How to organize music files?

I'm trying to re-organize my music files. I copied them from my iPod before it died, so they have funky names, like DGEDH.mp3. I tried using a Windows utility to rename them from their ID3 tags, but it didn't work very well--it created a bunch of folders (one for each album in theory, but more like 7 or 8 in reality) and renamed the files with non-English characters. Most of the files are MP3s, but there's at least one or two other file types as well.

I'd like to copy them to a new folder and try a Ubuntu utility to rename and re-organize them. In Windows, this would be straightforward--I'd use the Search function (with no file name specified) to list all of the files in the main folder and its subfolders, then drag and drop them to the new folder. What's the easiest way to accomplish the same thing in Ubuntu? The GUI search doesn't seem to accept wildcard characters, and I don't remember all of the file types I have, so it's not as simple as searching for "mp3".

Many thanks!

Solution 1:

You can use Banshee, which is Ubuntu's default music player.

1. Open Banshee

2. Before importing your music, configure Banshee's import options

   • Open Edit > Preferences
   • Enable "Copy on Import" and "Update file and folder names"
   • In the Source Specific tab, make sure the Music library is set to a good location

3. Import your music via Media > Import

It's important that you set Banshee to update file and folder names before importing your music.

Once your music is imported, you can modify file properties, such as name, artist, album, genre, and rating as needed, following Banshee's documentation.

Solution 2:

I've been using Picard ( apt-get install picard ) for a while. It can rename and move files in your library. You can:

1. Import your music folder(s)

   

2. Set or update your mp3 tags. Tags will be the official ones (i.e. as reported on MusicBrainz)

3. Tick the desired commands in the Options menu to move and rename (see the figure below):

   

   • In Options... you can adjust the output folder and the structure of the new renamed folders containing the music, together with a few other parameters.

4. Finally save everything

Solution 3:

There are many applications that can rename audio files based on the tags. Personally I like Puddletag, which is kind of an Mp3tag clone. Another one is EasyTag, which included in the repositories.