Mp3 Naming Conventions

komputamuso

Nothing causes more discourse in the world of mp3 collecting as naming conventions, he blatantly lied.

After ages struggling with this one, I have finally come up with what I consider to be the best naming convention for mp3 files. But I would really like some feedback on this, as any naming convention is bound to be a compromise of sorts, and there may be a better one than mine.

Here we go:

Single files:

Band Name - Track Title.mp3

example: The Beatles - Yellow Submarine

Albums:

Artist/[Release Year] Album Name/Disc ##/Track ##. Artist - Title feat. Featured Artist.mp3

example: Beatles, The/[2003]Let It Be Naked/Disc 01/01. The Beatles - Get Back feat. Billy Preston.mp3

Now, I reckon most of us would agree that the Artist - Album - Track ## - Track.mp3 format or similar might be ideal if it weren't for the fact that, in most cases, the name is too long to be stored on DVD or other back-up media, especially if you want the DVD to be compatible with other systems. Hence the need to shorten the filename.

I started, obviously with the initial directory name. You'll see that I put the 'the' of 'The Beatles' at the end of their name, in order to prevent hundreds of 'The ...' directories listed one after the other. I didn't carry this naming convention through to the filename tho, pure laziness really, it just seemed like pedantic-ness gone too far! I also do the same for Proper Names, so "Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds" is filed under "Cave, Nick & The Bad Seeds". Same for "Cole, Nat 'King'". John Cougar Mellencamp defeats me entirely though. And, as u can see, I also made the decision to shorten all "and"'s to "&" just to shorten the filenames really.

In the next directory down I start with the album release date. This is so all the albums in an artists directory list in release order. It also helps distinguish from different releases of the same album. The name of the album is next before we transfer down to the next directory level.

In the case of the next directory I made the decision to split each CD in the case of a double CD release between directories, mainly because that's the way they are released. Also, as I usually would play one CD far more than the other it makes more since to go to one directory, select all the files using CTRL-A, press RETURN and away you go, instead of manually selecting the files you want. The number of the Disc is in two character format, "Disc 01" instead of "Disc 1", as I do have a number of CD collections which contain over 10 CD's and it just looks neater.

Down to the final level and we come to the filename itself. After long debates with myself as I don't have a life I finally decided to put the track number first. This was purely down to the fact that my old mp3 player would only play tracks in order of filename and not track number. As well as this, it does mean that tracks from 'various artist' CD's appear in the proper order. I used a dot after the track number as it meant a space less than the " - " separator I had been using and, in the same way I used the [] characters to delineate date, I figured the dot could delineate track number. And, aesthetically, I find it more pleasing. The track number is also in two character format because it just looks tidier.

In an ideal world I guess I would love to use the Album - Track ## - Title format. However this would be no good in the case of one track being isolated from the rest of the album. So the Artist name is next, followed by the track name seperated by " - ".

Finally I decided to put the featured artist at the end of the track. Many people put the this just after the artist name. I previously had the artist name as the first part of the filename and this way of naming the file just confused things.

This may all sound ultra pedantic, but as a sound designer I need quick access to my files, and I imagine DJ's are the same. If you have a better way of doing it tho I would much appreciate the comments.

By the way, there has been a long held file naming convention in Karaoke mp3 tracks, and they also have pretty much the same format as I have outlined. I only discovered this after re-inventing the wheel. The main differences are that albums tend to be reference numbers and so can be included in the file name, and that the artists names appear in proper alphabetical order, i.e. "SC8101-01 - Sinatra, Frank - My Way.mp3".

Thanks.