I launch maybe 200 musical projects per year and use an Excel spreadsheet to track their progress - file locations, quality (star rating), songwriting notes, mixing to-do’s, etc. And clickable links to mixdowns (.MP3), lyric files (.DOC), etc. With thousands of projects accumulated over the years, I couldn’t live without it, but it’s far from ideal, cramming all the notes for a project into a single cell of a spreadsheet, for example. And when new versions of older projects are produced, things get messy. At worst, I can’t tell which of a dozen versions are important vs. wasting hard drive space.
A better solution would incorporate a relational database, so each project can have multiple sub-projects, mixdowns, notes and to-do’s. And tight integration with the file system would keep timestamps, versioning, and metadata (e.g., star ratings) synced. And, when a sub-project is created, it automatically inherits field values from the parent, so to-do’s aren’t lost, for example.
I’ve researched this online, but “project management” typically relates to groupware and applications like Microsoft Project, where the emphasis is on managing people and resources - not files. Maybe I’m just using the wrong search criteria?
Just a first thought: have you considered an audio data ase app like smSoundminer/Basegead/soundly or even Mediabay to archive mp3 mixdowns of projects with embedded notes in metadata? In Soundminer you could even export to TSV (tab separated values).
It may not offer all the requirements but does serve the ones you mentioned here.
That’s an intriguing idea. It doesn’t look like any of those programs permit file links in the metadata fields. However, it might be a step up from Excel, nonetheless, as it automatically indexes the MP3s, wherever they are, and presents accurate file creation / modification dates. Automating this would eliminate some human error, for sure.
This also gets me thinking generally about information management apps, like InfoQube. It’s pretty flexible and supports file links, but doesn’t sync with files to display accurate modification dates or other metadata. Bummer. But, again, it might be a step up from Excel.
At first blush, it looks like another groupware app, but I watched the “Manage Files and Folders EASILY in Notion” video and am intrigued. If it can be configured to automatically present Nuendo project files, lyric files, renders, etc., on a single page, alongside stream-of-consciousness notes, it’d be ideal. Looks like it can filter on keywords too. Maybe ratings?