MediaMonkey forum

First of all this is not a 'need help' cause somethings 'broken' item.

I am a new MediaMonkey ('MM') user , and over the years my 'collection' has migrated through a couple of other cataloggers (none anywhere as thorough as MM!). The current 'structure' of my saved files seems like it is not any longer necessary with MM. Currently on the file system, all selections are saved in a parent folder, which is the artist name, then each selection is stored first in a sub-folder by the album name, then in that sub-folder, the actual selections themselves, along with the album art.

Unless I'm mistaken, with MM, since a database is being used to tie all those 'parts' together, it seems that EVERYTHING can be simply saved in the 'My Music' folder, without the use of the file structure itself.

I have been trying to maintain that structure while using MM, and unless I'm doing something wrong (quite possible), I spend a lot of time creating folders, and moving files ......

Just curious if I can 'dump' all that structure....................
Thanks,
Henri

You can although you could run into issue where 2 songs would have the same filename.

You can setup Tools > Options > Auto-Organize to automatically maintain an organized folder structure. Or once in a while select all your songs and use Tools > Auto-Organize Files (I prefer this myself to keep control).

Using a folder/filename structure has as benefit that you can use the data to populate tags in case you ever need to (like when you mistakenly tag files incorrectly). In that case Tools > Auto-Tag from Filename can come to the rescue.

I personally use:
\\NAS\Music\<Album Artist:1>\$Trim(<Album Artist:50>)\[<Year>] $Trim(<Album:50>)\$Trim(<Artist:50>) - $If(<Disc#>,<Disc#:2>-,)<Track#:2> - $Trim(<Title:50>)

Lowlander wrote:You can although you could run into issue where 2 songs would have the same filename.

Ahhhh, very good point

Obviously I'm doing something in the wrong sequence, because I seem to have to generate (outside of MM) the folder structure, especially with a new artist. I'm gonna guess that my workflow is incorrect, and that I'm doing things out of sequence, or that there is a better way..... and take a look at that from a 'cradle' to file situation....

I do a lot of nature photography (digital now), and going digital caused a total revamp of my workflow from camera to paper (or file).....

Thanks for the example of your 'sort script'.....
Henri

RoadRunner wrote: Just curious if I can 'dump' all that structure....................

its possible to do this, but you may run into duplicate filenames trying to overwrite each other.

besides that, you will eventually run into peformance problems with all files dumped into one folder, it just slows everything down when you start getting thousands or more files all in one folder.

getting your files tagged correctly is the hard part, then using a standard auto-organization mask will help you keep up with the structure very easy.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... s_Examples

The workflow that works for me:
- Add new files to a separate folder
- File > Add/Rescan Tracks to add the files to MediaMonkey
- Tag the files
- Use Tools > Auto-Organize Files to organize the files in folders

It's best to organize your folders/files inside your media application as otherwise the link to your song is lost which results in loss of play data and playlists.

for workflow, I use the following

- all new ripped/downloads go into a working folder
- run all tracks through musicbrainz picard tagger to fix/update metadata, add album art, and set the genre to use last.fm tags
- add lyrics with lyricator script
- run analyze volume
- use auto-organize (control R) to rename/organize them into my main library structure