How to organize music library (Ultimate Guide)

In the modern days, keeping your music library organized isn't as simple as keeping the records in order. Because most music these days is digital music that you listen to on either your phone, iPod, or computer. And I am pretty sure you have a difficult time finding your favorite songs in a music library that's entirely in shambles.

So, the best way is to organize a music library for your personalized preferences. Especially if you are a DJ or starting to become a DJ, then this is a thing you must do. Now, let's get going with the guide and see how you can organizer your music library for the best results.

Reasons to organize music library.

I know many people might think, why does it matter if their music library is organized or not? I don't blame them either because it doesn't seem that necessary to create a playlist and keep your favorite songs all in one place.

But if you are a DJ or aspiring to be one, it's important to keep your music library organized. And even if you are not still organizing, a music library gives you a more sorted experience that makes finding songs much easier. Here's why –

• For DJ's the most essential part of their job is mixing. Without an organized music library, you can't even find the proper songs to mix. And, you can't mix random songs at will either so, managing the library is crucial.
• When you have an organized music library, you can be up to date with all your tracks, whether it's an old classic or a new hot release of the year.
• There might be a lot of songs in your library that you don't listen to or even like. Organizing the library makes it easy for you to find those songs and cut them out of the list.
• Keeping an organized library opens up new possibilities for you. Let's say you are in a mood to listen to pop songs only. With an organized library, you can easily do that, but you will surely come across distractions with an unorganized one.
• Also, organizing your music library helps you in keeping all the music in one place. Commonly, people have music scattered throughout their devices, and they don't even know where to find it.

These may not seem a lot, but you can realize the difference when you organize the library and get these benefits. So, if you are wondering how you can do it, let's get going with the methods and steps.

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How to organize music library

If you had asked the same question many years ago, then the answer would have been complicated. Luckily, nowadays, there are plenty of apps that make the process of organizing your music super easy for you. While you will still need to spend some time, you can do it with half the effort.

So, let's start by checking out some apps that you can use for organizing your music library and how you can use them.

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The apps for organizing music library

• iTunes 

Without a doubt, this is one of the most famous music players you can find right now. Whether people use a MAC or Windows, they love this player in particular. And the partial reason for that is the functionality of the application.

A great thing about this is, you already have a huge library of music that is organized. You just get your favorite songs from that list. If you want to make the whole process easier and don't care too much about perfect structuring, this is an excellent app for you.

• Media Monkey 

Here's another application that is widely popular for managing music libraries. Now, unlike iTunes, this one has plenty of options and gives you in-depth control in managing your music library. You can use this on your pc or your smartphone too.

A great thing about this software is that you can organize your songs from the core. Whether you want to do it based on genre, folder, artists, albums, or year, you can do it all. However, this is a paid application, so you need to consider that as a factor.

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• MP3TAG

A crucial part of adequately organizing your music library is editing the metatags of each file. Metatags are some tags that make it easier for the device or applications to identify songs and their characteristics. You can determine the genre, Artist, name, year, and all other necessary information you can get for sorting music.

The MP3 tag allows you to do this freely. You can edit all kinds of tags you need to for your music library to be organized. Two great things about this app are that you can organize the bulk of your music with ease using this one, and it's a free application.

However, a downside is that you can't use this one on a MAC. So, if you have a MAC, I suggest going for MetaBliss, which is pretty similar to this one.

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• MusicBrainz Picard

This one is an excellent app if you are looking to organize your music library to the fullest. When you have a whole collection of music to collect, this app works the best. It can easily rectify any track with misinformation through some advanced features it has.

The best part of using this application is that you don't have to do everything manually on this one. All you have to do is provide a little bit of guidance to the software and it will work on fixing those metatags within moments.

It's super easy to organize your music library with this application. Also, it's free software for both Windows and MAC.

• MixedInKey 

As a DJ, you will find a lot of use out of this application. This one lets you add musical data related to the key of the music. So, this can be very helpful for mixing multiple songs because, as you know, having the same key works for mixing the best.

Now, this is more of an advanced step in organizing your music library. And due to that, you can't get this app for free. It's a paid software that does a phenomenal job of making your work much easier as a DJ. So, you can consider this as an investment too.

• Bulk Rename Utility

Well, this software isn't specifically meant for or limited to organizing your music library. It's software that you can use for all kinds of file renaming purposes. I mean, isn't renaming files and folders one by one just an annoying process? This makes your life much easier in that aspect.

You can simply rename bulk files and folders in one go. Even though the initial interface of the software may look a bit daunting, once you figure it out is very simple. And the best thing is that you don't have to pay a single penny to use this software.

There you go. These are some applications that you can use to organize your music library a little better. If you go deep into it, sure you can find a lot of other options as well. But these are the most convenient ones I could find that work the way they are supposed to work.

Now, let's dive into the ways you should be organizing your music.

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The ways to organize music library

1. Working on the folders

You have to start with the folders first. Now, it's up to you how you structure them. The basic structure should have one primary folder named "Music."

Then, inside the music, you can do a lot of things. You can either create folders according to years or you can go by genres.

But the best way is to go with Artists. It's much easier to find songs based on artists. Then from there on, you can have folders with years. So, a simple order would be

The music, then Artist, and then the release year.

2. Cleaning up unnamed files

"Unknown," "Download 1", "Unknown Artist," Does this sound familiar? Well, it's pretty common to have songs named like this. So, what you have to do is rename the songs and label them correctly. And it's not just for professionals. Everyone should do this. Otherwise, how will you ever find a piece?

3. Remove music you don't listen to.

It's obvious, why keep the music that you don't listen to or never will. You should delete all the music that you don't listen to. This will clear up a lot of mess and also save up some space on your device.

4. Edit and update metatags

If you want the best possible music library with the proper organization, updating the metatags is necessary. Doing this permanently makes the file organized. So, no matter what device you are loading them up to, you can always find them based on those tags. These tags include title, artist, releasing year, key, BPM, album, genre, and sometimes cover art.

5. Creating playlists

This is a preference you can go for. There are several ways to create playlists. Some create a playlist based on the melody of the songs, such as soft, funky, upbeat, and so forth. Some also go with moods like happy, sad, depressed. You can also go with genres so you can listen to one particular genre when you are in the mood for it.

The critical part of the playlist is to bring all your favorite songs together in one place based on a criterion.

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Wrap up

In short, knowing how to organize a music library is never a waste. And if you are a DJ, then it's a must thing for you to do. But if you love listening to music, you will have a better experience with an organized library than an unorganized one. Also, it's not much work when you have the right tools like the ones I suggested above.