I think some folks have misunderstood my method.
you are redundantly retyping a lot of information in the folder name which is better contained in the tags
I am typing precisely NOTHING in folder names - they are generated automatically by MC, using the formula I listed above.
If an album has both a Mozart and a Beethoven composition on it, the directory structure does not work unless you split the tracks in the album
It depends entirely on the 'Album Artist' I've chosen - which itself depends on where I would like to see the album in my collection when browsing alphabetically/graphically using Album Artist as the primary field.
I don't have a huge classical collection, but I'm happy to thrash this out for the sake of the argument.
Let's say I have a compilation album by the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) called "Life is Good" and it contains a number of compositions by a number of composers. Where do I want this album to appear in my collection? For me, the 'brand' of this album is ABC Classic FM, so I want it under A, the same way I'd like Cafe Del Mar collections to appear under C. So I put 'ABC Classic FM' in the Album Artist field. The Album field is, obviously, the name of the album, in this case "Life is Good". The Artist field would be the composer for each track. I don't care about orchestra or conductor info, and if I did I'd use other fields for that - IMO that's about cataloguing background data, not organizing a collection. But if the conductor was the most important element to me, I'd put him as the Album Artist.
The Album Artist field is the common thread, or primary 'brand', for any given album. The main thing I will remember if I go looking for it, and the place I want it to appear when browsing my library. So if it's a Pink Floyd album it's Pink Floyd. If it's a 'Now That's What I Call Music' compilation then its that. If it's the soundtrack to The Rocky Horror Picture Show then it's 'Rocky Horror Picture Show, The'. If it's a Beethoven compilation, then it is Beethoven, regardless of which orchestra or conductor or record label is behind it. If it is a more complicated or esoteric compilation with no clear 'brand' to recognise it by, then I might just give it an Album Artist of 'Classical Compilation'.
I have some multi-disc blues compilations where each disc is by a single artist, so with those I set the Album Artist to be the name of the artist for that disc, and the Album Name to be the name of the broader compilation (eg 'Blues Collection, The'). This means the B.B. King disc falls alongside BB King's other albums, rather than all 10 discs of the box set clumping together. That's just personal preference - if I wanted the set to appear together that's easy too, I'd just change the Album Artist field to 'Blues Collection, The', and the Album to something like 'Volume 01 - B.B. King'.
I also have some other blues compilations that are the kind of stocking-fillers that are churned out by random record labels. Their only common thread is the record label itself, or whatever stupid cliche name they decided to give the album. I might give these an Album Artist of 'Blues Compilation', or I might just delete the album info altogether (set it to Various) and handle the tracks as orphans.
Basically I'm just advocating a bit of creative flexibility with the Album Artist and Album fields. I realise it may be 'bending the rules' a bit, but honestly, a scientifically-curated music collection that results in music being awkward to browse and clutter appearing in unexpected places - because the handle you know it by doesn't match the scientific fields you are sorting by - is no fun at all. My goal is to be browsing an intuitively-arranged collection and listening to lots of music.
The other is inadvertent total path length issues in Windows, especially in classical if you try to load the folder name with too much descriptive info. I am on Win 7, and total path length from the root drive letter plus hierarchical directory folder names plus album directory plus track name must be less than Windows max length, which is around 250 or so characters
Again, I'm not loading the folder name with anything, it is auto-generated as simply 'M:\MUSIC\Album Artist - Album\Track# Artist - Name' . I don't have anything like 250 characters in those fields, and I can't imagine ever getting that many inadvertently (unless somebody else populated those fields with every composer, musician, chorus line dancer and caterer involved with the production). Remember, I'm not using Album Artist to list the orchestra members, I'm using it to separate "Pink Floyd" from "Pop Hits 3".
Searching Windows folders is not something I want to do, and I sure as hell do not want to be typing album folder names to maintain an imperfect hierarchical folder structure.
We agree entirely!
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Topic: What’s your folder layout for music? (Read 6827 times)