Store music on PC

[londonaberdeen]

I'm probably being rather stupid here but having just treated myself to a new PC with loads of disk space and also been treated to an MP3 player I decided it's time to get into the musical trend and store all of my music digitally.

My question is... when I RIP my CD's onto the hard drive, how should I name the files? By artist, then song? Or song, then Artist? Not so simple when you add a Genre to the calculation. I'm thinking about keeping each CD in a seperate folder and the folder name being the Album name and artist. Am I clutching at the past, should I let go of the CD's and just throw all the music into the mix not caring which songs came from which CD?

The problem is I think, I'm using the free software with the PC, perhaps there is better software out there to create a library of your own music.

Does anyone know of something simple for listing and playing music, by artist or genre. Preferably free but would buy if it done the trick.

 

[ShyGuy68]

Good software for ripping cd's are DCex (http://www.download.com/CDex/3000-2140-10226370.html). You can set it up so it connect to the net and get the name and tracklist of the cd you are ripping, so it'll name the files and put it into folders according to band name.

As for playing mp3's on the computer, I personally use winamp. www.winamp.com

 

[covariant]

I like CDex for ripping and playback with foobar2000.

 

[Tele2047]

I also use CDex to rip, 128kbps is good quality, if you're concerned about space you could go down a bit (or if you're going to lose the originals, you could go higher).

 

[KarenDee]

I use MusicMatch. I think there is a free version, but my kids paid for one and gave me the version with lifetime upgrades. First off, I create a folder for each type of music...Rock, Country, Bluegrass, Jazz, or whatever. Then in each of those files I creat files for the Artist. I do that unless I only have a single song by an artist, then I put all those in a Miscellaneous file, just to cut down on the number of files. Later on if I get more songs by that artist, I'll create a separate file for it. I name all my songs the same way...Artist, Song Name. I use a hyphen separator between them. Music Match has a feature which lets you describe how you name your files, even including the hyphen (or whatever you wish) and it will then name any song you might download from the web like that, so you don't have to do it manually. My file structure might look like this:

MUSIC
~~~COUNTRY
~~~~~~ALAN JACKSON
~~~~~~~~~Alan Jackson - Back To Me And You
~~~~~~~~~Alan Jackson - Five O'Clock Somewhere
~~~~~~~~~Alan Jackson - Gone Country
~~~ROCK
~~~~~~BILLY IDOL
~~~~~~~~~Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself
~~~~~~~~~Billy Idol - Flesh For Fantasy
~~~NEW AGE
~~~~~~ENYA
~~~~~~~~~Enya - Only Time
~~~~~~~~~Enya - China Roses


...etc., but you get the idea. Sorry, I only used the "~~~" because the formatting here wouldn't let me tab over for clarity. If you go with something like MusicMatch, expect a learning curve while you discover all the features!

Karen

 

[londonaberdeen]

Thanks

Thanks everyone. Great advice, especially KarenDee you really took your time and explained a simple and effective way for me to store the files.

Appreciated comments from all.

Thanks