Over the years I have been ripping my vinyl collection and buying digital music.
I have it all sorted by folders in Traktor, and I would like to import it into ENGINE PRIME exactly the same as I have it in Traktor, with the folders and everything.
I wouldn’t use the word “organized” to describe having 3000 folders!
If you’re using a database system (i.e. Traktor, Engine Prime) you don’t need folders for every year and for every LP or EP. The database allows you to search, no matter where the track is located.
3000 subfolders… that sounds already like a mess.
I organise my music by genre. So I have maybe about 40-60 folders max (including sub genres)
Every track I added there is named in the same way (artist - track name (mix/remix/edit))
Every operating system lets You sort by the date of creation of the file.
So if I want to look up a track from a specific year and genre - I am able to find it without any database software.
Then in Engine I keep clean my tags and track info etc…
This makes search fast, easy and accurate.
So maintenance of Your data base starts from a single file and a general idea of how You want to be able to find it and manage that music library later on between multiple platforms (example traktor, engine, serato, rekordbox…)
The folder structure didn’t even match the text description eg: text said year first, but the folder patch didn’t have year until a couple of folders deeper.
Tags and crates, and playlists if you really really must do a far better job when it comes to searching, than folders can.
It’ll be a shaky haunted house moment when you start the switchover, but it’ll be worth it.
30 is pretty good! The only reason I have 352 folders is that when I started collecting MP3s there was no DJ software or librarian database, so I had to organize in a way that I could find stuff manually.
Initially I had alphabetical folders called ABC, DEF etc. but early DJ soft/hardware didn’t like too many files in one folder, so it then became one folder for each letter, with subfolders for artists if they had lots of songs. Artists with only a few songs just sat in the root letter folder.
The old system is still in place, but now I just make a new folder each year and put all the year’s downloads in that.
I may download an old track, but it goes in the 2020 folder. I can still find it by using the database.
Or did you create playlists to mimic the folders which you showed above?
You can also navigate directly to your folders Engine prime and Engine OS*
In Engine OS you have to maintain your Folder manually (you will have to copy your main folders to the prime disk) You won’t be able to use Sync Manager.
What I have finally done is create crates, name them as the folders in my collection, and copy each folder individually. The subfolders I have only left in the folders I use the most.
I have been almost as in Traktor and with fewer folders.