I mentioned in another thread that I can be obsessive about organizing my Prince digital music collection. I wonder if any of you go to similar lengths to organize your stuff or if you all think I'm insane.

Sorting the commerically released stuff is pretty self-evident (by album, b-sides, NPGMC releases, etc.). Plus, they all typically have correct metadata. So those are easy; it's really the bootlegs where I spend most of my time organizing.

I got a lot of my bootlegs from CDs. When I rip them, iTunes automatically saves them according to their album names (which were invented by bootleggers). Thus, they're initially organized into folders such as "Prince: Blast from the Past Volume 2". That's fine for CDs of live concerts, but I don't like that for CDs of bootleg studio songs.

For one thing, there's a lot of duplication of studio songs across bootleg CDs. If I left the files in the bootlegger-created album folders, I'd end up with multiple copies of most songs. I don't want or need 25 copies of "Cookie Jar", for Christ's sake. So I start by moving all of studio bootlegs into a single master/working folder. This allows me to sort them and group all copies of a single song together. I'll listen to them to check their sound quality, discard those with poor lquality, and save the better quality copies.

Once I narrow down the files I'm keeping I edit the metadata of each song, including adding a picture for the album cover. Of course most of the files already have that info, but it's whatever random title, sequencing, album art, etc, the bootleggers assigned them. I don't like their metadata because it's inauthentic -- Prince didn't come up with those names, sequences, or cover art. Those are all artisitic decisions that should be left to him. So I change the album titles and art to something generic / descriptive, because those are more utilitarian rather than artistic. I end up with albums such as "Unreleased Songs from the '80s" that might have 50 tracks on it.

As part of my metadata editing process I research each song on PrinceVault. Obviously I'm making sure the title and spelling are correct. But I'm also checking the accuracy of the bootleggers' description / classification of the song. I want to confirm whether it is indeed a bootleg or if it was released on some non-album capacity. If the song had been officially released, I'll note that in the comments section of the metadata and sort it accordingly (e.g. I'll put it in my folder for "NPG Music Club releases", or my folder for "European maxi-singles", or whatever). I'll also search the internet for it's official cover art.

I also check PrinceVault to see if there are multiple versions of a song (bootleg and/or commerically released). If there is, I try to figure out which version I have and note it in the file name / song title.

Finally, I edit the year in the metadata. The bootleggers will sometimes leave itt blank or put the year they burned the disc. Based on the info from PrinceVault, I change it to the year of release (for released songs) or the year of recording (for bootlegs). Sorting the songs by year is more authentic to me than sorting in whatever random order the bootleggers came up with.

After many years (decades, tbh), I'm just now seriously organizing my mostly digital collection and am wrestling with the same issues. I'm currently building a custom digital asset management system to catalog the many thousands of tracks, videos, images, articles, etc. that I've accumulated over time (and continue to collect now that the flood gates have truly opened).

There is an infinite number of ways to tackle filenames, metadata, etc. The only important rules are (1) be consistent, and (2) organize in the way that is friendly to the way in which your consume the content.

My system is overly complex -- but it works for me.

Hi Lurker.

I kind of have a two tier system.

Tier 1: Regular music collection

I still use iTunes as my main media player for everyday use, saved in MP3 format (256kb-320kb). These are also the files I transfer to my phone to listen to on the go. Here I have all of Prince's commercial albums, a few official odd and ends (CD singles not included on LPS, The War etc.) along with a selection of essential bootlegs. I don't include huge box sets of outtakes here, but there are a few unreleased albums (Parade Demos, Camille, Exodus Alternatives) as well as key concerts (First Avenue and Birthday gigs, the SOTT concert movie audio). Since I'm very selective here it's much easier to manage the meta data.

Tier 2: My Main Prince Collection

However, I have a Prince folder on my PC where the bulk of my collection is stored, mainly in FLAC / WAV. There has been the odd occasion where MP3 has been the only option (Closer 2 God for example), but this collection is around 98% lossless.

