Best way to organize music files on Windows Explorer

I currently have my music saved under folders of GENRE>ARTISTS.  Ive heard from others that its best to have it set up as ARTISTS>ALBUMS>SONGS. Any opinions out there. Should I also look for album art on the internet and save them under the albums folder for each album? I was previously just going through WMP11 and just copying and pasting the album art there. Not sure if this is the best way though.

organization of music should best fit your preference, as its your library and your the one listening to it.

I have my library set up as the follow:

main genre > (sub genre) > (album) & songs

those in parenthasis are not present all the time in every folder.

I have this set up because most of my memory of songs are not based on artists, lyrics or song name, but the overall sound itself. this organization helps me find what I want more quickly than if I was to organize in another manner.

In terms of album art, I normally stay away from album art and id3 tags. truthfully, I see mp3s as music and nothing more. the folder name and file names have all the info I need, if I can’t fit any more than I will use id3.

If you have your music already organized by albums, you can save yourself time, and rename jpg images of your album files into “folder.jpg” , and put them in the corresponding album. than all music in that album will attach itself to “folder.jpg”. really what happens is that applications and devices play music and if it notices a folder.jpg within the same folder, it will assume that is the album art for the song.

Message Edited by thoma on 04-16-2008 08:47 AM

Message Edited by thoma on 04-16-2008 09:08 AM