Automatically sort music files into folders by album/artist names

I have a large collection of music files (let's say MP3), with metadata (ID3 tags), but all are located in the same folder. I wish to automatically organize all of them according to this metadata.

Tal Galili

Posted 2010-08-02T17:31:41.807

Reputation: 2 825

Answers

I suggest using Mp3tag; it has a rich feature set and allows this quite simply. To do this with Mp3tag, simply:

Open it.
Select all the files you want to rename (Ctrl+D to change to a certain directory).
Select them all in the list (Ctrl+A).
Go to the Convert menu at the top and select the first option, Tag - Filename.
For the format string, use my (in)famous one: %artist%\%album%\%title%
Click OK and watch the magic happen! It's truly a great program.

I hope this guide helped you and anyone else who is puzzled when it comes to organizing their music themselves without the aid of mainstream software like iTunes. Sometimes, I've found, you have to take things into your own hands!

Additional Info

Sometimes Mp3tag can become confused when working across multiple drives. To avoid this, include a path before the aforementioned format string (e.g., D:\Users\Me\Desktop\%artist%\%album%\%title%).

Gabriel Ryan Nahmias

Posted 2010-08-02T17:31:41.807

Reputation: 396

Much more intuitive than Picard. Insanely nice; thanks. – ruffin – 2014-09-30T02:11:22.727

+1. i LOVE mp3tag, and have been using it for years, and googled this question and..surprise surprise! it does this too. It is truly an amazing program. – Chud37 – 2014-12-05T17:46:46.377

I suggest the simple format string %artist% - %album%\%title%. Other scripting functions like brackets, which display contents only if available, can be used. – qwr – 2016-07-06T22:36:36.693

How can I make Mp3tag monitor/scan and apply the properties to the files in the folder? I don't manually clicking "Save" every time I add a new song to the folder – CreativiTimothy – 2018-10-24T03:14:34.107

You can use Picard. It can be configured to move files into a hierarchy based on their metadata. It can also use the MusicBrainz database to correct your metadata...if you want it to.

Of course, you could also do this with a single command on a unix system. I doubt that's what you want though.

Roinator

Posted 2010-08-02T17:31:41.807

Reputation: 91

1It isn't obvious from reading the documentation how to accomplish this. Can you be a bit more specific about how to use Picard to move files into a hierarchy based on metadata? – Michael – 2015-12-11T05:45:29.027

1@Michael : It is: Options -> Options ->File Naming-> Rename files when saving... If you want to completely break previous folder structure you need to select Move files to this directory... – Alamakanambra – 2016-10-20T23:30:52.487

Worked for me with the OS X version. – Clayton Stanley – 2012-06-14T04:21:58.877

2I have a synology diskstation, and a unix-y command that I could cron to do this would be enormously helpful.. Any chance you'd like to share? – Andrew Theken – 2012-07-07T13:52:23.047

Give iTunes a try.

iTunes sorts its media library in

artist
album
   track 1
     .
     .
   track n

mobe

Posted 2010-08-02T17:31:41.807

Reputation: 54

I personally use MediaMonkey It allows you to specify a pattern based on the metadata you have, and use it for moving the files to the corresponding directories (creating each directory if needed). It can also use Amazon to find any missing metadata

David A.

Posted 2010-08-02T17:31:41.807

Reputation: 407