i 'only' have about 16K songs, around 150gb, and foobar doesn't even flinch. i don't much care for media monkey and wouldn't suggest trying it with such a massive library, but it's worth trying.

also remember that foobar is free, while media monkey charges for their best version.

not sure about playlists, it's been many years since i used itunes. but i assume you can save them in a standard format and import them just fine. i seem to remember having to do that with ratings, since itunes doesn't write them to tags. just made one playlist for 5-star, one for 4-star, etc. then imported them in foobar, redid ratings, and all was golden.

as for scripting - both apps require it if you want to go beyond what they give you out of the box. but you can get away without scripting easily enough, whichever app you choose.

i guess your best bet is to try both and see which one feels best for you!

Artist Name \ Album Name \ 01 Track Name.mp3

Album year & genre are visible in iTunes.

Song title > Duration > Artist > Album > Genre > Year > Bit Rate

It's not often I need to look at my files through explorer etc as I do all of my stuff through MM, but I do like to have my music sorted into proper folders. I just do it like this as I have no need for the rest of the info:

<Album Artist>\<Year> - <Album>\<Track#> - <Title>

Which looks like this:

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x...titled-1-6.jpg

Downloads \ Artist name \ Album name \ Track name

I think some of you would be astonished at how pedantic I am with regards to my music collection... I'm definitely not that OCD in any other facet of life. The motivation behind it is ease of locating artists and searching by genre on my music drive, ditto for my iPod, and correct scrobbling for last.fm.

I name my music using a <Genre>\<Artist>\<Year> <Album>\<Track#> - <Title> mask and tag it accordingly. It requires genre tags and disc # tags (in the case of multidisc albums) for my iPod's sake since folder structure means nothing to it. All other tags (lyrics/comments etc.) should be blanked out because they usually contain crap like bittorrent tracker and blog URLs. I ensure that all albums have album art too (there must be a small folder.jpg in each album which should then be embedded in each track). I think I might run my music against MusicBrainz to iron out any discrepancies.

If any of you have mp3 tagging questions, ask away. And how ironic is it that I should just notice from my last.fm sig that The Red Krayola is mistagged? :(

How do you organize mixed artists compilations like certain soundtracks or albums like "golden oldies"?

Although I'm pedantic about tagging all my music, I still keep the folder set-up simple (as shown above) because it's very rare I need to actually go into folders to look for music. 99% of the time searching and organising is done through my music software. So, for me, the physical folders only need a simple arrangement.

that doesn't sound pedantic at all. in fact, it sounds absurdly inefficient. you'd be much better off using tags for things like genre and year, then using a strong library-based media player like foobar for organization.

also, embedding artwork is redundant, and it only serves to increase the size of your collection. i assume you do it for the sake of your ipod - again, if you use foobar, then you can embed artwork on the fly while syncing.

or you can go balls out and flash your ipod with rockbox firmware. not only will it let you use folder.jpg for album art, but you can use your own directory structure for organization, and can do away with all 'syncing' apps. just copy files in disc mode.

tore - sounds like you're still struggling with mixed-artist albums. how do you do things now? do you dislike the idea of using "various artists" as the album artist?

since you use foobar, you can make use of further tags to keep things sorted. i have an "album type" tag which could be set to "soundtrack", "mixtape", "compilation", etc. it helps me divide all "various artist" albums into finer categories for easy sorting.

Hehe, not really. I'm just wondering how people sort these albums (where they store the files) as it seems to be the only real difference in how we do things. :)

When it comes to tags, I do like you. I use Various artists for album artist and of course I also have album types tag to let me find stuff like soundtracks, studio albums, best ofs and so on. With foobar, I also like using multiple values in the artist field now and then, for example on songs like "Islands in the Stream" by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. It should of course show up under both these artists in my library tree and with foobar, I can make that happen. :)

When it comes to the physical location of my files, my goal is (still) to include searchable information in the path and filename, so all mixed artists compilations are organized in a folder called "!Mixed Artists Compilations" rather than f.ex under V for Various Artists. That way, a search query for "%path% HAS Mixed Artists" will give me all mixed artist compilations despite what album type is or if I've somehow forgotten to tag them .. Not that I I'm forgetful!

edit :

I also include album type in filename (f.ex "1972 - Close to the Edge [Studio album]") and all that together made the transition to foobar and retagging albums a breeze, for example by automatically filling %album type% with the information from that directory. Not sure what the benefit is right now, but if somehow my tags get screwed, it'll be of use. ;)