absolutely foolproof method and sticking with it. It’s very tedious work if you decide you don’t like your organization methods and have to redo everything.

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Can you use Foobar Smart Playlists in the Traktor Browser?

That’s the main reason for creating Smart Playlists for me…

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Sort of! While there isn’t a specific node, you can choose a playlist in Foobar, select all the tracks in it, and drag them to a playlist in Traktor.

It’s not going to beat Traktor’s iTunes integration though.

I do want to make it clear that I’m not necessarily saying people should switch their media players, especially if you’re happy with what you’re currently using. I know Foobar users and open source advocates can look like zealots and I’m not trying to be “that guy.”

I just suggest taking a look at all the tools available, then use what works best for you.

Foobar isn’t going to beat iTunes “out of the box.” iTunes is still the best media player in that regard, and it’s also the best looking with one of the best UIs out there, in my opinion.

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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.

12

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

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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.

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Any particular reason you use AIFF and not ALAC?

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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.

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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

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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/support/knowledge-base/show/3395/no-apple-lossless-alac-playback-on-windows-systems-with-traktor-2.7.0-or-higher/

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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).

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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.

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I’d love to try it out, but Mac only. :thinking: