I think Pat is going in the right direction here. The layout of the files on disk storage is essentially independent of everything else.
Yes, I know you can drill down the tree with the slim interface, or with windows explorer (or ls if you're a *nix fan), but fundamentally you're doomed. What was important to me 4 years ago when I started recording music on my hard disk is not what is important to me now. And in 2 years I'll be interested in other stuff. I am neither going to move all that music into new branches, nor am I going to re-record it all. It's not just classical music. I'm very interested in folk music. I have a large collection in storage of Eastern European folk music on records (remember, vinyl). One day when I have nothing better to do with myself, I'm going to dust off that old record player, figure out how to get audio in into MP3 format, and record it all. And then what? Let's say I have this tune that originated in Bulgaria, but the Turks liked it so they put Turkish lyrics to it. Gypsies moved it around for 50 years, and this recording is from an ethnically Hungarian band who collected it while visiting a predominantly German town in Transylvania (once the eastern part of Hungary, but now politically Roumania). If I try to build a storage tree that imparts "information" by where in the tree the song is stored, I'm doomed. Not every example is this complex, but do I store this by country of origin of the tune, of the lyric, of the (majority of the) band members, of the band leader, of the place where the recording was made? And where exactly was it made? Is that place Hungary? Roumania? Translyvania? That depends on when it was made. Some linear tree combining the best aspects of each? It's unknowable ahead of time what requirements might develop over time. About the only good rule is don't pick a flat structure (the most obvious one) because most major operating systems at the moment can't manage one big directory of 40,000 songs well. After that, in the MP3 world, there are tags (I don't know about other music formats, because I haven't ventured there yet). The most recent version of the MP3 tagging "spec" includes the following tags of relevance to this discussion: 4.10 COMM Comments 4.2.1 TALB Album/Movie/Show title 4.2.2 TCOM Composer 4.2.3 TCON Content type 4.2.2 TEXT Lyricist/Text writer 4.2.2 TIPL Involved people list 4.2.1 TIT1 Content group description 4.2.1 TIT2 Title/songname/content description 4.2.1 TIT3 Subtitle/Description refinement 4.2.3 TLAN Language(s) 4.2.2 TMCL Musician credits list 4.2.3 TMED Media type 4.2.3 TMOO Mood 4.2.1 TOAL Original album/movie/show title 4.2.5 TOFN Original filename 4.2.2 TOLY Original lyricist(s)/text writer(s) 4.2.2 TOPE Original artist(s)/performer(s) 4.2.2 TPE1 Lead performer(s)/Soloist(s) 4.2.2 TPE2 Band/orchestra/accompaniment 4.2.2 TPE3 Conductor/performer refinement 4.2.2 TPE4 Interpreted, remixed, or otherwise modified by 4.2.5 TSOA Album sort order 4.2.5 TSOP Performer sort order 4.2.5 TSOT Title sort order 4.2.2 TXXX User defined text information frame The complete list is here (and, while not perhaps exhaustive, is exhausting to look through): http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-frames.txt Scroll down to section 4. Now, Slim can read all these tags. At the moment, though, it doesn't put them all into the database, but you can file enhancement requests with Slim to get your favorite tags supported in a way that makes sense to you, and you can influence how Slim prioritizes doing the work by getting your friends and fellow music followers to vote for the enhancements. -- Michaelwagner ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Michaelwagner's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=428 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=17877 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
