The Best Way To Catalog Your Music?

Hi guys,

What do you think the best way to order my music.

By name, by artist, by playlist order?

Or are there any other options.

I thought it would be interesting to see how other people do it.

x

 

For my folders in Mac OS, I catalogue by genre, then subgenre, then artist, then album (chronological order).

For Traktor, I make playlists cause otherwise I'd go insane.

 

For iTunes I sort by overall genre (house, trance, electro, etc., never subgenres). Further sorting is usually done by knowing all my music very well.

And last but not least, cover art on EVERYTHING. I can find many of my songs just by looking at the cover art. Most of the cover art also has record labels in large letters or symbols (such as Anjunabeats), which makes it easy to quickly tell the musical style.

In Traktor I organize things by playlist. I often completely remake the playlist because of my music library's growth hormones.

 

In traktor i do it by year-month & genres.

I hate genre'ising music but it helps me so much so that i can know straight away where to go if i want to take my det a bit deeper/house'ier/techier etc etc.
And i find that by month helps me so that if i think oh i had a real hot record not so long ago, what was it? i know it will be in the previous months folder.

It sounds long winded and a lot of folders but its really not, its nice and tidy and easily accessible.

 

I have it by Firstly year then month then i have say a "House" folder and in that i've got. Deep , Tech, Progressive, Upfront. I find this helps, if you know exactly where you want to take your set then you know where to look type thing.

I then have and other folder "Cheese" which has anything from 60's to RNB and indie :lol: for the occasional Birthday etc i do .

 

I sub genre everything. With today's EDM, there's a lot of music that fall under several genres. For example, I've got some stuff categorized as "Deep Jazzy Tribal Tech House". I know that might not be a real genre, but it helps me remember what elements the track has.
I also use the star rating system to "rate" the energy of the track. 1 star having the lowest energy to it.
I try to keep playlist current with categories such as "Favorites", "Commercial", etc.
Oh yeah and +1 on the cover art thing. It really helps me memorize a track.
---
Btw, welcome to the forum Senior Smiley Face!

 

Wow all very helpful so far.

The general rule seems to be via genre then month and then year.

@ O.D the energy star rating is a smart idea. It will help find a track for the mood of the crowd.

I've been doing it by genre and having to remember all of the music, things are getting messy so I'll start to implement some of these ideas

x

 

Yes i agree, the 5 star rating is good, i only rate certain tracks 5 stars if they smash it on the floor, then that way i can easily find that track that killed it last week, for example.
I don't bother rating anything 1-4 stars, it would just take up too much time.

 

I also make playlists with "crowd music" with the new popular music and a second playlist of "everything else in between" music. Once in a while you have to drop something cheesy for the crowd to sing along.

 

Label (with release, artist, song field )