Music Organizer Suggestion

[Maxine370]

Well I've made a real mess of my music collection. Between Windows Media Player, Itunes and the Yahoo Player(s) I have on my system, the various ways I get music and having SO much in my music folder, I've got a very unorgazined system which makes it very hard for a type A person like me. Somehow, in using some of the catloguing programs (itunes, WMP, etc.) some of my music has been resorted into artist and then album folders and some is not. I don't have the time to manually sort it all again.

Does nayone have a good suggestion for a program that will do this for me. Not so much a playlist player but something that will organize my music in Windows Explorer putting things in proper folders by artist, album or the like.

Has anyone ever used this http://www.tuneupmedia.com/download/?gclid=CLjfsJvgi5cCFQsMGgod12Dz8Q

I'd rather not spend any money or at least keep it minimal.

Thanks all.

[Chuck Engels]

iTunes will do that for you Beth.
You would have to start over and clear your current settings but you could then import all of your music and iTunes will sort it all out.

[Ron]

It all really depends on what you use as a Player. Here's what I do:

For iTunes, it doesn't matter where or how your music is stored or sorted in the folders, as long as iTunes knows where they are. Use the Playlist feature in iTunes to do just about anything you need. It has many powerful categorical features (too many to list here). One tiny example; use the Smartlist Feature. you can select numerous songs (ie, all Holiday related music), then right-click and select "Get Info" and select the info tab. Here you can input some specific category text that you can use with the Smartlist feature. For example, put "Holiday" in the Group field, then press OK. All songs will have that text associated with it. Now, use the Smartlist to tell it to only select the music with "Holiday" in the Group field and your playlist is created in 1 second. There's much more to it than that, but a powerful feature.

If you happen to use another player (I use Winamp), once you create the playlists you want in iTunes, there are programs out there (free) that can export your playlists from iTunes into any format you need (m3u, wpl, xml, etc). Here's one that will do just that - http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/ Extremely easy to use and is just a bare bones playlist creator, no bells or whistles. I can help you with the program if you happen to get stuck, but I think you'll be fine.

If you look at the structure of the playlist with an editor, you'll see what I mean by "it doesn't matter where they are stored", as long as the playlist knows the path to the song, it can be played.

[Maxine370]

I'm actually looking for a way to clean up my folder structure. I often need to find my music (in folders) when I'm lookng to add to video projects.

I might try the itunes (starting from scratch as Chuck suggests) and I actually think WMP. I guess I was trying to avoid the whole start from scratch thing since I do have playlists and stuff set up in itunes. I guess my problem is I use so many different players that ultimately I need the organization to start at the base level (the folders).

I also find that these organizing mechanisms leave folders even when they've moved their contents so there is still a lot of manual clean up to do.

Thanks for the advice and suggestions.

[Ron]

I'm actually looking for a way to clean up my folder structure. I often need to find my music (in folders) when I'm lookng to add to video projects.

I might try the itunes (starting from scratch as Chuck suggests) and I actually think WMP. I guess I was trying to avoid the whole start from scratch thing since I do have playlists and stuff set up in itunes. I guess my problem is I use so many different players that ultimately I need the organization to start at the base level (the folders).

I also find that these organizing mechanisms leave folders even when they've moved their contents so there is still a lot of manual clean up to do.

Thanks for the advice and suggestions.

That's just it, Beth. I have over 6000 songs in iTunes. I can remove (not delete) every single song from iTunes, then select the mother folder (it truly doesn't matter where the music is "folder-wise" - just ensure that they're all beneath this folder) and iTunes will import again all 6000 tracks and knows where each and every file is. If you ever need to "locate" a specific track for a project or whatever, search for it in iTunes, and again, select "Get Info" and the path to the file is on the Summary tab

I understand that you want to "clean up", but I'm just saying that, for iTunes, even if you removed all current sorted structure, you can have iTunes neatly put everything back in any format you desire.

[Bob D]

I think the problem here is the "type A" personality!

[Maxine370]

Thanks I'm using a combination or the itunes which created the new folders and resorted, WMP which I'm using to rename certain songs that were not properly tagged originally or after itunes got hold of it and a manual clean-up to remove all the empty folders remaining after the resorting. It's a little more time-consuming than I wanted to spend but in the end I'll get what I want.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

[munickster]

Beth - here's one I've been reading about recently: http://www.mediamonkey.com/

It sounds like it might do what you want. I have not yet installed it so I can't vouch for it, but I plan to try this instead of Windows Media Player.

Dick