I'm trying to find an effective method of printing out my current list
of MP3 files.  I have a specific requirement which I'll explain in a
minute so please read this before deciding whether you can help.

I've recently ripped all of my cds (about 800) to an external hard
disk and now use that as my primary source of music played through
stereos in several different rooms in my house.  I've figured out how
to do what I thought were the hard parts (finding a ripping method
that would produce reasonably archival copies, figuring out how to
serve from one source to multiple receivers simulataneously, etc.) but
am flummoxed in finding a way to print a simple list of the current
collection of artists/albums.

Specifically, I want be able to print out whenever I want it a list
that would have the artist name and album name on one line.  As for
instance:

Abbey Lincoln/Who Used to Dance
Adams (John)/Gnarly Buttons
Adams (John)/Road Movies
Air/10000 hz Legend
Air/Moon Safari
Air/Premier Symptomes
Air/The Virgin Suicides
Air/Talky Walky
Al Green/Al Green's Greatest Hits
Al Green/I Can't Stop
Alabama 3/Exit on Coldharbour Lane
etc...

I've explored RealPlayer, AudioStation and a few other mp3 players and
they can each do something almost right but not quite.  Generally they
will provide a way to print one of the following (1) a list of artists
OR (2) a list of albums (but NOT by artist, just a list of album names
in alphabetical order, not useful to me) or (3) a list of all the
songs (really not useful to me).

Alternately, it's possible that this could be approached through
Windows.  The files stored in a directory ('my music') within which
there is a directory for each artist and with each artist directory
there is a directory for each album (and then, obviously the actual
songs/mp3 are stored within the album directory).  So perhaps this
could be approached by figuring out how to print just the two levels
of the directory structure that I'm interested in.  For instance the
full generic path would be:

g:\my documents\my music\artist\album\song.mp3

so if there were a way to go to the g:\my documents\my music directory
and from there print the directories that exit there (ie, the 'artist'
directories) and also one level of the subdirectories within each of
those directories (ie, the 'album' directories) but NOT any further
(ie, NOT the song/mp3 file names), that could work as well.  But again
I'm specifically looking for either ONE LINE that contains the artist
and album name or it would also be acceptable to have the artist print
once and then the album names listed underneath one line per album
(this would look like:

Abbey Lincoln
     Who Used to Dance
Adams (John)
     Gnarly Buttons
     Road Movies
Air
    10000 hz Legend
    Moon Safari
    Premier Symptomes
    The Virgin Suicides
    Talky Walky
Al Green
    Al Green's Greatest Hits
    I Can't Stop
Alabama 3
    Exit on Coldharbour Lane
etc...

In any case, I am NOT interested in tips on cutting and pasting bits
of a list from a window as a way of accomplishing this once (I've
already done that, what I'm looking for is a way to do this
repeatedly) NOR and I interested in links to MP3 discussion boards,
information sites, etc.

I'm reasonably computer literate and can generally poke around enough
to figure things out but this has eluded me.  This seems like it
SHOULD be an incredibly simple thing.  I'm hoping it is and that I've
just missed it.

---

Request for Question Clarification by elmarto-ga on 24 Sep 2004 08:51 PDT

Hi csny,
I might be able to write a small program that would put the
information you need into a .txt file, which you could then print.

If you're interested in this solution, please let me know what version
of Windows you're using.

Regards,
elmarto

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 26 Sep 2004 16:44 PDT

csny...

Here's a freeware program which reputedly provides you 
several options for extracting the information from a 
directory tree:

"Dir 2 File is a small utility that allows you to export
 directory listings to HTML, plain text, CSV, or Excel
 files quickly and extremely easily."

"Includes options for HTML page customisation."

"Note: Excel MUST be installed if you wish to use the
 .CSV or .XLS export options."
http://support.it-mate.co.uk/?mode=Products&p=dir2file

Let me know if this satisfies your needs, and I'll post
it as a formal answer.

