There seems to be confusion between the filesystem and the metadata.
The filesystem is for storage... it's only important to be able to group tracks together in small batches (releases - albums/singles/EPs) to be able to manage the files
The metadata is for searching, grouping and locating in your music player.
With that in mind, a lot of the problems he's cited vanish.
I have ~84,000 tracks from over 6,000 albums. The result of a 5 year ripping spree after a decade worked in the music industry.
Every track, with no exception, has been scanned by MusicBrainz Picard, had it's PUID generated and meta data normalised.
I've allowed my definition of genre be influenced by general opinion... I simply learned how the mass tag things.
The result is that I can find everything in my interface (Squeezebox) within seconds.
The file storage I only need to care about for management of the files, and copying to my portable player or deleting old releases (which I do rarely, but it does happen).
The file storage starts with file type:
MP3|FLAC|FLAC_9624
Below those are folders for high level type of content:
I have no problem at all storing and finding tracks, and I've no problem at all searching for tracks.
One of the good things about Squeezebox is that when you search it searches all metadata and the full file path. So a search for "quadro poly" would turn up the Polydor version of Quadrophenia.
Agreed. Although I appreciate the 'hacker sensibility' of using a hierarchical filesystem, such a structure is simply never going to cut it for music. There are too many opportunities for multiple tagging and too many areas that don't fit into the hierarchical approach.
In addition, depending on your chosen music player, practicalities dictate that changing file and folder paths is invasive and error prone - the file location is often a music player's 'primary key' for a given piece of music. Moving it around will lose associated data. It's best just to go with a real simple filesystem hierarchy of data that won't change, artist/album. I've written about this here http://www.blisshq.com/music-library-management-blog/2010/07...
What is Squeezebox exactly? I found many programs named like that and the one I think is you are talking about seems to have been discontinued now. Do you have a link or something?
I use Squeezebox server on a QNAP NAS storage thing.
Then I use a Squeezebox Transporter for the superlative DAC that it has.
Squeezebox server allows me to listen remotely too, so for more than a decade I've had the ability to listen to my home music collection from wherever I am in the world (assuming I have an internet connection). I use DNSMadeEasy for their dyndns stuff.
The filesystem is for storage... it's only important to be able to group tracks together in small batches (releases - albums/singles/EPs) to be able to manage the files
The metadata is for searching, grouping and locating in your music player.
With that in mind, a lot of the problems he's cited vanish.
I have ~84,000 tracks from over 6,000 albums. The result of a 5 year ripping spree after a decade worked in the music industry.
Every track, with no exception, has been scanned by MusicBrainz Picard, had it's PUID generated and meta data normalised.
I've allowed my definition of genre be influenced by general opinion... I simply learned how the mass tag things.
The result is that I can find everything in my interface (Squeezebox) within seconds.
The file storage I only need to care about for management of the files, and copying to my portable player or deleting old releases (which I do rarely, but it does happen).
The file storage starts with file type:
MP3|FLAC|FLAC_9624
Below those are folders for high level type of content:
Artists|Classical|Spoken Word|Compilations|Soundtracks
Within Artists I used
Artist/Release Name[ - Catalogue Number]/[Volume/][Media/]Track Number - Track Name
I only fill in catalogue number if I have two versions of the same titled release... i.e. Quadrophenia by The Who I have a couple of versions of.
I only fill out Volume if this is a multi-volume release.
I only fill out Media if this is a release that spans multiple CDs or DVDs.
So the short version of that might be:
FLAC/Artists/The Who/A Quick One/02 - Boris the Spider.flac
And a long version might look like:
FLAC/Artists/The Who/Quadrophenia - Polydor 2777840/CD2/01 - 5.15.flac
I have no problem at all storing and finding tracks, and I've no problem at all searching for tracks.
One of the good things about Squeezebox is that when you search it searches all metadata and the full file path. So a search for "quadro poly" would turn up the Polydor version of Quadrophenia.