Best Way to Organize/Categorize My 50GB of Music Currently in Folders? (WANT TO AVOID MUSIC APP/ITUNES AT ALL COSTS)

[HappyDude20]

I have 50GB's worth of music that I've collected throughout the past 15 years. Some CDs, other digital downloads (legal). About half have the info such as album name, artist and album artwork. The other half only have the track/song name.

Not a fan of iTunes/Apple's Music App throughout the years and am wondering if there is some sort of solution I may be missing. On my iPhone I don't mind using Readdle's Documents app and playing music through there. Obviously Apple's Music app excels in having Siri at the ready to play playlists but truth be told, my main goal is to just have my 50GB's of music organized (which lives on my External SDD) and I connect it to any computer I'm at.

 

[sracer]

I have 50GB's worth of music that I've collected throughout the past 15 years. Some CDs, other digital downloads (legal). About half have the info such as album name, artist and album artwork. The other half only have the track/song name.

Not a fan of iTunes/Apple's Music App throughout the years and am wondering if there is some sort of solution I may be missing. On my iPhone I don't mind using Readdle's Documents app and playing music through there. Obviously Apple's Music app excels in having Siri at the ready to play playlists but truth be told, my main goal is to just have my 50GB's of music organized (which lives on my External SDD) and I connect it to any computer I'm at.

When considering a solution, the physical size of your collection (50GB) isn't as important as the number of tracks. When you say about half have info, are you referring to ID3 metadata tags or the filenames themselves?

 

[HappyDude20]

When considering a solution, the physical size of your collection (50GB) isn't as important as the number of tracks. When you say about half have info, are you referring to ID3 metadata tags or the filenames themselves?

I’d say half of the songs have appropriate files names which include artist, album name, track number and album artwork But this was all thanks to iTunes almost 10 years ago when iTunes asked if I would like for it to go find album artwork. I also did manually group tracks into albums.

I’m not sure what ID3 metadata tags areso if my collection does include that it probably isn’t even a quarter, if at all. Probably the songs I purchased off the internet have them, but the majority of my music collection came from hours and hours of me ripping my CD collection.

 

[lostom]

I'm not sure I understand what you're looking to do?, add meta data to your other 50 % of songs or what.

Are you looking for suggestions for apps that can help with metadata and organising your library?

I've gone down that path and used a few apps, depending on how much you want to spend and how deep with customising you want, Jaikoz ( hard core music app) or Song Kong (quick and easy) same dev, are 2 that I've used and found very high quality, Song Kong is probably all you need by the sounds of it, there are plenty others out there I'm sure.

These 2 are just my experience.

 

[sracer]

I’d say half of the songs have appropriate files names which include artist, album name, track number and album artwork But this was all thanks to iTunes almost 10 years ago when iTunes asked if I would like for it to go find album artwork. I also did manually group tracks into albums.

I’m not sure what ID3 metadata tags areso if my collection does include that it probably isn’t even a quarter, if at all.

ID3 metadata tags are embedded into an mp3 file that contains information about the file. Artist, Album name, Genre, Album cover art, track number, etc.

Music library software (like iTunes, MediaMonkey, etc.) heavily relies on that information to organize the files.

For organizing my music library, I focus on both the "physical" and the "logical".

For physical organization, I use a basic directory/folder structure:

Basic album
Artist / Album_name / tt-trackname (where: "tt" is track number, eg. 01-More than a Feeling)

Compilations
Various Artists / Album_name /....

Multi-disc albums
Artists / Album_name / Dxx-tt-trackname (where: xx is disc number, eg. D01-01-Crank it Up)

But to me, more importantly, is the logical organizing... for that I use an ID3 tagger app. These apps can embed information into the mp3 file which allows music players to display correct information and music library apps can present the library in a logical manner.

With correct ID3 tags, I can use any library app and have my collection display correctly... it doesn't rely on the physical file names or their locations.

 

[HappyDude20]

I'm not sure I understand what you're looking to do?, add meta data to your other 50 % of songs or what.

Are you looking for suggestions for apps that can help with metadata and organising your library?

I've gone down that path and used a few apps, depending on how much you want to spend and how deep with customising you want, Jaikoz ( hard core music app) or Song Kong (quick and easy) same dev, are 2 that I've used and found very high quality, Song Kong is probably all you need by the sounds of it, there are plenty others out there I'm sure.

These 2 are just my experience.

thank you I’ll get started with those two for now.

i suppose my goal was twofold, first to have all of my tens of thousands of songs organized into respective albums and to even include song names and number tracks. About 10gbs alone are from live concert recordings from Archive.org so I may have to add those manually.

My second goal was to have an app on my iOS devices that isn’t Apple Music. I hate how the interface on Apple Music seems to change ever so slightly with each iOS update. Readdle’s Document app seems to be okay except for the fact that I store all of my secure files on there and would prefer to keep that app just for my secure things

 

[lostom]

thank you I’ll get started with those two for now.

i suppose my goal was twofold, first to have all of my tens of thousands of songs organized into respective albums and to even include song names and number tracks. About 10gbs alone are from live concert recordings from Archive.org so I may have to add those manually.

My second goal was to have an app on my iOS devices that isn’t Apple Music. I hate how the interface on Apple Music seems to change ever so slightly with each iOS update. Readdle’s Document app seems to be okay except for the fact that I store all of my secure files on there and would prefer to keep that app just for my secure things

Strongly suggest ( If you haven't already), have a back up of everything, some apps treat live music differently and sort them in a fashion that make not work for you.