Rename the new music folder. It can be something simple like “Music,” or something reflecting the personality of your collection, like “Death Metal Grotesqueries” or “The Soundtrack to My Life. ”
Grouping your music logically will make it easier to find tunes you are looking for and the refreshing simplicity will inspire you to keep new additions organized by labeling them the same way.
It may be best to do this one album at a time so that you can organize them according to artist. You can also rename them as you go.
An easy way to search your entire hard drive for audio files is to do a search for all files ending in extensions associated with audio files. Click on the start menu, go to the “Search programs and files” bar at the bottom, and type in *. mp3 or *. FLAC (or other kinds of audio files you know might be on your computer). Any files discovered this way can be moved to their appropriate place in the master music folder. [2] X Research source Music players like iTunes will only recognize compatible files, but you can use this to your advantage. In iTunes, click “File” then “Add File to Library. ” Only files playable in iTunes will be visible. You can try this with any folder and move the uncovered files accordingly.
One way to figure out what you might be able to get rid of is to sort music in your music player by number of plays. In iTunes, go to “view” and then “View Options. ” From there, you can select what data tags will be displayed in the player. Check “plays” and hit enter, and your music can now be sorted by number of plays. Click on the “plays” column header to group your entire collection in ascending or descending order of plays.
In iTunes, right-clicking on a highlighted album and selecting “get info” gives you the option of correcting a batch of tracks or individual songs. The artist, album title, year of release, etc. can all be changed In Windows Media Player, click on the “Organize” menu, then “Options” > “Library” > “Automatic media information updates for files” > “Retrieve additional information from the Internet. ” The player will apply tags to music it recognizes. [4] X Research source Make sure to use the same spelling of an artist’s name if you are updating more than one album by the same person or band.
Programs such as MusicBrainz Picard will “listen” to tracks and compare the audio imprint results to the music stored in their database. It will then tell you what tags it has for the music in its database. Adding these tags to your files can be done with a single click, and thus you can quickly, accurately, and uniformly relabel the albums in your collection without having to do so track by track. [6] X Research source Tracks that are not initially recognized by existing metatags in MusicBrainz Picard are placed in the “Unmatched Files” category. You may have to listen to these tracks to determine what they are, but that shouldn’t be too much of a chore for music lovers! Create folders for these tracks or albums as you determine what they are. [7] X Research source
Do an online search to find an image of the album’s cover (or an image you’d like to use for it). Save a copy of the image and place it in the respective album’s folder on your computer. Album art can be added in iTunes by highlighting all of the tracks in an album, right-clicking and selecting “Get info,” and then dragging the album art files into the “Album Art” box in the lower right. For Windows Media Player, go to either your saved copy of the image or an image online and right click. Select “Copy. ” Then, right click on the album you want to update in Windows Media Player and select “Past album art. ”
