I have a question to the wise people here on this board as to how their playlists or songs are setup on their players.
I want to get the best possible advantage of the players abilities.
For example mine (screenshot above) are simply Artist,Albums,Songs within those albums. At the top of the menu I have links to various songs according to Genres and whether they are new or popular or a soundclip. E.G. {01-New}{02-Favorites}{03-Sound Clips} etc. then the Genres are listed.
Anyone have a better way or more logical way to have their playlists setup?

Great question! I was wondering this myself, but hadn't had a chance to post anything.

I personally am doing exactly what you are. Top level playlists are Artists or Genres. Under the artist playlists are album playlists.

I like your idea of numbering the Genre playlists so that they appear at the top. I'll have to try that myself.

It's really up to you, and how you want to navigate them. Remember that it's easy to change things around, try it out for a while, then change it again. Eventually you'll settle on a system that's right for you. The point is, experiment until you've found something you like.

Personally, I've got all my artists in the root, with their albums as subtrees of those. I prefer to keep the tree as flat as possible, so that I don't have to navigate anything too deeply. For instance, I don't have any genre trees at the root because I never bother sorting anything by genre.

I also have special-purpose playlists and mood playlists at the root. These are surrounded by parentheses so that they appear first in the playlists menu. So my playlist root tree looks something like this:

(Demo)
(Humor)
(LAN Party)
(Low Key)
Aimee Mann
Blues Traveler
Brian May

Etc.

I'm going to use the ( ) method you describe instead of my numbering system, thanks. I too recently made a playlist for moods e.g. loud, mellow, get them in the mood , etc.
My question was mainly to see how others did theirs maybe there was a better different way. Secretly wanting to see others screenshots of their playlists. I may get rid of the Genres folders I don't use them much as it turned out.

If I change the title of my playlists (from '01 New' to' (New)' )and they contain links to other songs elsewhere will the links still work ?
Before I destroy all links & have to go back & redo all the links to those songs of which there are many,many,many.

Nevermind the links still work after changing the name of the playlists this is great considering I couldn't wait for an answer even from tfabris quick replies.

These are surrounded by parentheses so that they appear first in the playlists menu.
Curious as to how you use the remote search to search for items in ( )'s?

One good thing about the numbering system is that my PIN numbers correspond to the playlists numbers.

Curious as to how you use the remote search to search for items in ( )'s?

I don't. The point of putting the parens around them is so that they are at the beginning of the playlists and I don't need to search for them. They are right there.

This is my tree structure:

By Artist
....10000 Maniacs
....4 Non Blondes
....[...]
Soundtracks
....Cinema
........2001 Space Odissey
........Pulf Fiction
....TV
........A-Team
........Magnum PI
....Cartoons
........Goldrake
........Mazinga
by Taym
....Latest
....Rock
....Blues
....Country
....50s
....60s
....[...]
....80s
....90s
....Blue Mood
....Classica
Special
....Non music audio files (voice recordings, etc.)

After testing for a while this was the most intuitive structure for me. So far.

I think the main problem with the original format shown in the screenshot is the Britney Spears entry. I think once you kill that, everything else will work out just fine. :)

I have yet to even start using my unit, but just from all the reading so far, you may want to consider using the source fields of your top level for special purposes if you're into custom searching. This way you're not left duplicating the artist name for all the fields at that level.

I suspect some crazy people might even track the price they paid for each CD and then play them back from cheap to expensive. :)

The possibilities are pretty endless if you think about it hard enough.

I think the main problem with the original format shown in the screenshot is the Britney Spears entry. I think once you kill that, everything else will work out just fine. :)
Ahhh but it is in the wendy filter, now you see it there you don't.
My sister would never forgive me not listening to her songs.

Playlist organisation is a fairly personal thing, in that what works for one person may be very inappropriate for another. That said, here's my playlist structure:

/artists/abc/Adam & The Ants/...

/artists/abc/Tori Amos/...

/artists/abc/Bad Company/...

/artists/abc/.../...

/artists/abc/.../...

/artists/def/.../...

/artists/ghi/.../...

/artists/jkl/.../...

/artists/mno/.../...

/artists/pqrs/.../...

/artists/tuv/.../...

/artists/wxyz/.../...

/singles/1950s/...

/singles/1960s/1960/...

/singles/1960s/1961/...

/singles/1960s/1962/...

/singles/1960s/1963/...

/singles/1960s/.../...

/singles/1970s/.../...

/singles/1980s/.../...

/singles/1990s/.../...

/singles/2000s/...

/collections/soundtracks/.../...

/collections/themes/Metal Mania/...

/collections/themes/.../...

/collections/tributes/.../...

/collections/covers/Born To Be Wild/Born To Be Wild

/collections/covers/Born To Be Wild/Born To Be Wild

/collections/covers/Born To Be Wild/Born To Be Wild

/collections/covers/Hey Joe/Hey Joe

/collections/covers/Hey Joe/Hey Joe

/collections/covers/...

/collections/namesakes/...

/collections/mystery links/1/...

/collections/mystery links/2/...

/collections/mystery links/3/...

/collections/mystery links/4/...

/collections/mystery links/5/...

