Help finding a simple program the organizes your music (1 Viewer)

Does anyone use or know of a good easy program to organize music. I'm not talking about WMP that just creates links to your songs, but something that can actually move the files and edit the names and put them into files based on artist...or something like that.

I have a bunch of albums that are already in their proper folders, but I also have a bunch of singles everywhere. And it's taking me too long to put each one where it's supposed to go.

Any ideas?


Thanks for the help.

iTunes. No, I am not kidding.

I am using a program from collectorz.com called movie collector which I find amazing for organizing my 1000+ dvd collection, they have a similar program for music which I have never tried but you can use the trial version to see if it meets your needs.

I'll second that, it's free and it's easy to work with.

Yeah, but can it actually change the location of the original file? Or better yet, can it change the name of the actual file by renaming it within iTunes? If it can do this, that would be a big help.

You know, I've never tried changing the actual file name or location in iTunes. I've always done that using windows explorer. So I'm not sure on that one. However, iTunes has a full id3 tag editor.

I keep all my mp3s on an external hard-drive so that I can move them from computer to computer. iTunes will complain if the drive isn't plugged in and I try and do something with the files, but that's about it. Once I plug it back in, all is well.

I use iTunes for my library, and the file name indeed gets altered whenever I rename a song in the id3 tag editor. The file also gets moved should I change the Artist or Album values as well.

The only problem though, is that there seems to be a 36 character limit on the file names. So, for example, I have a song entitled "Dangerous (Look In The Light Of What You're...)" by Yes. The file name for that song is called "11 Dangerous (Look In The Light Of W.mp3".

The collectors software mention can change the filename based on information pulled from ID2/ID3 tags on your MP3 files> I have used the software for a long time and would recommend checking it out. Can also set ID information from filename if you need as well. Dont think it will move files for you though.

The best file tagger and renamer I've tried yet is called, aptly, Tag&Rename, findable at http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

I use it mainly to tag and sort everything in a consistent format, usually something like "AArtist, The2007 An Album (VBR)The Artist - 01 - The Track.mp3" and it works brilliantly.

It can also fetch a lot of info on the tracks from either Amazon or FreeDB for instance, so if you rip an album you can add tags and album art to it with a few mouse clicks.

It can easily move and arrange all tracks into a file tree, say if you'd want all your music automatically moved to C:Music - you just alter the rename mask to indicate that. Even if your files are spread out all over your hard drives now, you can just set a nice rename mask in the program and have it move them to one location.

If I want to rename a file in place I'd just enter "%1 - %6 - %2" (what those values mean is very easy to see in the program even if it seems cryptic here; the result would be "Artist - Track number - Songtitle"). That is assuming the MP3 tags were all correct and I wouldn't have to touch those.

However, assuming I'd also want to do something slightly more advanced, like maybe have that track moved to some other location, I'd just pre-set the mask to: "C:Music%1%3%1 - %6 - %2" and have the file automatically and easily moved to C:MusicArtistAlbumname and named as above.

This is an utterly brilliant program, and unlike iTunes you have total control over what you're doing. Meaning, you can edit your MP3 (or virtually any other music format) tags totally secure in that it doesn't move, rename or do anything else to your files unless you specifically choose to go the rename panel.

It can also do things "in reverse" - meaning if you have a bunch of tracks named Number - Songname - Artist.mp3 for instance but it has no MP3 tags at all, you can use a similar function with a mask and pick up the track number, name and artist and add those as MP3 tags. Then, to add the album name, you'd quickly hop into the multi-file tag editor and add the album name and then do a quick rename and your track would be tagged, properly named and moved to the directory you want them in.

Again, this may sound tricky when described, but it's really not, and it is incredibly powerful. Anyway, it's shareware, download it and give it an hour or so and you can see for yourself.

iTunes scares me, but that's because I really dislike programs that do things "on their own".

Yes and yes.

ill second tag&rename, one of the best software purchases ive ever made.

I-Tunes and the Collectorz.com music edition, their movie one is pretty sweet too.

Media Monkey is one I use. (Google it, I can't post links yet :-(

It allows a lot of customization, and mass editing of ID3 tags. It will let you resave your entire collection to any directory/file structure you choose based on the tags...ie: %a %al [%y] %tr - %t would save them to a directory first based on artist, then album [year], then track - title. ie: Bob MuscianCool Album [2007]1-Cool Song.mp3 You can pick any id3 info to appear where you want, using as many directories as you want.

You can also auto-pull album info from places like amazon, but It's kind of hit and miss.

There is a free and pay version, all the pay version adds is advanced burningripping capabilities, all the organization capabilities are in the free one.

Sounds like you've never used iTunes -- you should at least try it before considering anything else.