Preserve Music Folders or Auto-Organize by Artist and Album?

There is no single correct folder structure for a personal music library. Some collectors maintain a careful hierarchy by label, catalog number, format, or mastering. Others want every import normalized into a simple Artist/Album layout and rely on tags for everything else. PhaseShift v1.1 supports both approaches with a library-organization setting for future imports.

Preserve Folders: Keep Your Existing System

Preserve Folders keeps the structure supplied by a folder-aware source such as Wi-Fi Transfer or a network import. If your computer stores an album as Music/Artist/Year - Album/Disc 1, those relative folders can remain meaningful after the transfer. Individual files without a supplied folder structure stay at the Music root, avoiding invented directories that you did not ask for.

Auto-Organize: Let Metadata Build the Library

Auto-Organize reads the embedded artist and album fields from a new file and places it into an Artist/Album folder. The original filename is preserved, so track numbers and naming conventions remain intact. If usable artist or album metadata is missing, PhaseShift uses an Unknown Artist or Unknown Album fallback instead of losing the file or creating an unsafe path.

Tags Matter More in Auto-Organize Mode

Automatic organization is only as accurate as the metadata in the files. Before a large import, check artist and album tags for compilations, multi-disc sets, featured artists, and releases with inconsistent spelling. PhaseShift supports metadata across common lossless and hi-res formats and includes on-device tag editing, so an untidy folder can be corrected without sending library information to an online account.

Which Mode Should You Choose?

Choose Preserve Folders if directory names carry information that tags do not, if your collection already follows a trusted archival scheme, or if you want transfers to mirror your computer. Choose Auto-Organize if files arrive from several sources, their tags are reliable, and you want a consistent hierarchy without sorting every album manually. The setting can be changed later for new imports.

Future Imports Only

Changing the organization mode does not launch a bulk move of existing music. Known files already managed by the library remain where they are, preventing a preference change from duplicating or unexpectedly relocating a collection. PhaseShift v1.1 deliberately makes organization future-facing: decide how the next import should be stored while the current library remains stable.