Perfect Music Organisation

Hello guys

So I am still rather new here but I think I am getting part of the hang of it and now have a crazy amount of rules (hope this doesn't slow my Mac down).

Now I think I am ready to tackle my biggest challenge and bug; music!

Here is my situation and hopefully we can get a solution and if there are others out there (I am sure there will be) with the same set up then they can learn as well and have a great music experience. Not all of theses things will be done using Hazel and if that's the case I will let you know.

1) So I have a folder on my Mac called 'Music to Process' this is where music goes which I need to action. Either from ripping or downloading.

2) I want to clean it up, run a ID3 tagger on it and then 'Cover Scout' on it. I will also run 'A Better File Renamer' to rename everything how I want it.

3) Then when I am happy with it I will set the folder to 'Green' which will trigger Hazel to move it to my NAS drive.

4) Once there, this is where I need the help. MP3's and Album Folders will be heading here. I need a rule that will sort it like this.

ARTIST/(ALBUM YEAR). (ABLUM TITLE)/##. TRACK.mp3

I could probably figure out how to sort the files into the respective ARTIST folder but then I don't want to have to create a new rule for each artist folder to then sub sort the files into the formate I showed above.

Thoughts anyone, much appreciated

OS X sticks the artist information under the "Authors" attribute so just use that.

Thanks Mr noodle. So that will deal with pushing the songs into the correct artists in the main music folder. Beyond that, is the way to have a rule running on the subfolders so that the songs that can then be sorted into the correct album without having to add each separate artists folder and the new rule manually? I hope that question makes sense.

Thanks once again.

Or would you do it the other way round? When I have finished tagging and getting the cover art.

So then I would tag it 'Green', this will make Hazel know it is ready to be moved to my Music archive. Before it does that I could have it put into the relevant folder i.e '(2011). ABBA's Golden Hits' then the folder will go to the 'Music' folder where I have the rule to move the folder to the relevant folder basses on the Artist of the MP3's in the containing Album folder?

Maybe I'm missing something here but you can do it in one swoop with the sort into subfolder action. Something like:

Code: Select all: (Authors)>(Album Year)>(Name)(Extension)

Use the right pointing triangle to separate each level of folder.

Well I did say I am quite new to this.

So if I want to achieve order I just get Hazel to run that on the MUSIC FOLDER. Is that an AppleScript?

Will that d the trick if my music structure is like this?

Cheers.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s14/sh/f22b9967-0aa9-477e-95c6-595f5e4beb35/723447916d28508224b200588b8f3947

Ok, so I have made that rule but there is 2 issues.

1) I can't see the Album Year option, is there one?

2) I get the error that the source and destination are the same, not sure what I am doing wrong there then.

Cheers once again for your continued help.

Can't say anything about the error without seeing more details about the exact rule you are using. Poking around in the attribute list, I am seeing "Year Recorded" which sounds like what you need.

I will try and get a screen grab of it.

Hang on

So here is the rule I have created.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s14/sh/2c030ee5-302c-48c9-a9ea-effcfd3d75f3/005ef0cc417e2c5781a5a12b8a73cdd5

and when I apply that on the 'MUSIC' folder this is what happens to 3 albums. Bit of a mess, so I am going into iTunes to make sure all the meta data is correct.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s14/sh/f8ab9861-be39-4d89-bf03-401803062ed0/c1b0de7e2713b9f2bbd2964480d5bc44

So when I change the rule to just have it sub dividing into Authors, this is the error I get.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s14/sh/215da8a3-0ec7-4750-a06d-ac1f388bc527/cdbf2b5bf3c83788308cff66d575154b

I am checking and the music files I have do contain the relevant metadata as I know that would be one of the questions.

It seems to me that the errors are because some of the data is missing. Also, you can't go by the metadata in iTunes, but instead, the metadata indexed by Spotlight. Select the file in Finder and do "Get Info" and see what data exists under "More Info". Alternatively, use the preview function in Hazel and click the "i" button for the file in question. That will show you what metadata Hazel sees.