Mike's Juke Joint
©2008 Michael J. Petro

More Library Details

Artist Folder Names vs. Artist Display Names
Album Folder Names vs. Album Display Names
Track Names and Names in General
Album Art

This section supplements information provided in Organizing Your Library.

Artist Folder Names vs. Artist Display Names

Artist folders should be organized (if you're the purist that I know you are) to preserve alphabetic order when displayed in Mike's Juke Joint (MJJ). The problem is that noone likes seeing their fave group "The Holy Cows" displayed as "Holy Cows, The." It's just wrong. So I included a cheap little trick to alert MJJ as to how the name should be displayed. Simply drop a file, empty or otherwise, called ".title" in the Artist folder. For example, my U2 folder is called "UTwo" (yes, I go overboard sometimes), but I've placed an empty file called "U2.title" in the folder, so MJJ knows how it's meant to be displayed.

Album Folder Names vs. Album Display Names

Album folder names can do double duty - they can provide the year the album is released. It is placed in the front of the album name, so that when MJJ scans the folder, it displays the artists' albums in release order. The format is specific: "YYYY - ." If the year is not provided, things still work, but in track and album details the year will be indicated as "Unknown." If it is provided, it must be in the specific format - year followed by space-dash-space (" - "), followed by the album name: "1968 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." If you leave out the spaces ("1968-Sgt. Pepper's..."), then the display name will be improperly truncated to "t. Pepper's..." Hmm. I should fix that.

Track Names and Names in General

The "/" is illegal in a filename, and who wants to see "AC-DC" displayed when "Highway To Hell" is playing? MJJ introduces character substitution to address this problem. As can be seen in the image above, you can name this artist "AC++DC" and MJJ will substitute "AC/DC" in the display, and all is now right in the rock and roll world. To represent track name:

05-Medley: What's Her Name? / You've Got * Power - The "Yeah Rights" <Skank Mix>

05-Medley= What's Her Name~ ++ You've Got ,, Power - The ''Yeah Rights'' ((Skank Mix)).mp3

Because of the horrible condition of many track names as they come back from CDDB scans (sorry), I developed a program to "groom" the filenames in my collection. I may consider releasing a version of this utility - currently it is in too rough a condition for general use. Note that you can "clean up" your track names as they play, as MJJ allows you to rename tracks on the fly.

Album Art

We all want to look at the pretty pictures, and when MJJ is doing its cool screen-scrolling of song details, we want to be able to see from across the room what album is playing, don't we? Well, just plop a JPEG or GIF file inside the Album folder. MJJ will copy it to "Folder.jpg" or "Folder.gif," so if you're concerned about disk space (With a collection that big? Come on!), you can call it that to begin with.

Album covers are easy to find, what with Google image search, Amazon.com, etc. Also, if you are using Collectorz.com products, then this program vacuums it up off of the Internet for you as it scans your CDs against a CDDB database.

---

The unregistered version of MJJ is free, and it will handle a maximum of 10,000 tracks. To support an unlimited number of tracks, a $45 registration fee is required, and I send you codes to unlock Mike's Juke Joint for unlimited access. My collection consists of over 48,000 tracks (legally ripped from my own CD collection), and MJJ handles them fine.

 
Send queries, kudos, complaints, enhancement requests and (gasp!) bug reports to:
Michael J. Petro