Since this is a bulk collection (which doubles up as a back up for my CDs) I don't sweat over the issue of meta data here, as long as the file names are numbered and correct. Sure, I do end up with a lot of duplicate tracks, but i prefer to keep the various albums and sets complete.

My Prince folder is split into 3 sub folders. Official, Related & Vault.

The 'Official' folder contains all of Prince's officially released stuff. This includes rips of all his commercial CD albums, Tidal FLACs of his NPGMC LPs, HD FLAC versions where available, plus a collections of Japanese SHM rips.

'Related' is the same kind of thing for related artists. The Time, Vanity, Apollonia, The Family, Jill Jones, Madhouse etc.

The 'Vault' folder is further divided to sub folders. My 'Live' folder is a collection of concerts in date order, 'Unreleased Albums' for LPs that have leaked or compilations of known sequences for LPs that haven't. Then I have folders for different labels and occasionally for a series if I feel it stands out on its own. For example I have a 'Sabotage' folder, but I keep all the 'Purple Rush' releases separate in their own folder. I have an 'Eye' folder but I keep 'Blast From The Past' separate to. Finally I have an 'Outtakes' folder but this is mainly for small miscellaneous releases such as 'A Better Place To Die'. These are mainly old boots. The weightiest of all my folders has to be my 'Purple Gold Archive' folder. I don't even bother with the video files, just the audio, but this collection is huge. Almost complete.

You sound as if you are already far more organised than me so I doubt this will help you much, but this system works for me.

drfeld said:

After many years (decades, tbh), I'm just now seriously organizing my mostly digital collection and am wrestling with the same issues. I'm currently building a custom digital asset management system to catalog the many thousands of tracks, videos, images, articles, etc. that I've accumulated over time (and continue to collect now that the flood gates have truly opened).

There is an infinite number of ways to tackle filenames, metadata, etc. The only important rules are (1) be consistent, and (2) organize in the way that is friendly to the way in which your consume the content.

My system is overly complex -- but it works for me.

I completely agree. There is no right or wrong. You just need to do something that makes sense to you, and be consistent. Though, no matter what system you come up with there will be a few songs that could easily go more than one category/album/folder. So I end up spending a lot of mental power on a small handful of songs.

When you organize, are you just soring them into new folders? Or are you adjusting the metadata as well, so that when you import them into a music app they sort in your prefered way?

What do you mean by "builing a custom digital asset managment system to catalg" your tracks? Is that a fancy way of saying you're plugging them into a spread sheet? I've started doing that myself, noting not just the song time and year, but I also have a notes column for some of that background into I got from PrinceVault.

VaultCurator said:

Hi Lurker.

I kind of have a two tier system.

Tier 1: Regular music collection

I still use iTunes as my main media player for everyday use, saved in MP3 format (256kb-320kb). These are also the files I transfer to my phone to listen to on the go. Here I have all of Prince's commercial albums, a few official odd and ends (CD singles not included on LPS, The War etc.) along with a selection of essential bootlegs. I don't include huge box sets of outtakes here, but there are a few unreleased albums (Parade Demos, Camille, Exodus Alternatives) as well as key concerts (First Avenue and Birthday gigs, the SOTT concert movie audio). Since I'm very selective here it's much easier to manage the meta data.

Tier 2: My Main Prince Collection

However, I have a Prince folder on my PC where the bulk of my collection is stored, mainly in FLAC / WAV. There has been the odd occasion where MP3 has been the only option (Closer 2 God for example), but this collection is around 98% lossless.

Since this is a bulk collection (which doubles up as a back up for my CDs) I don't sweat over the issue of meta data here, as long as the file names are numbered and correct. Sure, I do end up with a lot of duplicate tracks, but i prefer to keep the various albums and sets complete.

My Prince folder is split into 3 sub folders. Official, Related & Vault.

The 'Official' folder contains all of Prince's officially released stuff. This includes rips of all his commercial CD albums, Tidal FLACs of his NPGMC LPs, HD FLAC versions where available, plus a collections of Japanese SHM rips.

'Related' is the same kind of thing for related artists. The Time, Vanity, Apollonia, The Family, Jill Jones, Madhouse etc.

