Organize a Music Collection With Mediamonkey

Getting music onto your PC is relatively easy, but once it's there, how do you find missing track information and get it organized into an easy to navigate collection?

Steps

  1. Install MediaMonkey. The free version will do.
  2. Run MediaMonkey and let it scan your drive/network for music files.
  3. Since MediaMonkey will find all the sound files on your computer, you will want to remove any irrelevant files from your library. This can be done by selecting the files and pressing 'Delete'. (Hint: it is easier to first sort the items by Path).
  4. Remove duplicate files from library. Go to the sidebar on the left, and navigate to - Library->Files to edit->Duplicate Titles. It can be easier if you sort the items by path.
  5. Go to the 'Files to Edit' node to locate all tracks that are missing information. Click the 'Album' heading to sort by Album.
  6. Lookup missing information and album art by selecting all the tracks from an album and right-click 'Auto-tag from Amazon'.
  7. If the information can't be located in Amazon's database, look up the information manually via www.allmusic.com and update the tracks manually by selecting them and right-clicking 'Properties'.
  8. Once track tags are updated, you'll want to organize the files on your drive in a consistent format. Select all the tracks in the MediaMonkey library by clicking <Ctrl><a> and click Tools | Auto-Organize
  9. Choose a format for organizing your collection. A pretty standard one is ../My Music/<Artist>/<Album>/<Track#> <Title>
  10. Your entire collection will now be tagged and organized in a manner that allows you to navigate it from music organizers such as MediaMonkey or directly from your Windows Explorer.



Tips

  • There are automated tools such as MusicBrainz for tagging your library, however, they rely on audio-fingerprinting technology which typically only matches ~25% of files.
  • There are other tools for organizing such as Tag and Rename or Tag Scanner which also work well, however, MediaMonkey is easier to use and free.
  • There are other tools for tagging such as Tag and Rename, iTunes, MusicMatch, etc. but MediaMonkey offers one of the fastest means of getting your collection updated.

Warnings

  • MediaMonkey also rips CDs, however, MP3 encoding is limited to 30 days. After that, you'll want to copy a standard version of the lame.dll to the MediaMonkey directory to get around this limitation.
  • This method will not update imported playlists. They will no longer work if they contain tracks that are moved.

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