/moods/Arizona/Born To Be Wild

/moods/Arizona/More Than A Feeling

/moods/Arizona/Take It Easy

/moods/Arizona/Jeans on

/moods/Arizona/Free Bird

/moods/Arizona/Witchy Woman

/moods/Arizona/Bat Out Of Hell

/moods/Arizona/Lyin' Eyes

/moods/Arizona/Wishing Well

/moods/Arizona/...

/moods/Highlands/Bert Jansch/.../...

/moods/Highlands/Pentangle/.../...

/moods/Highlands/Clannad/.../...

/moods/Highlands/Enya/.../...

/moods/Highlands/Capercaillie/.../...

/moods/Highlands/Runrig/.../...

/moods/Highlands/Wolfstone/.../...

/moods/Highlands/Peatbog Faeries/.../...

/moods/Black Country/Black Sabbath/.../...

/moods/Black Country/Rainbow/.../...

/moods/Black Country/Uriah Heep/.../...

/moods/Black Country/Iron Maiden/.../...

/moods/Black Country/.../...

/moods/Vienna/.../...

/new/2001-11-02/.../...

/new/2001-11-09/.../...

/new/2001-11-13/.../...

A few words of explanation:

• I use the unsorted-menus patch so I see these in the correct sequence.
  
• /new/ is where things get uploaded initially. After uploading, they get linked to the other parts of the tree. When I'm satisfied that I've got everything correctly positioned, the dated /new playlists get deleted.
  
• /moods/ is my name for genres that avoids the issue of "That's not Rock, that's Blues!"; some are composed of individual songs, some of entire artists, and some are a mix. Note that they can contain several genres - e.g. /moods/Highlands/ is mostly Folk and Folk-Rock.
  
• /artists/ is subdivided alphabetically; the divisions correspond with the letter groups on the remote, except that q and z are restored to their alphabetical positions. This makes menu navigation a bit easier using the number buttons.
  
• /singles/ are organised into decades; full ones (>100 tunes) get subdivided into individual yoars. This means you can play well-known stuff from a particular era, or shuffle the whole lot for passengers who don't like my albums.
  
• /collections/mystery links/ are for passengers' entertainment. Turn off all info and turn off shuffling, then play one of these playlists. The passenger(s) then have to guess the connection between the tracks. For example, the easiest one is tracks that have a particular word in the title (the hard part is identifying the titles), and the hardest one is that all the tracks contain words that can be combined with **** (I'm not saying what) to form new words.
  
• /collections/namesakes/ is like /collections/covers/ but for tracks that share only the title, otherwise unrelated. I don't use this much, but it's fun to have.
  
• My collection is highly cross-linked. Everything appears in /artists/ and/or /collections/soundtracks/, and may also appear in several other lists.
  

Maybe it's just me, but you're working at this waaaay too hard. But I hope you're having fun with it.

In reply to:

---

Maybe it's just me, but you're working at this waaaay too hard. But I hope you're having fun with it.

---

Absolutely (to both parts). It beats doing my "real" work.

I haven't settled on perfect organizational strategy yet but what I have is:

Artist -- list of all artists, and in each artist is a list of all songs by that artist. No albums.

Albums -- list of artists -- in each artist playlist is a list of their albums -- in each album list of their songs in track order

Composer -- Classical, Jazz, Opera, in each category is a list of composers falling into those genres, and in each composer playlist is a flat list of songs composed by that person, regardless of who is rendering it. (i wish the empeg had a way to differentiate composer, conductors, bands versus soloists, etc, and be able to search by/tweak by those, oh well!. this is an approximation).

Moods -- Here I am still experimenting with "Blues" "cool" "deep" "50s" "fast" "funny" "sappy instruments" "sappy voices" "sleepy" (point is, you get into a mood, you want to play by mood).

Genre -- Here I have genres (Acapella, Blues, Classical, ...) In each genre is a flat list of songs of that genre.

Audiophile -- Here I have an ordering of audiophile related material by album (e.g. Stereophile CD1, CD2...etc) and then categories by: Bass, Breath, Detail, Dynamics, Highs, Layering, Soundstaging, Live, Vintage, and non-musical test noise.

I'm working on a new one for dance related stuff:

Rhythms: Swing, Cha Cha, Foxtrot, Mambo, Menrengue, Samba. ..etc -- flat list of songs that fall into rhythmic categories.

I have some odd ball mp3s that do not fit in my system. I have a big collection of commercials ("Coke is it!") and am planning on adding popular speeches, as well as other non musical recordings. Also, in there are relaxation related tracks. Luckily, wendy filters came in just in time to help filter on the road.

Am I helping or hurting? ;-)
Calvin

I like the various ideas of how to reduce the number of top level playlists. I can imagine when you start getting 50-60GB of music, that's a TON of artists.

I think I might try something like the following:

Artists
- Artist Names
---Albums

Albums
- All albums

Genres
- Genre Names
--- Subgenres?

New
- New, unsorted mp3s

Out of curiosity, who else has ``Porn'' as one of their playlists? (There really needs to be a little trenchcoat smiley.)

Out of curiosity, who else has ``Porn'' as one of their playlists?

Heh, I have the Sex-O-Rama albums in MP3. If you're not familiar with them, the album is songs from popular porn movies, like Debbie Does Dallas and Behind The Green Door. Truly great stuff.

we were watching a porn one night and a friend said every so often, "That's Jimmy Hendrix!"
Mmm yeah right Nudge. Every couple of scenes and the backing track was by Jimmy.