I need a secretary/Music Categorisation

[slinger]

No purpose to this post really, other than to sound a warning to anyone else thinking about undertaking the same task the I've just set myself.

I use JRiver to play my digital library, and I've just bought a Synology DS211j Disk Station as I've got so much data (not just music, but work stuff as well) that really needs a decent backup system. I duly installed 2 x 1gb disks duly and set them up in a RAID 1 configuration.

Here's a brilliant idea!!! Why not buy a USB3 external drive and consolidate all of my music files instead of having them spread over two internal drives and one external drive as they are now? OK, that actually is a good idea.

The bad idea was thinking I'd 'reorganize' my music files in preparation for sending them to the new drive. I've got a pretty even split of classical and non-classical albums so that was a no-brainer; two directories. The bad idea was thinking that alphabetical sub-directories within those two main directories would be a clever ploy. I never realised how badly my albums were currently organised. Just as a 'for instance' I've just found an Otis Redding album in a folder that's called...'Otis Redding - Dictionary of Soul [1966]' which of course needs to altered to read Redding (Otis) - Dictionary of Soul [1966]' to fit in with my anal-retentive mindset. There's also 'Otis Blue - Otis Redding Sings Soul [1965]' Try reorgainisng THAT so that it seems to make some sort of sense in my new cataloguing system. 'Redding (Otis) ...sings Soul [Otis Blue] [1965]' is the closest I've got so far.

Oh yes, and I also intend to create 'folder.jpg" files at a set size of 400x400 pixels for each album, rather than let JRiver import huge and unnecessary image files from the web.

This evening has so far seen me subsisting on a diet of Elgar and scotch. All I can say is, if I'm not insane now (but we all know I am) then I certainly will be by the time I've finished. I can also count on the fingers of one foot how many people this post will make any sense to. I know there is at least one other Synology user out there, and a couple of JRiver users.

Maybe I should just have spent more on kit and less on music, then I wouldn't have so many bloody records to index.

[terrybooth]

I'm afraid that why index systems abstract the indexing from the names of the files. How the files are laid out on your hard disk drive is ultimately at the mercy of the operating system.I once responded to a complain about 'system slowness' from someone to discover that they had all of their sections' files in a single folder. So every time anyone opened the folder, the PC would have to pull information about tens of thousands of files before anything happened. Jriver, of course, doesn't bother with how the files are arranged on disk, it just uses the metadata in the file (hint - MP3Tag is much better than JRiver at editing these).

My frustration is with classical recordings. The way that the metadata is stored and then arranged in JRiver means that it isn't easy to find Bach or Beethoven stuff - it takes the particular recording artist first or orchestra first. So there I'd be tempted with different libraries, which means different areas of disc to point to.

Obviously, classification is always going to produce awkward problems: Nitin Sawhney's 'Beyond Skin' was nominated for a Mercury award; he tells a story about going into a record shop to find a section of Mercury award nominees which had all the albums in except his; when he asked about that (without announcing his identity) , he was told, 'Oh no, he's world music - he's over there in the World Music section'. (And if anyone wants to buy the DVD of "A Throw of Dice", you'll see a very interesting interview with the man, which is where I got this story.)

But I digress. Short of spending three years learning Dewey Decimal, any thoughts on top level classification for music? My vinyl (when it was semi organised and not in boxes all over the place) used to be organised into: Pop/Rock, Folk/Word, Jazz and Classical.

And a final thought, which I always drag out when the subject of filing systems is broached.

Filing systems: invented by the Egyptians, perfected by the Victorians, destroyed by computers.

[howardc1951]

On my HDD player I've simply got folders from A to Z and in each of those are folders for each artist whose names begin with that letter and in each of those are folders for each of their albums. Admittedly I've only got about 300 albums but surely the system would work for any number?

[slinger]

Terry, while I agree that classification can be a problem, ultimately it's only me who has to understand it, so I'd know where I've got Nitin Sawhney tucked away. I'm only attempting to consolidate and organise the physical locations of the files; JRiver's classification system is a completely different kettle of fish. Hopefully most of my recordings will still slot neatly into the 29 'genres' I already have. The main problem I've always had is with classifying classical recordings. For instance -the Berg and Bartok violin concertos performed by Kyung Wha Chung, with Sir Georg Solti conducting the CSO. Do I put that under the soloists name (well yes actually I do at the moment) or do I toss a coin to see if it's a Berg or a Bartok CD I've ripped?

I suppose it all comes back to my original comment in this post, it's only me who has to understand it. It's still a pain in the bum though, and the most labour-intensive part is setting up all of the thumbnails prior to re-importing my entire catalogue into JRiver. You do tend to get some blurry/cr*p/huge thumbnails otherwise.

[terrybooth]

Anyone with more than a few disks/CDS/audio files have to do it, so how do you categorise music.

For the Vinyl I had Pop/Jazz/Folk-World/Classical.
For digital, I currently have: Americana, Blues, Classical, Folk, Funk(&Soul), Jazz, Pop, Rock, World.

I don't want to start a discussion about what goes into what (that's up to you) - just how do you classify stuff?

[Andrew]

I don't. I occasionally try to have a rough A-Z progression but it falls apart pretty quickly. I just "graze" whatever catches my eye.

[terrybooth]

It's finding stuff that's my problem. I know I have certain records. but I can't find them. Somewhere or another I have a 10" LP "No Strings Attached" but can I find it!

[Andrew]

I've driven myself crazy before with "missing" CDs. I just buy another one nowadays because they are so cheap. I've not lost any vinyl AFAIK.

I've mislaid handfuls of CDs before and they have never resurfaced.

[jammy395]

CD's straight through in alphabetical order Abba to ZZ Top.
Albums same but in 4 coloured boxes along the lines of ...Easy Listening / Pop / Rock / Her's.

[Andrew]

I can never be arsed to put stuff back in order. You must be pretty self-disciplined