I'm actually thinking about how to go about this, since I'm getting ready to buy a hard drive big enough to hold my entire music collection and still have plenty of space left over.

I was probably just going to sort everything alphabetically, then according to live, official studio, and non-live rarities/b-sides/etc.

I don't organize. I just have folder with a bunch of oddball songs, or albums I haven't made folders for, and then I just have a bunch of folders with the name of the album (And inside are the songs) or whatever.

By dumping them all in one file and then spending half an hour looking for them.

There's a file organizer plugin for winamp. It doesn't have support for a decade variable, though, which is something I would like.

If you want it, it's called "Media Library Organizer". The filename is "ml_org.dll". A google search should give quick results.

As the name suggests, it gives you the option to right-click and organize stuff in your media library according to rules defined by you.

I have folders with the artist's name.
And then the album title.

I let iTunes do it for me...

Thought I'd revive this thread and hope to gain some potential answers to an age old conundrum.

What do you guys out there do with your compilations and soundtrack albums?

My aim for organizing files is that some essential information about the album is contained in the folders which of course is part of a file's filename and so is searcheable and filterable from Winamp. For example I like the file name to contain what decade the music is from, if it's a studio/live/compilation album and - if it's a compilation album - if it's a mixed artists compilation.

For best of albums and such, I do this :

\Music\M\Madonna\!Compilations\1990 - The Immaculate Collection [Greatest Hits album, 1980s - 1990s]\01 - Everybody.mp3

However, sometimes a compilation album is a multiple artists album - like "Golden Oldies". Those I organize outside of the A, B, C, D folders. Instead, I've made a mixed artist compilations folder.

\Music\!Mixed Artists Compilations\The Best Prog Rock Album In The World ...Ever! [album, 1960s - 1970s] (2003)\CD1\Genesis - Dancing With The Moonlit Knight.mp3

Or, an example with the the musicbanter comps (where I haven't yet bothered figuring out what decades the music is from) :

\Music\!Mixed Artists Compilations\Musicbanter [Internet Bootlegs]\Musicbanter December 2009 - Night Driving\01. Ragnarök - Fabriksfunky.mp3

However, there are also soundtracks and scores which are sometimes multiple artists as well. I didn't want to lump those in with stuff like "That 70's", so I treat soundtracks and scores as if they were an artist outside the regular A, B, C, D folders.

\Music\!Soundtracks & Scores\1930s\1939 - The Wizard Of Oz [Movie, Musical, 1995 rerelease]\04 - Over the rainbow.mp3
\Music\!Soundtracks & Scores\1970s\1977 - Saturday Night Fever [Movie, Mixed Artists]\01 - Stayin' Alive.mp3

Saturday Night Fever is of course a Mixed Artist Compilation and that information is now placed in the [additional info block]. If I have a compilation album with film music from different movies, I do it like this :

\Music\!Soundtracks & Scores\!Compilations\2003 - Classic Disney- 60 Years of Musical Magic [Movies, Mixed Artists]\CD1\01 - Brad Kane - Whole New World [Aladdin].mp3

(Note that I don't actually care very much what the actual filenames of the files themselves are .. Well, as long as they contain the song title, that's the most important. For example, they don't need to contain artist and album because that information would be redundant as those are already in the folder names.)

This all works rather well for me. It's what I've ended up with after some amount of trial and error so it wasn't always like this. It makes it very easy to set up filters for mixed artist compilation albums, movie soundtracks, musicals or all of them together with their own view properties in Winamp (f.ex organized by albums first, not artist). However, I'd like to see what others have come up with. :)

I use Mediamonkey as my mediaplayer. Highly reccomended, a great way of organizing a huge record collection.

Do you mean it has a feature that auto-sorts your files and that it's good?

Or do you mean that it has a nice and tidy media library? Cause if it's the latter, you're off topic. This is a thread about how your files are organized, not your media library. ;)

ahm... I might be off topic, or not. But still; I don't bother about how my files are organized, I let Mediamonkey do the work for me (it has this auto-tag function, works perfect for me)