MP3 Music Collection

[LHammonds]

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

 

FYI - I fell asleep last night typing these instructions so I'm saving where I'm at and will continue to finish it tonight or tomorrow when I have more time.

 

 

 

Here are some notes about the process I do when adding new songs to my collection. I'll probably need to reference this at a later date (bad memory) but thought I'd share it with y'all while I'm at it.

 

Reference Site: FreePlayMusic.com

 

Software I use to manage my collection:

• Duplicate Cleaner
  
• Mp3tag
  
• MusicBrainz Picard (song identification by name, tag or fingerprinting PUID)
  
• AudioTag.info (upload unknown song for identification)
  
• Google (getting lyrics or finding unknown songs via lyrics)
  

 

Let's say you downloaded the entire collection (10 tracks) called "Evil Intentions Vol 5" from FreePlayMusic.com and now you need to "clean them up" before adding them to your music library.

 

Step #1 - Configure Mp3Tag

1. We need to add a "Mood" column to enter the data from the site typically referred to as "Feeling" or "Mood" of the music.
   
2. Click Tools --> Options. Select "Tag Panel" and add a new item. Choose "MOOD" from the dropdown list and call it "Mood / Feeling" and click OK, OK (option panel should now be closed)
   
3. Click View --> Customize columns. Place a checkmark beside Mood (if Mood is not shown, click New and add it). It should have the value of %mood% and field should be %mood%.
   
4. You can change the order of the columns by selecting them and clicking the "Move Up" or "Move Down" buttons. I prefer the following order: Filename, Title, Artist, Album Artist, Album, Track, Genre, Year, Mood, Comment, Tag, Path
   

 

Step #2 - Tag Cleanup

1. Put the 10 files in a folder somewhere...such as C:\Music\New
   
2. It is handy to include album art so if you can find some, add it to the folder. Attached example:
   
3. Open Mp3tag and point it to the folder where you placed the new music.
   
4. You should see a nice of the 10 music files and their pre-defined tags.
   
5. Instead of modifying one at a time, let's add the album art to all of them at the same time. Select one song and press CTRL+A to highlight all of them (or CTRL+Click each one)
   
6. In the panel to the left, you should notice the unique fields now show "< keep >" in them...meaning it will not modify that info when you save the files. Right-click the empty album art graphic and choose "Add cover" and select the album art image in your music folder. Click File --> Save (or CTRL+S) to save the album art to each of the selected songs.
   
7. >> CONTINUE HERE <<
   

[Thor.]

Hey LHammonds i always wondered what type of music you listen to, me its 90% alternative rock and the other is everything in between except Country :down:

 

Thanks for the tips by the way, unfortunately i Convert my stuff to lossless Flac, and use MediaMonkey.

It has pretty much everything built in :thumbsup:

 

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

 

it even looks for Album art :thumbsup:

 

If you look inside the configuration it looks almost like it could support winamp dsp's, i haven't fully searched through its huge list of features yet, also does video and other formats if you dig deep enough.

Edited August 25, 2011 by Thor.

[LHammonds]

Hey LHammonds i always wondered what type of music you listen to

You'll have to continue wondering. muhahahaha!

 

Thanks for the tips by the way, unfortunately i Convert my stuff to lossless Flac, and use MediaMonkey.

It has pretty much everything built in :thumbsup:

This is only the beginning. This will be a VERY long post when I get done with all the little things I do to get my collection worthy of storage on my hard drive. I recently went through a massive file re-organization and dumped all the various music I had scattered around...many of it dups of the same music files but renamed differently and such. That is where the duplicate file utility was VERY handy at multiple stages of the re-organization. It becomes a bit more difficult to match a file if they are different sizes (bit rates), incorrect or incomplete tags and files named differently (e.g. title.mp3 vs artist-title.mp3 vs album-track.mp3). It's also fun seeing the same song list in iTunes because the filename and/or tag says "The Beatles" vs "Beatles."

 

Picard and even Windows Media Player (if play the song using it) will grab the album art if it finds a match. However, some music such as the files on the example site I'm using can possibly have no album art or art that is different because they made changes to their logo over time but failed to go back and re-process all the files. And sometimes, I just like tweaking the images (left-over hobby from my Windows and Dock icon creation days).

 

LHammonds

[Thor.]

Its one sweet Application, it has everything from shoutcast radio to sorting and converting, and cd burning. All wrapped into one complex application, but not to overwhelming that you can't find your way around.

 

Not to mention its free, some features are locked but its free none the less, like winamp if you use that media player.

Edited August 25, 2011 by Thor.