Local Libraries
Organising a collection that grew for years
Album artist, compilations, live sets and bootlegs: a tagging strategy that keeps a large personal library browsable on a phone.
The short answer
Decide what "album artist" means in your library, apply it consistently, and let everything else follow. Most browsing problems in a large collection trace back to that single field.
The four fields that carry the weight
- Album artist — the entry a record is filed under. For a compilation, this is usually "Various Artists".
- Album — the release, not the edition. Deluxe editions can stay separate if you genuinely browse them separately.
- Track number and disc number — the difference between an album and a shuffled folder.
- Year — makes chronological browsing possible and helps distinguish reissues.
Compilations, live sets and bootlegs
Compilations belong under a shared album artist so they group into one record instead of scattering across twenty artist entries. Live recordings are easier to live with when the venue and date sit in the album title rather than in each track title. Bootlegs benefit from a consistent prefix so they are easy to include or exclude at a glance.
Playlists are a second layer, not a filing system
A collection organised only by playlists gets harder to navigate as it grows, because playlists carry no structural relationship to each other. Keep the album and artist structure clean first; use playlists for how you actually listen — a commute set, a late-night set, a set for the car.
Do the work once, on the desktop
Bulk editing on a computer is far faster than correcting records one at a time on a phone. Fix a batch, re-import, and check the result on the device. Once the structure is right, it survives every future move.
Where OVO fits
OVO is built to reward a well-organised library: browse by album, artist, song or playlist, and keep the collection you own at the centre of the experience.
