The Foxpop Masstagging Guide

How-to with screenshots for automated id3 masstagging with foobar2000.
Nov 2006

4. How to Organize mp3 on the Hdd

4.1. Folder strategies

For less than a 100 albums, I guess you can find anything easily, whatever structure you do. Over a 100 albums, I recommend one of the two strategies for the directory structure.

1. Level 1: music genre (\pop\, \rock\, \jazz\, \funky\).
   I use genres that are meaningful to me and break down my collection into 'nice groups'. Because I have many pop music in English, I created sub-groups under pop.english with compilations and smooth. However, I only have a few albums in German, and I placed all kinds of German music into pop.german.
   Level 2: "artist - album" format
   
   \jazz.vocal.man\bobby darin - bobby darin swings\
   \jazz.vocal.woman\stacey kent - the boy next door\
   \pop.english\abba - mamma mia\
   \pop.english\abba - more abba gold\
   \pop.english\abba - thank you for the music\
   \soundtrack\forrest gump - ost cd1\
   \soundtrack\forrest gump - ost cd2\
   
    
2. Level 1: Artist (\Abba\, \Bobby Darin\, \Diana Krall\)
   Level 2: Album (\Abba\, \More Abba Gold\)
   
   \Abba\More Abba Gold\
   \Abba\Thank You For The Music\
   \Abba\Mamma Mia\
   \Bobby Darin\Bobby Darin Swings\
   \Forrest Gump\Ost cd1\
   \Forrest Gump\Ost cd2\
   \Stacey Kent\The Boy Next Door\
   

Before, I used strategy #2, but as my collection grew bigger, I wanted smaller sections. I think it's better to gradually add more structure as your collection grows, instead of overcomplicating a small number of albums.

It's easy to convert between the two structures if id fields are properly filled. The following screenshot shows the following:
Original is in \music-genre\artist - title\
Target will be moved onto another drive in the format \Artist\Album\ (all contents of the directories will be moved, including cover pictures, txt files, etc.). Note, that you cannot move and change track filenames at the same time. You have to change the track filenames first to be able to perform the move operation afterwards.
And I recommend first to try the result with one album, and just then run it on the whole collection.

I like to keep file names in all lowercase, so it's easy to read and more fits to the screen. (I don't care about track file names, I usually generate them from the Title field anyway.) I use Total Commander to convert file names to all lowercase. In Total Commander

1. Mark\Select All (Ctrl+A)
2. Files\Multi Rename Tool... (Ctrl+M ).
3. All settings at default, but Upper/Lowercase is set to All lowercase
4. Start! and Close

You can Undo after a mistake. Sometimes I can even re-launch the panel after close and Undo from there.

Change to all lowercase with Total Commander (v6.55)

4.2. Track filenames

Inside the album folder, I only use the "nn - track title.mp3" format. This is to keep names short, as with "nn. artist - album -track title.mp3" file names can get super long (like artist = "stan getz and joao gilberto featuring antonio carlos jobim"), and I have to scroll so long to read the track title. Also, when I burn tracks on a DVD, with very long file names I can overflow, and the end is truncated.
I use "nn - track title.mp3" instead of "nn. track title.mp3", so I know the point is only for the extension (good for mass renaming).

I usually change track file names at the very end of the whole tagging process, when all id3 tags have been filled, so I can automate things easily.

1. I feed all the albums into the playlist (Library\Album List)
2. Edit\Select All.
3. Right click\File Operations\Move, Rename or Copy Files...\
4. Select nn. title.mp3 format. Run.

You can define your own format at edit, see the \Program Files\foobar2000\titleformat_help.html on your hdd for tags. Multi Cd volumes in one folder can be numbered by including the disc number; it only adds a number if the Disc Number tag is not empty.

Alternatively, you can number track file names (in one folder) with Total Commander. In the Multi Rename Tool (Ctrl+M), put in the Rename mask: file name field "[C:2] - [N]".

4.3. Two levels of folder depth

Both strategies involve 2 levels of folder depth. I've found that if there are more levels (depths of 3 or 4), it takes more time to find things. Therefore, in case I need more structure, I 'code-in' more levels into one folder name, like I put all jazzman with vocal performances into jazz.vocal.man.

Instead of "pop.english.compilations", it can also be "pop - english - compilations", etc. Just, the "." takes up the less space of all the characters and is easy to read.

4.4. Chronological order, bitrate and 'The'

To store music also based on year, include the year in the folder name. This works great for pop, rock discography, but not for jazz or classical music (original release date of the album vs. publication date of cd; date of composition, date of live performance, date of cd publication). Therefore I fill up the YEAR tag with usually the earliest date of these, but don't use it in the folder names.

For this you would enter this format in the Move, Rename or Copy Files... panel:
/ artist / date - album / nn - title
/%artist%/%date% - %album%/%tracknumber% - %title%

Or to include year and bitrate in the folder name:
/ artist - date - album - bitrate/nn_title
/%artist% - %date% - %album% - %bitrate%/%tracknumber%_%title%

Rename The Beatles to Beatles, The (taken from elonidel's Faq):
Use this script: $if($strcmp($left(%artist%,4),The ),$right(%artist%,$sub($len(%artist%),4))', 'The,%artist%)

See the foobar2000 Masstagger Manual for detailed info on auto-reorganizing folders for large collections. First, experiment on a temp folder, as there is no Undo. However, if the id tags are filled properly, you can re-run with the correct format and things should be OK again. If id tag fields are empty, there's no easy way back! :-)

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Last edited on 14-Jan-2007.

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(c) Imre Oliver Kozak and @Foxpop.