"Curating" downloads

[mathias broucek]

Any words of wisdom on how best to organise the "album" in a non CD-based world?

Some things are obvious to me. For example:

1. I tend to change awkward disc breaks. For example, Bruckner 8 split across two discs with the 9th as a "filler" becomes two separate albums of 8 and 9.
2. I will sometimes recouple big CD boxed back to the more logical original LP couplings.
3. A two disc set of (say) the Verdi Requiem will become a single "album"

However I sometime struggle with the extent to which it's best to break-up illogical or semi-logical couplings.

For example, an album called "Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 3, 4 (Abbado, BPO)" makes sense whether we're talking discs or downloads/rips but "Beethoven: Symphony Nos 3; Schumann: Manfred Overture (Giulini, LAPO)" is a CD construct that doesn't make much sense as a download/rip. But if you take splitting things too far you end up with too many "albums"!

And what about big compilation boxes? Is it best to break up the Concertgebouw Anthology boxes on a one-work-per-album basis? What about the Jansons Radio recordings box - single "album" under Jansons or split up?

I'd be interested in what people do.

BTW I realise some don't bother with this kind of editing but I have a fairly large collection....

PS I'm the main user but my wife also uses the iPad/iPhone controller to access the music

[crb11]

Personally I have one album for what I'm likely to listen to in one go. So normally one album per work (I'm unlikely to want to listen to two Beethoven symphonies back-to-back, to pick your example), operas get split into acts, or where there'd normally be an interval, but some collections of shorter works stay together. For things like song recitals, I'll usually split individual songs or groups off into albums, but keep a playlist so I can listen to the CD as originally intended.

Makes for a lot of albums (1676 over 10480 tracks), but means I can find what I want.

[johnb]

For me there are two aspects to how I treat ripped CDs and downloads:

- How I organise them into folders on the computer
- How I tag them, so as to be able to search and find the music I am looking for when I stream the files.

I usually rip CDs into separate folders which represent the original CD (and the same with downloads). The exception to this is when a single piece (or a single act in, say, an opera) is spread over more than one CD - in that case I rearrange the tracks so that all the related tracks are in one folder.

As far as tagging is concerned, for the vast majority of ripped CDs and downloads I treat each piece as an individual "album", i.e. An "album" = a piece. The only exception is for CDs or downloads that comprise a collection of short pieces, e.g. Barbara Bonney's "Diamonds on the Snow" CD.

The tagging regime I use for the "album" tag is
<composer> - <piece> - <main performer>
e.g. Shostakovich - Symphony No 15 - Haitink, RCO

This way I can either play the original CD (by playing the tracks in a folder) or search for and play an individual piece (using the tags).

With Operas I usually treat each Act as an "album" (but this varies).

If you are combining tracks that spread over more than one CD (or download "disc") you usually need to edit the Track Number and Disc tags. THE standard software to edit tags in the Windows world is mp3tag. Don't be misled by the "mp3" part of its name - it edits most, if not all, file formats.

I should mention that I use the Squeezebox Touch and Logitech Media Server (running on a Server box). This, when combined with an iPad running iPeng and a systematic tagging regime, has an outstandingly good user interface.

[mathias broucek]

Thanks both

I'm coming around to the one (decent sized) work = one album philosophy as you both suggest. That said I'm quite tempted to have complete symphony sets as a single album. Not for Haydn, however.....

My tagging is similar to John's. His example under my system would be:

Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 (Haitink, RCO)

[mikealdren]

I use Musichi to tag and track all my CDs which I have now loaded onto the computer. It's a very flexible tool as it is classical orientated and allows you to tag by Composer, Composition, Movement and Artists (including by type: pianist, soprano etc). It also has links into on-line data which it can edit very flexibly. Strongly recommended.
Mike