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by csny-ga on 27 Sep 2004 15:04 PDT

sublime1 

- I tried that piece of freeware and it doesn't seem to do what I need
as I need to print 2 layers of subdirectories and nothing less.  (btw
I got all kinds of junk loaded onto my pc in downloading from that
site.  my problem, I should have checked beofre downloading but for
future reference...)

xpertise

- I've tried several of the directory printing pieces of free/share
ware on the referenced site.  several of them don't do what I need
(they generally want to provide too much information about the
directores).  One of them--PrintFolders--comes sort of close; it
prints a list of all subdirectories within a directory and then prints
out a list of the subdirectories under each directory.  Not bad, since
with a bit of cutting through the txt file I get something like what I
need.  It's also possible that if I keep ploughing thru the other
available utilities I'd eventually find one that actually does what
I'm looking for without the cutting step.  Thanks for pointing me
there.

linus_vp

- it looks like this would work but I'm kind of gun-shy about loading 
bits of other operating system or opsys-like code onto my pc. But
maybe I'm misunderstanding what those other pieces are?

elmarto

- I use win2000.  I would be interested in your crafting a little
routine if it's still worth your time.  Pace my comment to linus_vp
above I'd rather not be needing to load bits of arcane code from
elsewhere to do it though.  My hope when I started was that this was
just something that could be done using commands I just didn't know
about?

---

Clarification of Question by csny-ga on 01 Oct 2004 12:32 PDT

xpertise - I don't know how to contact you directly so I'm hoping you
see this comment, but I did buy MusicLibrary and it does do exactly
what I want.  Thank you.  If you 'answer' the question I would be
happy to accept your answer.

I have an answer, but you will have to install a small unix-like program.
Download the base filesets for cygwin from http://www.cygwin.com/.
Then open the cygwin shell.  Once you have a command line, type these commands:

cd "g:\my documents\my music"
du  awk -F/ '{print $2 "/" $3}' > list.txt

Then goto your windows explorer and print the file list.txt.

Here is an example of my output:

The Beatles/Let It Be
The Beatles/Let It Be... Naked
The Beatles/Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles/Past Masters, Vol. 1
The Beatles/Past Masters, Vol. 2
The Beatles/Please Please Me
The Beatles/Revolver
The Beatles/Rubber Soul [UK]


Sorry I don't know how to do this directory from Windows, but the du command 
in unix does what you want quite nicely. You may type man du for more
explanations, or ask me here.

Hope this helps!

On the previous comment, the pipe symbol didn't show in the command
line, so I am showing the command again with the pipe symbol (|) where
it should be (right after the du)

cd "g:\my documents\my music"
du | awk -F/ '{print $2 "/" $3}' > list.txt

The du command actually gives the output of blocks and
directory/subdir and the awk command just strips out the first field
and prints the rest.

Forget the complicated solutions...
This is a usual question, and there are many ways of solving this:
1) using a cataloguing program like music library
(http://www.wensoftware.com/MusicLibrary/) or WhereIsIt
(http://www.whereisit-soft.com/), they both have exporting
possibilities (and they scan in your music automatically).
2) but since you have your music organized nicely, you might just as
well use a simple freeware program to list folders (and subfolders) in
the format you desire.
Many of them are listed here: http://www.tucows.com/directoryprint95_rating.html
Good luck! :)

just download "ziplabel" available in

www.ziplabel.com
Itz a trial ware

just download "ziplabel" available in
www.ziplabel.com
Itz a trial ware

csny -

since the windows dir command does not seem to do what you want, you
will have to take the risk and install something to do it. if you try
cygwin, i assure you the product doesn't put on spy-ware or ad-ware.
it is also not 'trial-ware', so you may use it as long as you like
with no 'nag-screens'.  i'm a unix admin by trade, and have used
cygwin for many, many years with no problems on windows 98, win 2000,
and win XP.

the best part is that once the command works, you can save it and run
it again without having to remember the syntax. it's a bit tricky if
you haven't used vi before, so let me know if you are interested, and
i'll post the steps.

I know that the last version of Winamp i used had an 'export list as
web page' function. It does exactly what yo're looking for by creating
a printable html file of all of you songs with artist names.

You can get the newest version at
http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp505_strata.exe

I hope that helps you out,
Jordan