The 'Vault' folder is further divided to sub folders. My 'Live' folder is a collection of concerts in date order, 'Unreleased Albums' for LPs that have leaked or compilations of known sequences for LPs that haven't. Then I have folders for different labels and occasionally for a series if I feel it stands out on its own. For example I have a 'Sabotage' folder, but I keep all the 'Purple Rush' releases separate in their own folder. I have an 'Eye' folder but I keep 'Blast From The Past' separate to. Finally I have an 'Outtakes' folder but this is mainly for small miscellaneous releases such as 'A Better Place To Die'. These are mainly old boots. The weightiest of all my folders has to be my 'Purple Gold Archive' folder. I don't even bother with the video files, just the audio, but this collection is huge. Almost complete.

You sound as if you are already far more organised than me so I doubt this will help you much, but this system works for me.

This is interesting and helpful. I basically divied mine into those three categories as well: officially releases attributed to Prince, offical releases by associated artists such as the Time, and bootlegs. And like you I divide the bootlegs between studio and live.

I wrote earlier that rather than keep the studio bootlegs in whatever artifical albums the bootleggers devise, I typically dump all of the files into a master bootleg folder for sorting and metadata editing. That's generally true, but I should caveat that I do keep some studio albums together if they are authentic to -- or close to authentic to -- Prince's vision. For example, I've kept together The Undertaker, Dream Factory, the Paisley Jam Session, The Rebels, and the songs from the aborted the I'll Do Anything soundtrack.

99% of the time I keep live albums together because they are obviously a unifed collection with an intended sequences as Prince himself intended. But I do have a folder with misc. unreleated, stand-alone live songs that I really love, so that I can load those onto my phone.

wow.

we're about to move soon, and i'm just now sorting through physical media.

i'll bookmark this thread for future use...

nayroo2002 said:

wow.

we're about to move soon, and i'm just now sorting through physical media.

i'll bookmark this thread for future use...

Best of luck with the move Nayroo. I hate moving. It really stresses me out. I hope it all goes smoothly. All the best.

lurker316 said:

I wrote earlier that rather than keep the studio bootlegs in whatever artifical albums the bootleggers devise, I typically dump all of the files into a master bootleg folder for sorting and metadata editing.

I've considered making a master folder with the best versions of each track that I can find.
I haven't attempted it yet, but I did come up with a numbering system for the files names to keep the songs in chronilogical order...

19860526A Pride And The Passion (Sheila E.).flac
19860604A Slow Love.flac
19860612A Baby Go-Go.flac
19860617A Girl O My Dreams.flac
19860617B Can't Stop This Feeling I Got.flac
19860617C We Can Funk.flac
19860618A Data Bank.flac
19860707A Train.flac
19860708A Eggplant.flac
19860709A It Ain't Over 'Til The Fat Lady Sings.flac
19860713A Everybody Want What They Don't Got.flac
19860713B The Cross.flac

It's the date in reverse YYYYMMDD followed by a letter to distinguish tracks recorded on the same day.

With officially released albums, I add the year infront of the album name. If multiple albums in a year then I go 1986a, 1986b etc. So on my iphone it's numerical. I add all the genres funk/soul/r&b/rock etc etc

For now I have all bootlegs in one master folder that I will sort through some time in the future. That's gonna be the exhausting.

lurker316 said:

drfeld said:

After many years (decades, tbh), I'm just now seriously organizing my mostly digital collection and am wrestling with the same issues. I'm currently building a custom digital asset management system to catalog the many thousands of tracks, videos, images, articles, etc. that I've accumulated over time (and continue to collect now that the flood gates have truly opened).

There is an infinite number of ways to tackle filenames, metadata, etc. The only important rules are (1) be consistent, and (2) organize in the way that is friendly to the way in which your consume the content.

My system is overly complex -- but it works for me.

I completely agree. There is no right or wrong. You just need to do something that makes sense to you, and be consistent. Though, no matter what system you come up with there will be a few songs that could easily go more than one category/album/folder. So I end up spending a lot of mental power on a small handful of songs.

