[t2ffn]

Hi,

I'm starting to look at adding my music collection to my XBMC machine, but thought I'd see if it will fit my needs first.

My collection is stored in this format:

Music folder:
Artist - Track.mp3
Artist - Track.mp3
etc

It is not organised into Albums, or by Artist, just one big pool. The ID tags are likely all messed up as in iTunes I have saved them to Albums I have made, ie, R'n'B, Chart, not the actual Album name.

I am thinking of purchasing TuneUp, from http://www.tuneupmedia.com/index.php which works like shazam to check your music, fix ID tags, and rename it accordingly, also adding cover art. (Dont think the coverart would transfer to XBMC)

Now, how well does XBMC handle music? How easily can I make playlists etc? Obviously it is more difficult to do using a remote than drag and drop with a mouse, if say using iTunes. Does anyone use XBMC for music and rate it highly? If so, do you find you have more albums, than individual tracks? I do not tend to get full albums as I only listen to a few tracks on them. How often do you swap playlists, add new ones? Time consuming?

Interested to hear peoples thoughts on this.

Thanks

[fonzie]

Before purchasing that software, take a look at Media Monkey. They have a free version. It can organize your music, into folders, rename, tag, add artwork, and more. I use it to organize my music.

[t2ffn]

Looks good thanks, I'll test it out.

What is the best way to organise music for XBMC? In folders by artist or one big pool?

Thanks

[dan1son]

XBMC uses the id3 tags for music. If you're going to use the library it doesn't really matter how they're organized since it'll read the tags and organize them accordingly. That said, if your music isn't tagged correctly you're in for a world of hurt.

I use Musicbrainz picard for tagging. It'll take a while the first time depending on how big your library is, but once done your music will be organized and ready to go in any number of players. Most music players will use id3 tags quite well, so it's worth it to do no matter what software you're using.

XBMC can also do a files view which will be organized just like your stuff is on the drive, but you won't get artist info and album reviews and such, but it's easier to do since you don't need to tag everything.

I use music playback the most in XBMC and find it works very well if your stuff is tagged well.

[t2ffn]

Gave MediaMonkey a quick test with some badly named files, and it couldn't decifer what they should be called.

I have a trial of TuneUp and it worked on every test file I gave it. The beauty of TuneUp is if files are named 0002 - Peaches & Cream, it Shazams the track, recognises the artist, album etc and renames the file.

For anyone with a slightly duff named collection, I'd advise to try the trial.

Dan1son, cheers for the info.

[fonzie]

True, that XBMC uses id3 tags to sort your music. A cool thing about XBMC is that once it has scraped all of your music (Artist info, Album info, fanart) you can go to the music settings and export your music library. This will put album.nfo and fanart.jpg files in each directory.

This is where I ran into a problem when I had all my songs in a single folder. It only saved one fanart.jpg and one album.nfo so I ended up having Will Smith fanart for virtually all of my music.

That is why I switched over to having a separate folder for every artist, and a folder in that for different albums.

My structure is:
MP3's->Artist Folder->Album Folder->songs.mp3

[t2ffn]

That is why I switched over to having a separate folder for every artist, and a folder in that for different albums.

My structure is:
MP3's->Artist Folder->Album Folder->songs.mp3

That could take a while for me...

Will have to see if TuneUp sorts folders out too!

Thanks

[dan1son]

Most of the taggers will also sort. Musicbrainz picard can as well. When it's tagging the files, you can tell it to put them in whatever structure you want. It's not the most "simple" thing to setup, but I'm sure you can find examples online with the layout you want.

I've had mine in "music/artist/album (year)/01 - trackname.file for as long as I can remember. Always works great, even if you're using file layouts for viewing. Make sure you do two numbers for the tracknum, or you'll get 10 before 2.

The taggers will also generally give you choices on what to do with album art. I have it throw an album.jpg file in the albums directory, but I've seen many people use the artwork embedded in the file. Having it embedded will produce a lot of copies if you primarily use albums. If your collection is mostly singles, embedded is probably the best.

[srsobieraj]

My structure is:
MP3's->Artist Folder->Album Folder->songs.mp3

Hey folks,

I keep my music in the following format:

Code:

MUSIC/<artist>/<album>/<song>.*

Everything was (and is) tagged nicely by WMP. But when XBMC tries to import, it doesn't understand the difference between the "Song Artist" tag and the "Album Artist" tag, which is causing a massive headache for me, as I have a bunch of Mix CDs, like "Best of Classical" and such.

How can I specify for XBMC that the Song Artist is a specific name (ie, Ludvig Beethoven) but the Album Artist is simply "Various Artists".

I've tried using MediaMonkey, but it doesn't seem to understand the difference between these tags either.

If there is no way to get XBMC to read these tags, how do folks deal with their mix albums?

[sjobbels]

Hey folks,

I keep my music in the following format:

Code:

MUSIC/<artist>/<album>/<song>.*

Everything was (and is) tagged nicely by WMP. But when XBMC tries to import, it doesn't understand the difference between the "Song Artist" tag and the "Album Artist" tag, which is causing a massive headache for me, as I have a bunch of Mix CDs, like "Best of Classical" and such.

How can I specify for XBMC that the Song Artist is a specific name (ie, Ludvig Beethoven) but the Album Artist is simply "Various Artists".

I've tried using MediaMonkey, but it doesn't seem to understand the difference between these tags either.

If there is no way to get XBMC to read these tags, how do folks deal with their mix albums?

With mix albums -->

Try to use with Album Artist: Various Artists
And check the checkbox "Part of a compilation"
Song artist: just fill in the name of the artist

rescan your library and it will be okay!

[dan1son]

XBMC also has a setting for compilations. "Include artists who appear only on compilations" under the music settings. If that's checked it will split off compilations and put each artist with the album and song from the compilation. If that's unchecked compilations should show up as "Various Artists" and you won't get 9 million artists that have one track.

I use the "Various Artists" albumartist tag, but I'm pretty sure that setting should be smart enough to figure it out even if that's empty.

[srsobieraj]

Thanks for the tips, I'll give both those a try.

[peter_rjs]

I tried many solutions over a long period of time.

XBMC is a superb audio system. I use the XBMCfreak version, on an ION330HT.

My audio files are all FLAC (\music\artist\album\track#-track name).

I feed HDMI direct to a very musical AV amp with excellent DAC's, and the sound quality is as good as my original high end CD & amp setup.

XBMC's gapless audio, playlists, fantastic visualiser, and general interface is just exceptional. I can't think of anything missing.

I only use it for audio, and it is superb.

Add in an Android phone with XBMC remote, (or an iPad with XBMC commander), and you have an incredible package.