What can I use to sort the file structure of my media library's in Linux?

April 5, 2007 1:35 PM

Is there a Linux equivalent of Itunes from the aspect of how it seamlessly organizes the files in my hard disk. One thing I have come to learn throughout my years of computing' is never rely on anything but the basics when you are able. So basically now that my music has proper tags and album art I want to maintain my library's constant growth with as little effort as possible. Basically I'm looking for my library to look like this /home/user/music_library/[artist]/[album]/[track name].mp3 Basically something like itunes "consolidate library" option.

Last time I asked a question similar to this based on windows OS. http://ask.metafilter.com/58823/Is-there-a-way-i-can-automate-the-process-of-adding-lyrics-to-my-mp3-tags

This time I'm hoping to find something similar but for Linux. As soon as Feisty Fawn is released Apr 19th Ill be switching completely to Linux.

My usual mantra for my media is share and share alike, meaning when my friends want to mirror my media library, I lend a spare drive to them and they copy it. Making redundant copies of my entire media library. So if I can keep this as organized as possible it makes life much simpler. Being as simple file structure is easier to cross computers than Itunes Db's and stuff like that.

posted by Chamunks to computers & internet (17 comments total)

Have you tried Amarok? I really haven't used all the functionality it has to offer, so I don't know if you can add lyrics. But it really simplified the task of organizing my (admittedly limited) music collection.
posted by cog_nate at 1:49 PM on April 5, 2007

Well the adding of lyrics is still an idea I'm tossing around since it would be very tedious for over 10,000 tracks. As to answer your question I haven't looked into Armarok yet but i will get back to you.
posted by Chamunks at 1:54 PM on April 5, 2007

Amarok is the single best music player interface I've ever used on any OS. Not sure about it's reorg functions though.

For mass re-organizing/tagging/etc. of music files, I'd suggest taking a look at EasyTag, which has some nice utilities for batch renaming files based on tag information, or the reverse-- batch tagging files based on filename.

Or, you could go Linux hardcore and write a Perl script for it ;)
posted by mcstayinskool at 1:54 PM on April 5, 2007

Both Rhythmbox and Banshee do what your looking for.
posted by thebabelfish at 1:56 PM on April 5, 2007

Wow I love this site!
posted by Chamunks at 2:01 PM on April 5, 2007

I use Amarok personally, but Songbird Media Player looks like it rocks pretty hard. I'm waiting for it to come out of beta, but it might be sufficiently usable for you.
posted by limon at 2:08 PM on April 5, 2007

(Check out this link to see what it can do..)
posted by limon at 2:10 PM on April 5, 2007

It would appear as if there is no simple way to sort using Armarock. Since I'm looking for the least configuration possible Banshee looks like it is my winner, being as I also have a last.fm account. But we will see once I'm 100% Linus reiser fs and all. No windows partitions :P.
posted by Chamunks at 2:12 PM on April 5, 2007

I heard about songbird but its still beta. If not beta alpha.
posted by Chamunks at 2:13 PM on April 5, 2007

I'm jumping on the Amarok bandwagon... The customizability is unsurpassed! I have it set up to organize things seamlessly with my previously itunes organized music collection. I also have one of the scripts installed that automatically searches lyrics websites and adds the lyrics to the songs whenever they play. Results of course may vary.

Not sure what you mean about not simple to start using it. Amarok also has last.fm support natively in the program. I have not tried Banshee though since Amarok came with Kubuntu and I haven't looked back. Best of luck in what you find.
posted by Phantomx at 3:09 PM on April 5, 2007

I would have hoped you would have linked some of those scripts but thats cool if you don't. I'm totally open to opinions I'm looking for some good research material. :P
posted by Chamunks at 3:19 PM on April 5, 2007

amarok has always annoyed the living fsck out of me, first thing I do is uninstall it.

rhythmbox is great. but it's true that its last.fm support has been wonky.

my favorite tagger is kid3. simple and easy to use but fairly powerful. does the file->id3 / id3->file thing.

I switched from edgy to feisty since ~ herd 2 or 3. I am fairly certain you would not be disappointed if you tried the current beta. (and for the most part the idea of releases is a mite fuzzier when you are dealing with something like apt or yum, basically you can run the beta and by the time the release rolls around you will already be running the up to date release cleanly)

recommend for just about every k/x/ubuntu user: medibuntu.
posted by dorian at 3:20 PM on April 5, 2007

YMMV, but I absolutely love Quod Libet. I don't know if there's a lyrics plugin, but just about everything else is covered. I've tried switching to Amarok and Rhythmbox, but keep coming back to QL.
posted by phooky at 3:27 PM on April 5, 2007

Stay away from Songbird. It has a lot of potential, but it still has a long way to go before it's stable enough for every day use.
posted by chrisamiller at 4:42 PM on April 5, 2007

Just as a note, amarok can organize your files for you, it does quite a good job of it actually. Just right click on the parent of the files you want to organize in the collection tree, go to 'Manage Files' and then choose 'Organize [#] Files'.

It gives you a dialog with all kinds of options for how you want to organize things and then you just click go and you're off.

Probably not as easy a single button click, but it works pretty well for me, and it remembers what you did last time, so you can get everything tweaked just so and then it's really only two clicks to get things right.

Also, amarok rocks in most other ways too, it has lyric scripts included, so you don't even need a link for them.
posted by christy at 4:53 PM on April 5, 2007

rhythmbox doesn't have an equivalent to the itunes 'consolidate my library' thing. It will organise files as you rip from audio CDs or copy from portable players, but we just haven't gotten around to adding a means of reorganising the files already in your library.
posted by plant at 10:46 PM on April 5, 2007

If you do, please make it hard to find - having a reorg done unintentionally is way up there on the irritometer :-)
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 AM on April 6, 2007