Make sure you have created [url=http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/noframe/source/editing%20album%20properties.htm]multi-artist albums[/url] (just set album artist field to Various for all tracks on a compilation album), because with that you can use the Album Artist field instead of Artist to create the folder mask.

Right at this moment I have everything stored in

Artist/Album/Track format.

The negative of that is that all the compilation albums are broken up. Each such album is duplicated to appear under each Artist that is represented.

I'm not sure how but I believe I can use MM to change that so that compilation albums are stored together. Is that so?

Second, if I do that, how will these appear in MM? How will they appear on the hard drive?

Will they appear in MM under the correct Artist, like they appear now, or will they appear under a "Various" name? Will they be on the hard drive under Various/Album/Track with the track name having their actual artist name in it as it is now?

Thanks.

i use the song title as the file name. that way i can add in 1 2 or 3 if i have that many of the same song by the same person on the same album.

and the filenames never get messed up that way.

my F drive looks like this.

F:\My Music\<Artist>\<Album>\<Genere>\<Title>

some times artist put christmas songs or gospel songs on their albums with country songs. so i split them up with the genere folder.

makes for long folder paths but they are all seperated that way. :D


yep i think nohitter151 is right you might have missed those when you selected them if you used your mouse to select the songs.

if you use the menu bar's edit menu and click on select all when you were viewing the playlist. then i would say the four songs might have been last on the list after the one you said not to move.

and when you said not to move it then auto organized stopped.

i don't know if that is possible or not it might be a bug if that did happen.

Strange; in regards to 2) - maybe you didn't have those 4 songs highlighted when you did auto organize? I've never had that happen before.

I just tried the feature to do this figuring it'll be easy to bounce between setups.

I tried:

F:\Music\<Artist>\<Album>\<Artist> - <Title>

That took care of just about everything with two oddities:

1. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" has a song called, "In the Flesh?" and "In the Flesh". The first one has a filename of "Pink Floyd - In the Flesh 1.ape" and MM complained that "In the Flesh already existed and asked if I wanted to overwrite it. Uh, I said no and just moved it there myself. Now it's fine and MM has no trouble with it there.

2. For some reason my 4 songs from The Beatles Abbey Road album were left in the top Music folder. Everything finished and these four songs were left. I re-selected them and re-ran Auto-Organize and presto, off they went to the new location. No idea what happened there.

[quote]I also realized one benefit to the album approach. Right now I only rip the singles I like. Later I plan to rip 100% of the CD's and that will result in a slew of duplicate filenames. Storing by album fixes that.[/quote]

That's true. Even with less than 1000 files I have had a few problems with duplicate filenames.

I just spotted your help in the other thread so it's great to know this program is so flexible.

The one thing that really concerns me with the above approach is the whole compilation album issue. I guess that's not so bad though.

I do like your approach to the problem by eliminating the Album name entirely.

I also realized one benefit to the album approach. Right now I only rip the singles I like. Later I plan to rip 100% of the CD's and that will result in a slew of duplicate filenames. Storing by album fixes that.

[quote]Auto-Organize Files

Tracks can also be automatically organized into a directory structure and filename format of your choice. This is done via the Auto-Organize Files function, which uses existing Track properties to move and rename files according to a specified format. For instance, you could organize all of your Tracks in the following format: C:/Music/<Artist>/<Album> - <Title>.xxx . To do this:

1. Select the Tracks that you wish to reorganize/rename, and click Tools > Auto-Organize Files.
2. Choose the Directory, directory format, and filename format to be used for the Tracks.
See Configuring Directory and Filename Formats.
3. A list will be generated showing the current directories/filenames and the new directories/filenames (changes are highlighted in yellow). If any of the new directories/filenames are incorrect, edit them as needed by clicking the path and editing it, or uncheck them.
4. Enable 'Delete emptied folders' if you wish the folders to be deleted after all tracks have been removed.
5. Click Ok to commit the changes to all the checked Tracks.

When Tracks are re-organized, it may result in old directories becoming empty. If this occurs, you will be prompted whether to delete the empty directory. If the all Tracks in the folder are moved, then you'll also be given the option to move any accompanying files such as Album Art or Lyrics.[/quote]

I don't like sorting my files by album, I actually have them all in one folder similar to how you have yours sorted (Artist - Title.mp3). However, I have heard that its better to have a folder hierarchy as storing so many files in one folder creates longer seek times for the hard drive. Right now, I only have about 800 files, but as I accumulate more music I may move to a My Music\Artist\Artist - Title.mp3 hierarchy. Like you said, I don't want to have to know what album a song is on just to find it on the hard drive!

Guys,

I have an F: drive that has nothing on it but my music in lossless format (currently APE). It's in a folder called "Music".

Every file in it is in that folder and no other folder. Roughly 1700 songs I've ripped from my CD's and stored in the format "Artist - Title.ape"

I'm now trying to get album art working and the popular scripts appear to fail (Batch Art Finder) if the art isn't in a folder by album.

I see other people talking about how their music is stored this way and frankly, I don't really get it. It's so much easier for me to find what I'm looking for this way. Everything is in a nice sorted format. Doing it by album would mean that, to find a song, I'd need to recall what album it was in.

If this is the best way to go, could someone give me good reasons why? Also, does MediaMonkey offer any sort of function to create this hierarchy for me if that proves to be the best solution for me?