> The default iTunes structure (Artist/Album/01 - Song Title.mp3) seems to work fine, for example.
It only works fine for basic rock and pop (because even if there is a composer different from the interpreter, that's optional). It starts breaking for remix albums released under a given artist (the original composer) where one song may have been remixed with three different people, now you have to start infecting the track names with the remixer.
And then you've got classical music, where each of the composer, orchestra, conductor and soloist may be considered the artist, but none really is because the authorship of this precise interpretation is a combination of all of them, and any missing will lead to a collision. TFA also touches upon original sountracks (of movies, animes or games) which regularly open whole new cans of worm, and special compilations such as Dark was the Night (40-odd artists — excluding composer for covers — for 31 tracks in a single album, good luck handling that one without relying on the "various artists" crutch)
> where one song may have been remixed with three different
> people, now you have to start infecting the track names
> with the remixer.
For what it's worth, I don't consider that "infecting". It's really the only sane way to handle huge collaborative works.
There are always exceptions which break any categorization scheme. The point is to treat them as exceptions, ie. fold them into the 90% model as well as you can, rather than restructuring your model to accomodate for 100% of every conceivable artistic license.
> And then you've got classical music,
This one _is_ interesting, but I solved it (personally) when I realized I only cared about the original composer (eg. Mozart) in terms of "artist", and the minimum nomenclature to disambiguate movements, etc. in terms of "title". Trivia like the performing orchestra is perfectly well homed in the album title, or ignored entirely. I admit I'm only interested in listening to classical music, not cataloging it to some deeper academic purpose.
It only works fine for basic rock and pop (because even if there is a composer different from the interpreter, that's optional). It starts breaking for remix albums released under a given artist (the original composer) where one song may have been remixed with three different people, now you have to start infecting the track names with the remixer.
And then you've got classical music, where each of the composer, orchestra, conductor and soloist may be considered the artist, but none really is because the authorship of this precise interpretation is a combination of all of them, and any missing will lead to a collision. TFA also touches upon original sountracks (of movies, animes or games) which regularly open whole new cans of worm, and special compilations such as Dark was the Night (40-odd artists — excluding composer for covers — for 31 tracks in a single album, good luck handling that one without relying on the "various artists" crutch)