Whether you're a fan of death metal, jazz, or country music, nothing is more satisfying for the music-obsessed than browsing through a healthy collection of music. But if such a collection of songs is spread out in different locations on your computers and devices, it can be difficult to find the exact song you are looking for. Cleaning up and rearranging your digital music library makes your collection more manageable and is the perfect reason to spend a day listening to music.
Steps
Part 1 of 2: Consolidate your music files
Step 1. Create a master folder for music
Putting all your music in one place will help keep your collection organized. Create a new folder by right-clicking and selecting "Create New Folder." Give the new folder a name and move it to a location of your choice, such as your desktop or a folder that contains all your media files.
Rename the new music folder. It can be something simple like “Music” or something that reflects the personality of the collection, like “Death Metal Extravagances” or “The Soundtrack of My Life”
Step 2. Create subfolders within the music folder
For example, within the "Music" folder, you could create a folder for music of a certain genre or a certain decade and, within this, subfolders for each artist. Within the artist folder there could be subfolders for each album and within the album folders one for the album art or lyrics.
Grouping music logically will make it easier to find songs you are looking for, and the refreshing simplicity will inspire you to keep new additions organized by tagging them the same
Step 3. Move the music to the Music folder
Open the folders that contain the music, and drag and drop these files into the new central music location.
It might be better to do it album by album in such a way that you can organize them by artist. You can also rename them as you go along
Step 4. Locate other music files
There may be some errant files in unknown locations. Search your entire computer for other music files so that you can consolidate them with the rest of your music.
- An easy way to search your entire hard drive for audio files is to search for all files that end in extensions related to audio files. Click the Start menu, go to the "Search programs and files" bar at the bottom, and type *.mp3 or *. FLAC (or another type of audio file that you know might be on your computer). You can move any file discovered in this way to the proper place in the master music folder.
- Music players like iTunes only recognize supported files, but you can use them to your advantage. In iTunes, click "File," then "Add file to library." Only files playable on iTunes will be visible. You can test it with any folder and move the discovered files accordingly.
Step 5. Delete the files on the player
Once you move the files, players like iTunes won't know where to find them. Delete all the files in the music player so that you can re-import them from their new location.
Step 6. Add the files to the music player from the new central location
Drag and drop the music files into the player of your choice from the new general music folder. There they will be; newly organized and linked from one central source.
Step 7. Delete the music you don't listen to
By creating new folders and discovering all music files on your computer, remove duplicate files or anything you don't need or don't like from the collection. For a music fan it might be difficult to get rid of something in the collection, but this can tidy up the music folders and make it easier to keep everything organized, as well as free up space on the computer for more music.
One way to decide what to delete is to sort the music on the player based on the number of plays. In iTunes, go to "Viewing" and then "Viewing Options." Here, you can select which data labels will be displayed in the player. Check “Plays” and click Enter, and now the music will be sorted according to the number of plays. Click on the "Views" column heading to group the entire collection in ascending or descending order of views
Part 2 of 2: Fix Metadata Tags
Step 1. Develop a uniform file naming system for the metadata
Music will be easier to find and handle if you have a consistent way of labeling it. You could choose the format "last name, first" for artist names; Or you could use a standard way of writing the album title (“Regretfully Yours [1997]”) or collections from various artists (“Soundtrack - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves”).
Step 2. Fix the metadata manually if you want to apply tags individually
Using whatever naming system you've come up with, go ahead and start applying these tags to your files. You can change the information for an individual track or highlight and change multiple albums at once. Most music players will allow you to change this information manually.
- In iTunes, right-clicking on a highlighted album and selecting "Get Info" gives you the option to correct a group of tracks or individual songs. You can change the artist, album title, release year, etc.
- In Windows Media Player, click on the "Organize" menu, then "Options"> "Library"> "Automatic updates of multimedia information for files"> "Retrieve additional information from the Internet". The player will apply tags to the music that it recognizes.
- Make sure to write the artist's name in the same way if you are updating more than one album by the same person or band.
Step 3. If you want a quick solution, use a program to update the metadata
If you have a lot of music without any identifying information and you can't remember track details, try using a program that will identify and tag these files.
- Programs such as MusicBrainz Picard will "listen" to the tracks and compare the audio fingerprint results with the music stored in their database. Then it will tell you the tags it has for the music in its database. You can add them to your archives with a single click, so you can relabel the albums in your collection without having to do it track by track.
- Tracks that are not initially recognized by existing meta tags in MusicBrainz Picard are placed in the "Ungrouped Files" category. You may have to listen to these tracks to determine what they are, but it shouldn't be too much work for music lovers! Create folders for these tracks or albums as you determine what they are.
Step 4. Add album art
Many music files come with the album art as part of their metadata. By adding them to a music player, the album art will already be there. This will not be the case with all files, so you may have to add it manually.
- Do an online search to find an image of the album art (or an image you'd like to use for it). Save a copy of the image and place it in the respective album folder on your computer.
- You can add an album art in iTunes by highlighting all the tracks in an album, right-clicking and selecting "Get Info," and then dragging the files from the album art to the "Artwork" box at the bottom right.
- For Windows Media Player, go to either the saved copy of the image or an online image and right-click it. Select "Copy." Then, right-click on the album you want to update in Windows Media Player and select "Paste album art."