Sondtracks by multiple artists - where to put them?

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1

Going through my collection and i've hit a snag, what to do with soundtracks and various artists.
For compilations its easy, a folder called compilations, containing all compilation albums.

My issues is with soundtracks. Now it might be easy just to say a folder called soundtracks, however i have a lot of soundtracks, by single artists i.e someone has written music for such a thing. These are organised by artist-album.
My issue is with soundtracks that are a collection of artists from seperate bands etc. It dosnt make sense to me to have a folder called soundtracks that contains soundtracks made up of songs by different bands, when a lot of my library is made of soundtracks by specific artists anyway, so what do i do with them?
Hope this makes sense, does anyone have any ideas?

2

I place soundtrack albums by single artists in the respective artist's folder. Soundtracks by various artists are placed in the compilations folder, with the other VA compilations.

3

hmm, yeah never thought of it like that, i guess soundtracks by various artists are sort of compilations, makes more sense than a list of soundtracks then a random folder called soundtracks full of other soundtracks heh.
Or maybe a folder called compilations for actual compilations and a folder called compilation soundtracks for VA soundtracks

4

I do exactly the same. To me a "compilation" is any album that is not connected to a single artist. So a soundtrack is a compilation, a mixture of songs (best of the decade) is a compilation, etc. All my albums are either under ARTIST folder or under a folder called COMPILATIONS.

5

The good news is that you can organize things however you wish....whatever makes sense to you.

6

So you have Music/Artist,Artist,Artist,Compilations,Artist,Artist etc?
Or you have Music/Artists/Artist,Artist

 Music/Compilations/Album,Album

And in compilations folder, does this just contain soundtrack compilation and actual compilations all together, or are there further subfolders for different categorys - im quite good at organising, but im struggling to come up with a way that seems right.

7

No, although in the tags I have multiple ARTISTS, in the file names and directories I only have one ARTIST.

Here's my setup:

noncompilations:

x:\music\artist\album\tracks....

If there are multidisks it would be:

x:\music\artist\album\disk 1\tracks...
x:\music\artist\album\disk 1\tracks

In the above, if there is only one artist on the album, I use that artist for the subdirectory. If the album has multiple artists, but is NOT a compilation (e.g., Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis), I have an ALBUM ARTIST set (in my case, I use Willie Nelson). And in the file it would be:

x:\music\Willie Nelson\Two Men With the Blues\01 - trackname.flac

But in my various players (squeezeboxes, foobar2000, itunes), they see the metadata and show the album under listings for both Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. Keep in mind that the file names and directory location are just for some organization for the files. My players don't really care about this. They care about the metadata (tags) itself.

For compilations, it is just:

x:\music\compilations\album\tracks
If multidisk, then:

x:\music\compilations\album\disk 1\tracks....

There are no subdirectories for soundtracks, etc.

example:

x:\music\Songs from Chippy\01 - Goodnight Dear Diary - Joe Ely.flac

But again, you can organize the file names/directories however you prefer. Some people organize around genre. For example,

x:\music\rock\artist\album\tracks
x:\music\jazz\artist\album\tracks
etc.

Some organize around years:

x:\music\1960_65\artist\album\tracks...

The possibilities are endless. Pick an approach and be consistent. And if your tags are correct, you can entirely rearrange your file names and directory listing in the future if you change your mind using functions of mp3tag.

8

Thanks for the detailed reply jj and garym - much appreciated.
This is my first time arranging my music so its kind of all new, and picking an approach that is gonna work is kinda tricky. But it makes sense VA soundtracks are compilations and so should be with other compilations and as you say i can always change it up and further arrange compilations to compilations and soundtrack compilations if i feel that would be better. My tags are all sorted now so i guess if something dosnt work it should be easy to change. Thanks a lot guys!