When you organize, are you just soring them into new folders? Or are you adjusting the metadata as well, so that when you import them into a music app they sort in your prefered way?

What do you mean by "builing a custom digital asset managment system to catalg" your tracks? Is that a fancy way of saying you're plugging them into a spread sheet? I've started doing that myself, noting not just the song time and year, but I also have a notes column for some of that background into I got from PrinceVault.

I warned you that my system is overly complicated:

Short version: I'm writing my own software.

Less short version: I plan and build apps professionally and specialize in developing online content management systems that run sites with 100K digital multimedia assets or more, so I'm building a custom browser-based cloud application that'll catalog all the material -- audio, video, text (think lyrics, articles, interviews, reviews, etc.), images, etc. -- and make it cross referenced, filterable and fully indexed and searchable. Imagine a more sophisticated version of iTunes (and definitely better looking).

The audio and video files will be streamable from a central server to whatever device I'm using (laptop, desktop, mobile, TV, smart speaker, whatever), so I won't need to worry about what file physically resides where. Everything will be based on information in a database instead of metadata in a particular audio file or a folder structure. This will allow me call up, say, all material from a particular year, or album, or tracks featuring Blackwell on drums, or all versions of a particular song, or a minimum audio quality, or certain keys or beats per minute, etc. -- or any combination thereof. In the case of audio or video, it can automatically build playlists. It'll also contain all my personal notes or comments.

That's it in a nutshell. Yes, I am a geek.

Check this https://prince.org/msg/7/450865


https://prince.org/msg/7/459832

00 Pictures
01 Albums

01-01 Compilations

01-02 Official live sets

02 Singles

03 Non-album (NMPmc, contributuons to soundtracks)

04 Outtakes

05 Live

05-01 Live unsorted

06 Related Artists

07 Video

08 Misc (mostly fan made compilations, Purple Rain score etc)

Inside them folders everything is in chronological order.

Then in my music player I got sooooo many playlists; favourites, live sets, instrumental, related artists.

drfeld said:

lurker316 said:

I completely agree. There is no right or wrong. You just need to do something that makes sense to you, and be consistent. Though, no matter what system you come up with there will be a few songs that could easily go more than one category/album/folder. So I end up spending a lot of mental power on a small handful of songs.

When you organize, are you just soring them into new folders? Or are you adjusting the metadata as well, so that when you import them into a music app they sort in your prefered way?

What do you mean by "builing a custom digital asset managment system to catalg" your tracks? Is that a fancy way of saying you're plugging them into a spread sheet? I've started doing that myself, noting not just the song time and year, but I also have a notes column for some of that background into I got from PrinceVault.

I warned you that my system is overly complicated:

Short version: I'm writing my own software.

Less short version: I plan and build apps professionally and specialize in developing online content management systems that run sites with 100K digital multimedia assets or more, so I'm building a custom browser-based cloud application that'll catalog all the material -- audio, video, text (think lyrics, articles, interviews, reviews, etc.), images, etc. -- and make it cross referenced, filterable and fully indexed and searchable. Imagine a more sophisticated version of iTunes (and definitely better looking).

The audio and video files will be streamable from a central server to whatever device I'm using (laptop, desktop, mobile, TV, smart speaker, whatever), so I won't need to worry about what file physically resides where. Everything will be based on information in a database instead of metadata in a particular audio file or a folder structure. This will allow me call up, say, all material from a particular year, or album, or tracks featuring Blackwell on drums, or all versions of a particular song, or a minimum audio quality, or certain keys or beats per minute, etc. -- or any combination thereof. In the case of audio or video, it can automatically build playlists. It'll also contain all my personal notes or comments.

That's it in a nutshell. Yes, I am a geek.

Wow, that's impressive!

Simple answer:

Official releases

bootlegs

associated artists

everything starts with the date of release (or performance for live) for chronological order

I don't have one.

A big amount of cd's.

I used to have a USB with all his material but lost it.

