Wednesday, June 22, 2016

ORGANIZING MUSIC ON WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER

Over the years, I have collected a fair bit of music, going from LPs to tapes, to CDs and computer HD. Since I am not afraid of my own thoughts, I never went the Walkman, iPod, constant noise in my ears route, preferring decent speakers to earbuds.

My new laptop, when it arrives, will not even have a CD/DVD player, so I decided to rip all my remaining unripped CDs to HD.  That along with downloaded music and contributions from others added up to about 6400 songs when I was finished.  Not a lot compared to some but enough.

One would think that ripping a CD to HD would be simple enough. The files would include the cover, the names of the songs and the artist(s).  No such luck, unless they were high priced commercial single artist(s).  Compilations are a problem, as are private label CDs, CDs from tapes or from LPs. My Music folder was an absolute mess and Windows Media Player was no better.

Seeking a make work project that did not involve physical effort, I decided to organize my music.  Someone said iTunes worked well.  Nope. Maybe on Apple stuff, not on PC. Decided to stick with WMP and do the best I could.  I pass on the following in case it is useful to someone. 
  • Set Windows Explorer to View hidden system files on all folders.  Also set all folders to open as large icons.  This makes it easy to clean up album cover messes.
  • Download and install MP3tag www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html.  The is a free program though the programmer would appreciate a few bucks if you like it.  It will list all music tracks with all information (tags) and can be sorted 16 ways to breakfast. 
  • With Windows Explorer, Windows Media Player and MP3tag all open and switching back and forth, it is easy to add titles to tracks, names and artists to albums, and album art.
  • To change individual tracks with oddball formats to MP3, I found this on line: Audio converter - http://www.online-convert.com/result/ac960ba92dfc4edcb965956964e408ad

11 comments:

  1. I commend ffmpeg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg) to your attention.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I shudder just thinking of such a task. I'm still trying to come to grips with Cloud storage. I think that the Cloud too is probably better suited to Mac computers. And I resist buying a Mac. Am about to get new laptop. Sticking with HP I think.

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  3. I have used Dell laptops for years and been quite happy. Others have different stories.

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  4. I use WMP for all my music, too. I love being able to create playlists and save them to my MP3 player (yes, with earbuds; a necessary evil) so I have great workout music at my fingertips!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It does sound useful, but I'm too lazy to do any more than I already do - WMP lets me set ratings and tags at the file level or album level and it'll display whichever tags I want (right-click on the top ribbon where it says "Title", "Length", etc. and choose columns). As long as I can sort by artist, album, genre, year, and any of the built-in tags, I'm happy.

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  5. Replies
    1. Doesn't work for me. Plays horrible Russian pop.

      Delete
  6. its really helpful; info thanks

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    ReplyDelete

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