Music Files - Names - Print List

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

My apologies for posting this kind of off-topic matter but related to all the editing I’m doing on my .wav/.mp3 files.

I wish to print the names of every artist with their respective album names and with each respective song tile (file named as such – e.g. My Way) under that album name (sub-folder).

I’ve saved these files as such:

Artist name (mostly in alphabetical descending order – A – Z) each a separate folder.

Ex. Frank Sinatra (the folder)

Under that artist’s name (folder) is often (but not always) a sub-folder with an album name

Ex. The Capitol Years

Under each album (or artist alone if an album had not been created for
that artist) are all the songs.

Ex. My Way
Love and Marriage
New York New York
Etc.

In many instances there will be no album listed as there may be only one
song under that artist.

Ex. Elvis
Return to Sender

Summary: This is how it looks on my hard drive?

C:\Music\Sinatra\CapitolYears\MyWay
…along with other songs (as .mp3 or .wav files) listed in the Folder
(Capitol Years) under the Folder (Sinatra).

I’ve already had one external hard drive die suddenly with music on it. I
want to, at the very least, have a list of all my music on this external hard drive so when it dies I’ll have all the music list printed.

Is there an easy way to do this in Windows 7 (32 bit)?

I downloaded the ptdirprn-setupexe from KAREN’S Directory Printer (
https://karenware.com/ - to a flash drive and then copied and pasted it into C:\Download folder on my desktop hard drive.

It’s 1,266 kb but when I tried to open it under my Admin user (it prompted that for an install) I get the error message - ”Installer integrity check has failed. Common causes include an incomplete download and damaged media. Contact the installer’s author to a obtain a new copy. More info at http:/nsis.sf.nsis_error.

I downloaded that same file three times and each time got the same error message.

I then downloaded - https://www.pendriveapps.com/create-a-list-of-songs-album-printer - and it only displays some of the artists (less then 1/3) and not alphabetically and not their albums – just a very haphazard list.

I’d very much appreciate your suggestions about any freeware which could generate a full music list of artists, albums and song tittles for printing.

Thank you!

2

…I used to have a utility called TreePrint but it was probably for Windows 98 or something (I found some references to it, but I couldn’t find a download).

[u]MediaMonkey[/u] has a report generating feature, and that might be worth a try.

Otherwise, I got quite a few hits when I Googled Windows print file directory.

I’ve already had one external hard drive die suddenly with music on it. I
want to, at the very least, have a list of all my music on this external hard drive so when it dies I’ll have all the music list printed.

I’ve got multiple copies of my music files, including my computer at work.

3

DVD Doug,

I surmise you haven’t monkeyed with that Money software?

I wish I could load my music at work but … you know how that can be frowned upon.

2 ext hard drives and both died in less than 3 years still under warranty.

They won’t salvage the contents.

Ext hds under-perform and are over sold.

Looking forward to 2 TB flash drives one day.

4

Already available: Kingston 2TB DataTraveler Ultimate, list price, a little over $2000 US. :open_mouth:

5

So is the idea to exclude files from the list that are not MP3 or WAV, so you don’t list for example PNG files and text files?

The DIR command can do this, when you open a command prompt and navigate to the drive or folder you want to look in.

C:\>dir *.wav *.mp3
 Volume in drive C is Windows 10 Pro
 Volume Serial Number is 98BC-F6D0

 Directory of C:\

23/12/2016  15:49           735,540 sample_original.wav

 Directory of C:\

17/11/2014  17:32           306,603 french horn mono.mp3
13/10/2010  15:10           399,151 Goldwave1_click_at_end.mp3
               3 File(s)      1,441,294 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  17,427,812,352 bytes free

If you want that output saved to a file:

dir *.wav *.mp3 > list.txt

Or using an application with a user interface, UltraSearch can do this. Use its File > Print List command.



Gale

6

Hi Gale,

No, I’m not trying to exclude any file per se.

All my music saved is either in .wav or .mp3

I was told to save music in uncompressed .wav but honestly I can’t detect the difference between an uncompressed .wav and the same song in compressed . mp3 so eventually I think I’ll convert all my .wav files to .mp3s and save a lot of space.

I just want to create a printed list (for when my ext hd dies) I will have an alphabetically list of every artist by name with every album by name listed under that artist with every song name listed under every album.

Some artists I will have no album listings, just song titles.

I tried the old DOS Command with Dir/w etc but ti never gave me a list of every artist with every album of theirs with every song of theirs alphabetically.

Perhaps, I didn’t have all the correct parameters as with DOS if you’re off by a space or one letter it won’t meet your goals.

But, if you’ve found that UltraSearch, you kindly linked to, works better than I’ll give that a try.

Thank you ever so much.

7

Steve,

How long do you think it will take for the Kingston 2TB DataTraveler Ultimate, list price, a little over $2000 US to reach $80-$90 US (price of a new ext hd)?

Thanks.

8

I’d guess it will be a few years before 2TB thumb drives become affordable.

9

UltraSearch does not name artists or anything else that is not in the path to the file. I understood that all the information was in the file or folder name.

I am guessing you would only get UltraSearch to produce lists like you want by producing multiple lists and using advanced syntax. For example, I see UltraSearch has a regular expression to specify folder depth. This should let you make a list of the files that are in the the artist folders (irrespective what a folder is called) and another list of the files that are in the album folders.

If that is insufficient, I don’t know if a media reporting utility would do what you want either. It may not if it was relying on metadata in the file rather than file or folder name.

Anyway, try any application that looks hopeful, including UltraSearch and MediaMonkey, then ask the application’s support team for help if needs be.


Gale


10

Hi Gale,

I emailed the good people at UltraSearch and here’s what they shared with me…
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Support UltraSearch
Date: Thu, May 4, 2017 at 2:21 AM
Subject: UltraSearch 7

I am sorry, but this is not possible without postprocessing of the exported results.
You could export the path and the name of each folder of your music disk and then use some copy and replace functionality from e.g. excel or write a vb script in order to split the desired information from the exported folder paths.

Maybe we will add some additional metadata columns like “Artist” or “Album” to UltraSearch similar to the Windows Explorer. But I cannot promise that this will be added in the next version of UltraSearch.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I can generate a list with the DOS command but it’s not pretty and it goes on for 60+ pages just to list the artists’ names, album names and song titles. I was hoping to generate a clean list (like a column in Excel) that could fit on 10 pages or so without having to type in all the info one-by-one into Excel or Libra Calc, etc.

Thanks.

11

Did you explain to them that setting folder depth would automatically list only the folders and files in that category of folder? As I understand it, you don’t have metadata, but you do have consistent folder depth. So if your Album folder was depth 3 from root of C:, depth 3 should provide a list of everything in the Album folder.

You can try Media Monkey and if unsuccessful, search for “alternatives to Media Monkey” and contact the authors of those applications.

It is possible someone on Stack Overflow might be willing to write some script for your to post-process the DIR output. You would have to be very clear to them exactly what output you wanted.


Gale


12

Hi Gale,

No, I didn’t share your additional points with them but thank you for them as I will now.

How do I reach StackPoint?

Thank you so very much for all your kind help.

13

Stack Overflow is part of Stack Exchange. On reflection, you might get a more friendly response on their SuperUser group.


Gale

14

Gale,

Thank you!

I just joined and posted.

If I get any solutions, I’ll be sure to share them with you.

Best.