3rd Eye Girl (This was made when there were singles being released on the 3rd Eye Girl website)

Bootlegs (Live)

Bootlegs (DJ and Fanmade remixes)

Bootlegs (studio Outtakes)

Compilations, sountracks and other stuff

Computer stream audio (Stuff like Love (acoustic), Turn me loose, One song, disco jellyfish, etc)

Home made compilation, singles, B-sides, rarities and alternate mixes)

NPG Music Club

Official albums

Official singles

Related artists

RJOrion said:

Prince 1977-1991 Prince 1992-2016

That's about right.

RJOrion said:

Prince 1977-1991 Prince 1992-2016

Do you divide it down the middle simply to make it more managable, or do you think those ears represent to distinctly different facests of his career artistically?

lurker316 said:

A lot people are responding to describe their folder struture, which is great. But I'm also curious if more people meticulous research and edit the file properities/metadate like I do, to make sure they sort properly once you import them into whatever music app you use. People talk about that in the old thread Trival Pursuit pointed me to, but not many people have discussed it in this newer conversation.

At home and work, I just use iTunes.

In my Jeep, I have a tiny USB drive that contains everything (audio) that I have of Prince and related artists. Official and bootleg. It's not organized at all - just album folders loaded onto it. The radio sorts it all out by whatever you choose . . . Song, Artist, Album, Genre, etc. I usually just leave it on Shuffle and enjoy what comes next.

lurker316 said:

A lot people are responding to describe their folder struture, which is great. But I'm also curious if more people meticulous research and edit the file properities/metadate like I do, to make sure they sort properly once you import them into whatever music app you use. People talk about that in the old thread Trival Pursuit pointed me to, but not many people have discussed it in this newer conversation.

Yes, I do. I change the properities and metadate all the time, and it's very time consuming, but I need this for research methods. I think we have the same system. I also get rid of duplicates of outtakes, particularly of the associated artists.

I have an additional collection of random live song recordings and I spent too much time figuring out what concert it was, as my set of live CD's is incomplete. I must have deleted songs with bad quality hoping I'd find a better version, but now I have no idea what concert it was. A lot of work to fiure it out.

I don't have a specific folder for released albums, they are all in one big folder as released songs. ( I don't need to know the album names to be fair, as I got them all in my head, so I don't bother about the released stuff at all)

I don't have a specific folder for associtates artists, they are all in one folder.

I have the outtakes sorted by years (including streamed but not released songs)

I have the bootleg live concerts sorted by tour name, date, year, venue, afterpary or whatever it is

Videos are sorted as above.

I have bootleg CDs sorted by label. I tend to keep them complete but delete those with bad quality or any nonsense that is not worth keeping) I change all metadate and proporties on those.

Any other stuff is unsorted and at the moment tons of live stuff that needs to done, but I shall do that in the next century.

And yes I find it important to know exactly when, where, what it was recorded whenever and whatever device from I chose to listen to the song.

[Edited 1/15/20 8:46am]

HamsterHuey said:

00 Pictures
01 Albums

01-01 Compilations

01-02 Official live sets

02 Singles

03 Non-album (NMPmc, contributuons to soundtracks)

04 Outtakes

05 Live

05-01 Live unsorted

06 Related Artists

07 Video

08 Misc (mostly fan made compilations, Purple Rain score etc)

Inside them folders everything is in chronological order.

Then in my music player I got sooooo many playlists; favourites, live sets, instrumental, related artists.

Yo have live unsorted too?

Somebody should help to get it sorted. I think if I'd tell the duration of the song it should be easy to figure out what gig it was?

I have no other idea how else this could be sorted.

OzlemUcucu said:

lurker316 said:

A lot people are responding to describe their folder struture, which is great. But I'm also curious if more people meticulous research and edit the file properities/metadate like I do, to make sure they sort properly once you import them into whatever music app you use. People talk about that in the old thread Trival Pursuit pointed me to, but not many people have discussed it in this newer conversation.

Yes, I do. I change the properities and metadate all the time, and it's very time consuming, but I need this for research methods. I think we have the same system. I also get rid of duplicates of outtakes, particularly of the associated artists.

