A broadband or DSL Internet connection and a free MP3 music download application make an ideal combination for any audiophile. Nothing beats getting all the newest and coolest tunes that you want for free. It’s very tempting to spend entire days clicking away at songs and adding to your music library. But you shouldn’t end with just that.

You should also take the time every once in a while to stop your downloading and sort out all the new music files that you got. Whether it’s by artist, by album or by track name is your call, so long as you get all the files in order and you see where everything is. If you’re the more obsessive-compulsive type, you might also want to fix the name of each file to a certain format. But why go through all this bother?

It’s pretty simple. When you just download MP3 music for free off the Internet, you’re going to end up with A LOT of files. It’s very likely that you accidentally downloaded two or more copies of the exact same track. Now, that might seem like a very small thing, but 10 of those redundancies at 4MB will mean a huge chunk of wasted hard drive space.

This is a good habit, especially if you regularly listen to your music. Few things are more disconcerting than opening a track labeled ‘Linking Park’ only to get a song from Norah Jones. Besides, with easy-arrange software like iTunes, arranging an entire library of downloaded tracks shouldn’t take too much of your time.