Organize that music!

[sonickteam2]

ok, i am sure this thread has been done before, but now i am really ready for once and for all to organize my digital music files. just my mp3s.
 
  basically to know what i have and dont.  
 
  theres lots of little programs you can buy for $40 that claim they're the best but i thought maybe an excel worksheet or something or other might work just as good.
 
   anyone tried any of these programs or came up with something just as neato?
 
    technically, i would like to be able to sort artist, song, album, track number and year, genre not so important cause i have them sorted that way on my hard drives and whenever i try to do a genre match, i end up with like 100 genres anyway.
 
   anyone?

[beetsnotbeats]

iTunes does this quite well. You can sort by any of the metadata (there are more than 20), but you can't do hierarchial sorting (first by artist, then by...). You can display the metadata in any order that you choose (drag, drop, resize columns). As long as your digital music files of whatever format you choose have good tags then you should be fine.

[vansmack]

Open iTunes.
 
 Hit CTRL+B (for iTunes 7 users, choose the first view option, then hit CTRL+B)
 
 That should just about do it.

[sonickteam2]

duh

[bellenseb]

If you're looking for an iTunes alternative with more options, MediaMonkey gets high marks on the DAP geek chatboards.