I have an additional collection of random live song recordings and I spent too much time figuring out what concert it was, as my set of live CD's is incomplete. I must have deleted songs with bad quality hoping I'd find a better version, but now I have no idea what concert it was. A lot of work to fiure it out.

I don't have a specific folder for released albums, they are all in one big folder as released songs.

I don't have a specific folder for associtates artists, they are all in one folder.

I have the outtakes sorted by years (including streamed but not released songs)

I have the bootleg live concerts sorted by tour name, date, year, venue, afterpary or whatever it is

Videos are sorted as above.

I have bootleg CDs sorted by label. I tend to keep them complete but delete those with bad quality or any nonsense that is not worth keeping)

Any other stuff is unsorted and at the moment tons of live stuff that needs to done, but I shall do that in the next century.

And yes I find it important to know exactly when, where, what it was recorded whenever and whatever device from I chose to listen to the song.

[Edited 1/14/20 18:03pm]

It sounds like we do have a very similar approach.

My live stuff is a mess. I'm not really a big fan of live stuff, so rather than keep entire concerts I used to simply pick a couple of songs from each show and delete the rest. The problem is I didn't bother to note which shows I pulled those songs from. So now I'm going crazy trying to figure out which concerts my stand-alone live tracks came from so that I can add that info to the metadata.

Some of my stand-alone live songs are audio I rippped from TV show appearanes or other video. Those are generally easy to research using PrinceVault, but Motherless Child was challenging. For one thing, I wasn't sure if it was from a TV show, a home video release, or a bootleg, so I didn't know which section of PrinceVault to look at. And when I tried searching by name I kept getting zero results. The search engine on PrinceVault is pretty rigid and doesn't really give you good results based on key words -- you basically need to have the title exactly right to get a hit. Turns out that it's listed there as "(Sometimes I Feel Like) A Motherless Child". I somehow eventually stumbled across it and learned it was from a Spanish TV show and was able to pinpoint the date.

OzlemUcucu said:

Yes, I do. I change the properities and metadate all the time, and it's very time consuming, but I need this for research methods.

[Edited 1/14/20 18:03pm]

Me too. Can you explain more what kind of research you are referring to?

lurker316 said:

OzlemUcucu said:

Yes, I do. I change the properities and metadate all the time, and it's very time consuming, but I need this for research methods. I think we have the same system. I also get rid of duplicates of outtakes, particularly of the associated artists.

I have an additional collection of random live song recordings and I spent too much time figuring out what concert it was, as my set of live CD's is incomplete. I must have deleted songs with bad quality hoping I'd find a better version, but now I have no idea what concert it was. A lot of work to fiure it out.

I don't have a specific folder for released albums, they are all in one big folder as released songs.

I don't have a specific folder for associtates artists, they are all in one folder.

I have the outtakes sorted by years (including streamed but not released songs)

I have the bootleg live concerts sorted by tour name, date, year, venue, afterpary or whatever it is

Videos are sorted as above.

I have bootleg CDs sorted by label. I tend to keep them complete but delete those with bad quality or any nonsense that is not worth keeping)

Any other stuff is unsorted and at the moment tons of live stuff that needs to done, but I shall do that in the next century.

And yes I find it important to know exactly when, where, what it was recorded whenever and whatever device from I chose to listen to the song.

[Edited 1/14/20 18:03pm]

It sounds like we do have a very similar approach.

My live stuff is a mess. I'm not really a big fan of live stuff, so rather than keep entire concerts I used to simply pick a couple of songs from each show and delete the rest. The problem is I didn't bother to note which shows I pulled those songs from. So now I'm going crazy trying to figure out which concerts my stand-alone live tracks came from so that I can add that info to the metadata.

