I don't think about it.

transient

MP3Tag & foobar2000/Amarok for life. iTunes is something very, very bad :).

I'm using the [artist]\[album]\[number] - [title] method for the main collection (~20GB), [artist] - [title] for the frequently listened tracks (~1GB).

Dagenham

... I have OCD... I want that track number stuck in the beginning of your music file names automatically.

SZayat

>> How do you name and organize your music?
[letter of the alphabeth]\[Artist] - [Year] - [Album Title]\[Track Nr] - [Artist] - [Track Title].mp3

e.g. \Music\A\ABBA - 1979 - Voulez-Vous\01 - ABBA - As Good As New.mp3

And beside the 26 letter subdirectories I also have one called "0#9" (for artist names starting with a digit or somehting else), one called "_Collections" and one called "_Soundtracks".

I never ever let a program automatically rename my files!
I use MP3 Tag & Rename from SoftPointer to do that myself.

zzynx

%album artist%\[%date% - ]%album%\[%disc%.][%track% ][%title%][ - %track artist%]

Example:
Moxy Früvous\1993 - Bargainville\10 King of Spain.mp3

I luuurve foobar. With that layout it adds disc numbers if required and artists if they're separate from the album artist. Great for various artist recordings.

Puff0rx

Um... I'm pretty sure you can do this right in the iTunes preferences, so that would help you Windows people. I had it set to use just the song name since I first started using iTunes, and I certainly never fired up the Terminal...

thebigcheese

Any way to do this in Windows (XP)?

Rhayader

I use MP3tag v2.41a to edit the tag info of my music files.
It's a quite convenient programme, I especially couldn't live without the function of "Filename to Tag" and "Tag to Filename" - this incredibly helps me keep my library organized.

>> How do you name and organize your music?

Files: %artist% [%track] %title
example: Modest Mouse [03] Float On.mp3

Every album gets its own folder (like this)
Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News

CrunchFlake

Artist \ Artist - Album (year) \ tracknum - Artist - track title

example:

Rilo Kiley\Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous (2004)\03 - Rilo Kiley - Portions For Foxes.mp3

Least

Artist / Album / Track# SongName

I do it myself with TagScanner. I'll have to look into these other programs. I love TagScanner's renaming and organizing feature, but it leaves a lot to filling out the tags. The best I have found for filling out tags is the newest WMP.

Josh

Yeah, this setting is in iTunes preferences (Mac and Windows alike) under Import settings. It's been there for a LONG time, and I'm always certain to uncheck it after an install.

mbarriault

@mbarriault: Really? I'm looking at Import Settings and I don't see it. Am I daft?

Gina Trapani

I've never really bothered with the actual .Mp3 file name. Everything I need is stored in the ID3 tags.

Quite frankly I don't see having a numeric prefix being an issue. If it was, it would be a simple task of using a batch re-namer to remove the first X digits, or cut to an underscore or space.

Tooby

You want to save your music as "artist - album - track # - title.mp3" or some variant of that. The track # is important so that the songs on your hard drive (or device) sort by how the tracks were laid out on the album. Do you really want to listen to The Eagles "Desperado", The Who's "Tommy" or Pink Floyd's "The Wall" with the tracks in alphabetical order?

I use Tag & Rename (commercial) as it has always done the job for me to both get the proper ID3 tag info from the internet and then rename the files using the mask above. There are several free alternatives, but Tag & Rename is still better enough that I continue (for now) to pay for it.

jsmorley

What Gina said.

So where's this option, mind giving us some proper directions to find it?

..and unless I'm wrong there's no reason why Macworld and Lifehacker would post complicated methods, when its possible to just do clicking in a GUI.

Thanks Lifehacker! Needed this tip!

skylive

@Tooby:
Agreed. I just take the defaults for the file itself, and manage everything from the tags. I don't imagine that technology is going to regress back to a state where the actual file name matters.

Brad N.

I use Rename Files to keep files renamed and Organize Files to keep everything the way I want it to be. Mac only, they are available right from iTunes and do the job quick.

They allow you to rename and organize files based on any of the ID3 tag data items, including some basic if-then logic and limited reformatting. (Yes, I might be a bit biased since I am the author of both of these tools.)

DeltaTee

[artist] -- [year] -- [album]/[number] [title]

Minimal number of subdirectories (i.e. none!)... I get to see what albums I have of each artist without having to clip back and forth... Specially usefully when selecting multiple albums but different artists for a listening session... I really dislike iTunes' [artist]/[album] structure...

In my ID tags I have prefixed the album date to the front of the album title, so that when playing a track on my iPod, I know the year it was conceived... Same with the track number - because I shuffle a lot, I like to know the track number and iPod falls woefully short in helping me out in this department, so I fudge it...

encosion

I tend to go with a simplistic [Artist] - [Track Title], leaving everything else to exist within the metadata.

Hummy

I think I picked it up from the old Napster days, but I use the "long form" of file names--

Artist - Album - (Tk#) Title.mp3

--within an Artist\Album folder structure. I'm on a PC and tend to use the filesystem to organize my music, and my player to play it, as opposed to using a "library" app. It also helps when compiling a disc, as you can scrape together files and know everything about them.

Of course, on the down-side, the 64-character limit on CD-ROMs often comes into play (I burn a lot of MP3 CDs for my car player and archival). So, I have an ancient VBScript I wrote (so old... well... it's doubtful that I even remember how to code VBScript anymore) that truncates filenames with a "~01" sort of name, then writes a .BAT file to re-expand the names.

It's terribly complicated, but that's the way I like it, by golly!

FLEB

It's been removed in Itunes 8. I'm kinda desperate for a Windows Solution as this is the sole reason I switched from WMP. I'm a bit anal with my music files. They are kept in Album/Track Name.mp3 - so it's a big music folder - but it works for me!.

DallasBatakas

I've stopped caring about the underlying organization. iTunes organizes it for me, and as long as they're accessible in a human-discernible location, it's all good. Furthermore, They're even more easily accessible through iTunes itself.

EnzoFX

@mbarriault: If you tend to uncheck it, then DON'T install iTunes 8, because it's not there and it forces the numbering. On Mac, you can use the above trick but on Windows you have no options, yet.

BoxOfSnoo

@thebigcheese: The reason why this was mentioned, was that this feature was removed from iTunes 8. Go take a look.

BoxOfSnoo

Previously, the track number insertion was needed because old iPods used to get their db corrupted when the filename was in Japanese, e.g. the song you expected to hear didn't play. The interim fix back then was to turn this track number insertion option to on. This was a problem back in iTunes 4.x era, and perhaps its already resolved.

I understand indirectly that the iTunes 8 Mac and PC have different "secret" settings, with the PC version on the losing end of the stick. Because of this I am going to stick with my iTunes 7.x for my iPod 5.5G.

piyo

Can anyone suggest a good, free ID3 tag editor for Mac?

PieroSavoie