My preferred folder structure/filename standard vs the world...
New here, long time music hoarder and SlSk user. I'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseam, but for the life of me I cannot understand why so few people organize/name their files like I do.
My structure looks like this:
MUSIC/ARTIST/ALBUM/ARTIST - ALBUM - TRACK NUMBER LEADING 0 - TRACK NAME.mp3
Who are all the people who don't have at very least, the band's name in the filename??? I would say that 65% or more of the time I see tracks that look like this:
ALBUM TITLE/TRACK NUMBER - TRACK.mp3
Can someone explain the logic here? It literally makes no sense to me, not just for accurate tagging, but also for file storage/organization. When you look back at the folder and the files, you have no way of knowing what band you're looking at unless you look at the file's properties or actually open the file in your player to display all the identifying info. To me, this seems not just illogical and annoying, but also stupid.
Not trying to start a fight, but genuinely trying to understand the thought process behind why you would organize your files in such a way. Either that or my workflow is so far out that it's me who is doing something weird and maybe there's an easier, more logical way to do this...
Thanks.
BIG EDIT HERE AFTER READYING ALL THE REPLIES:
**1) No one in the opposite camp has made a convincing argument against my method. The best you guys got is "**your file names are too long" which bears ZERO consequence on the usability of my music collection. On the (very) rare occasion a file name might be over the character limit, it's easy enough to shorten or abbreviate the file name(s) to fix this.
2) My annoyance with this 100% stems from being a SLSK user. I download A LOT of music. After downloading music, my folder will look exactly like this:
C:\Users\myprofile\Documents\Soulseek Downloads\complete\yourslskusername\ALBUMNAME\TRACK NUMBER - TRACK NAME.mp3
So, if you take a close look at that, and multiply it by a shit load of files and folders, you will see how annoying it is when it comes time to sort my collection. I can't remember what I downloaded last week, so when I look at the file names and folders and they don't contain at very least the ARTIST NAME, it gets pretty annoying. So for my personal workflow, artist name is PARAMOUNT to the file name. The album name, track number and track name are also very helpful when checking your download for completeness via Discogs, etc. Having minimal information in the filename makes sorting, checking and organizing files pretty annoying.
3) Maybe there's a better, more new school way of doing things, but when you have a TB of music (I'm sure some of you have even more) you want your files to be super standardized and organized. It makes sense to have the minimum critical info in the filename so you can make compilations, etc.
4) A lot of you guys are saying I am doing it “the old way” and you are 100% correct. That said, if there’s anything I have learned as time has passed, just because something is newer, it doesn’t ALWAYS equate to better.
5) If file names and folder structures are irrelevant, then why have a standard filename at all? Why not just dump all your files into one giant music folder and let your third party application serve up the files via the metadata? Complaining that my files names are too long means file names ARE important to you, so that argument is contradictory. If file names don’t matter, and you never have to look at them at all, why would you be opposed to naming the files the way I do?