Some of my stand-alone live songs are audio I rippped from TV show appearanes or other video. Those are generally easy to research using PrinceVault, but Motherless Child was challenging. For one thing, I wasn't sure if it was from a TV show, a home video release, or a bootleg, so I didn't know which section of PrinceVault to look at. And when I tried searching by name I kept getting zero results. The search engine on PrinceVault is pretty rigid and doesn't really give you good results based on key words -- you basically need to have the title exactly right to get a hit. Turns out that it's listed there as "(Sometimes I Feel Like) A Motherless Child". I somehow eventually stumbled across it and learned it was from a Spanish TV show and was able to pinpoint the date.

Yes, we have the same approach. My live stuff is a mess too, but I managed to sort some of it and it took a lot of time. I must have kept good rendition of "D&P" for example and I have no clue what concert it was.

I wish somebody would set up a website with a rough duration of the songs each played at concerts, it would help. The set lists are mostly the same every night. It is really hard to figure out what concert that was.

drfeld said:

OzlemUcucu said:

Yes, I do. I change the properities and metadate all the time, and it's very time consuming, but I need this for research methods.

[Edited 1/14/20 18:03pm]

Me too. Can you explain more what kind of research you are referring to?

Hi

I meant to say I like to see the evolvement so I try to sort it in a way that I can see how many times a song was played, how long etc, where, when etc. - and I can only do this if I have all the information available. I don't like to junk everything in one folder specially with the live versions.

I have here live versions for expample that may not be on the bootlegged concert CDs so this needs to be checked and researched when this song was played. It's possible I got it ripped from a video on utube and no other material of that show exists.

The outtakes are fine as they are. I have them all listed by year.

lurker316 said:

I mentioned in another thread that I can be obsessive about organizing my Prince digital music collection. I wonder if any of you go to similar lengths to organize your stuff or if you all think I'm insane.

Sorting the commerically released stuff is pretty self-evident (by album, b-sides, NPGMC releases, etc.). Plus, they all typically have correct metadata. So those are easy; it's really the bootlegs where I spend most of my time organizing.

I got a lot of my bootlegs from CDs. When I rip them, iTunes automatically saves them according to their album names (which were invented by bootleggers). Thus, they're initially organized into folders such as "Prince: Blast from the Past Volume 2". That's fine for CDs of live concerts, but I don't like that for CDs of bootleg studio songs.

For one thing, there's a lot of duplication of studio songs across bootleg CDs. If I left the files in the bootlegger-created album folders, I'd end up with multiple copies of most songs. I don't want or need 25 copies of "Cookie Jar", for Christ's sake. So I start by moving all of studio bootlegs into a single master/working folder. This allows me to sort them and group all copies of a single song together. I'll listen to them to check their sound quality, discard those with poor lquality, and save the better quality copies.

Once I narrow down the files I'm keeping I edit the metadata of each song, including adding a picture for the album cover. Of course most of the files already have that info, but it's whatever random title, sequencing, album art, etc, the bootleggers assigned them. I don't like their metadata because it's inauthentic -- Prince didn't come up with those names, sequences, or cover art. Those are all artisitic decisions that should be left to him. So I change the album titles and art to something generic / descriptive, because those are more utilitarian rather than artistic. I end up with albums such as "Unreleased Songs from the '80s" that might have 50 tracks on it.

As part of my metadata editing process I research each song on PrinceVault. Obviously I'm making sure the title and spelling are correct. But I'm also checking the accuracy of the bootleggers' description / classification of the song. I want to confirm whether it is indeed a bootleg or if it was released on some non-album capacity. If the song had been officially released, I'll note that in the comments section of the metadata and sort it accordingly (e.g. I'll put it in my folder for "NPG Music Club releases", or my folder for "European maxi-singles", or whatever). I'll also search the internet for it's official cover art.

I also check PrinceVault to see if there are multiple versions of a song (bootleg and/or commerically released). If there is, I try to figure out which version I have and note it in the file name / song title.

Finally, I edit the year in the metadata. The bootleggers will sometimes leave itt blank or put the year they burned the disc. Based on the info from PrinceVault, I change it to the year of release (for released songs) or the year of recording (for bootlegs). Sorting the songs by year is more authentic to me than sorting in whatever random order the bootleggers came up with.

Can I hire you?