Hi all. I am searching for an application or tool that will sort a lot
of mixed MP3 files into albums. The scenario is as follows:
I have 10.000 MP3 files in one, single folder. All of them are titled
"Artist - Name of Track.mp3". They do not necessarily hold any ID3
tags or similar. Most of the files come from complete albums, but many
do not. What I would like to do is: Organize all of these files into
folders; named after the corresponding album titled of the tracks
while leaving the non-album tracks alone. These are the basic
requirements. I do not need to play the files or similar, only sort
and organise. An idea might be to interact with one of the online CD
databases (CDDB, FreeDB etc.), lookup the track titles and calculate
which album they belong to. I have access to multiple platforms, so if
you can or know someone who can write the code for this project; do
let me know (obviously, I will pay more for this service than I will
pay for the answer :) I hope all of this makes sense. If it does not,
I will try and clarify. P.S. I have downloaded and tried more than 25
MP3 organizers without luck.

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Clarification of Question by phoz-ga on 08 Jul 2002 11:54 PDT

Hi AI, thanks for answering. You are correct, but the problem really
is to retrieve the album titles from "somewhere" and match them with a
number of tracks. I will give you an example. Imagine a directory with
the following files: "Prodigy - Breathe.mp3, Prodigy - Charly.mp3,
Prodigy - Jericho.mp3, Prodigy - Firestarter.mp3, Prodigy - Your
Love.mp3, Prodigy - Climbatize.mp3". Now, I want this
tool/application/script to look up the following titles in a CD
database and retrieve the information that "Breathe, Firestarter and
Climbatize" should be moved to a directory created with the name "Fat
of The Land" and that "Charly, Jericho and Your Love" belongs in a
directory named "Experience". Maybe I am asking the impossible. I
realise that this is a quite feature to ask for. Sorry if this
clarification adds to the confusion :-)

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Request for Question Clarification by aziphirael-ga on 08 Jul 2002 12:10 PDT

Hi Phoz,

My initial impression is that it is not impossible to do. Essentially
if the files are correctly named then you can do the look-up to the
database. Files that it can't work it will leave alone.

Probably could be done in either Perl or Java by my initial reckoning.
Perl would be an ideal choice as it has powerful text and file
manipulations. The program would glob the directory containing your
files and then do a lookup based on your file names to the external
database of song names. Once it has a match it would then move that
file to the appropriate directory, maybe make it so that if it is a
song of a new album that hasen't been found yet it would create the
directory.

Anyway thats just of the top of my head :-) Would need to sit down and
do some programming to see how doable it really is.

ALL of them are titled Artist - Name of Track.mp3 ??
They all have artist, and then a hyphen? If so, you
could probably use a little DOS batch file to do 
the job. 

I'll wait for a clarification before I elaborate.

-AI

There is a program called MP3 Butler, which uses an mp3's file name to
populate its ID3 tag, and then moves it into a directory structure
similar to what you're asking for.  *Warning* it also alters the file
names so they don't have any spaces, quotes, question marks,
parentheses, or other characters that have to be "escaped" on the
command-line.

http://babblica.net/mp3butler/main

You could use this Sort MP3 perl script to do a large part of what
your asking.  It will only work with mp3's with an ID3 tag, but at the
very least that could deal with a significant portion of your
collection allowing you to deal with the remainder in a different
fashion.

http://www.curtisonline.net/software/ (half way down the page)

Ahh, yah I see... I completely missed
that there was JUST Artist, then track
name. That is a bit of a quandry huh?

Could you possibly just separate the 
tracks into directories with artists,
THEN use a renaming batch file? It of
course would require some typing, to
populate the album fields (a human needs
get the names). 

Do ANY of the album names exist in the id3 tag?

Ever just consider paying an underling
to rename them, and sort manually? Have
a cousin or a sibling that needs cash?
hehe.

Can you goto a DOS prompt, and do a
dir > c:\files.txt
Maybe let us see the extent of damage?

-AI

Musicmatch can populate ID3 tags from file names.  It can also lookup
album information from some type of CDDB and populate the ID3 tags. 
Finally, it can rename your files using the ID3 tags so you could have
"artist - album - track.mp3".  You'd then need a script to generate
the directory structure.  It seems the problem so far has been getting
the album name in the file name and this might help.  Also, if you
just want to be able to arrange your tracks by album, music match does
it directly through ID3 tags without changing directory structure.

caveats:

music match juke box functions required for this are not freeware, you
have to pay $20.

The lookup function is kinda slow and requires some user interaction. 
For instance, if prodigy has 5 different versions of "Outerspace" in 5
different albums, mmjb will make a best guess and offer 4 other
alternatives.  You don't need to actively manage this if you are
willing to take the best guess.  It could end up misslabeling your
tracks, esp if some of them are not available under CDDB or are
misspelt.

I've never tried to look up labels for more than 30 tracks at a time.

I would recommend MusicMatch over any other software, though its not
free its worth the money. The sound quality of MusicMatch Jukebox is
much better than its counterparts (say real one). Also I hate Real
players they try to load during startup and try to connect to their
server.

There is a super-tagging function, using which you could label your
tracks. This could later be organized in different folders etc.

Also MusicMatch Jukebox is a real jukebox, since clicking on a track
adds the track in the playlist at the end wheras in the RealOne (no
real jukebox exists now) the moment you click on a track, that track
starts playing.

However if you are really concerened about 20$, you could use RealOne
to organize. It does a decent job, like selecting all the songs by
artist and labelling then by album and moving them in different
directories