Organizing your Music on disk

Whether or not you organize your files is a personal choice. If you've ever had difficulty finding a particular file, or album of files, then you may see the value in it.

But with tools like Spotlight and Google Desktop, you might be fine without it. Personally, I like the idea of a nice tidy disk, and it makes manually backing up a breeze.

 

 

 

To the left is an example of a well organized file structure.

All the blocks in the diagram represent folders. The folders with a gold star have music files inside, all others are container folders, that is, they only have other folders in them.

The root level is basically your music folder. It can also be the root of your external drive, as long as that drive is only used for music.

The Root Genre Level is for DJs who play more than one genre of music (in broad terms). If you only play dance music, or only play drum 'n bass, this level can be left out.

The Folder levels can either contain music directly, or have further levels of folder organization, depending on the level of organization needed. For instance, this DJ has two separate 2Pac albums, so has decided to create a folder for each, inside a container folder called 2Pac. Conversely, he only has a few miscellaneous DJ Assault tracks, so they all live inside a folder called DJ Assault.

Note the fact that under Electronic, folder level 1 is a sub genre level, containing various kinds of Electronic music genres organized into folders, which in turn contain Artists and their music.

Contrast this with the folder _!Latest Bangers, a miscellaneous collection of recently obtained Hip Hop, which this DJ wants to access all together for the time being. Once those tracks are no longer appropriate for that folder, they will be recategorized into the general collection.

Wikipedia articles relevant to organizing files

Computer File Management

Spotlight

Google Desktop