Ask any writer or producer where their music is, and the honest answer is "everywhere". A drive from a few years ago, a Dropbox folder from a studio you used to work at, a Google Drive someone shared, and a Downloads folder full of bounces.
The usual plan is to sort it all by hand one weekend. That weekend rarely comes, and when it does, it is gone by Sunday afternoon with one drive half done.
Do not sort first
The instinct is to tidy before you move anything. Do the opposite. Gather first, sort later, and let software do the sorting wherever it can. Hand-sorting thousands of files is exactly the kind of work that needs no taste, which makes it the right work to hand over.
Step one: list where everything lives
Write down every place music might be: each drive, each cloud account, each laptop. You do not need to open them yet. The list is what stops one quietly getting forgotten.
Step two: connect, do not copy
Copying everything into one new folder doubles the mess and starts a second version of every file. Where you can, connect the source instead, so the files stay where they are and new bounces keep arriving on their own.
- Cloud folders like Dropbox and Google Drive can usually be connected directly.
- Old drives are worth one plug-in and one pass, then they can go back in the drawer.
- Keep sessions where your DAW expects them. You need the bounces catalogued, not the project files moved.
Step three: let the files tell you what they are
A file name, the folder it sits in and the audio itself say a lot. "Golden Hour INST v3" is an instrumental of Golden Hour. A folder of WAVs with matching lengths is a set of stems. Tempo and key can be read from the audio. Good software reads all of this, so you only answer the questions it genuinely cannot.
Step four: answer once, not every time
When something is wrong, correct it once in a way that sticks. If a folder holds bounces, say so once, and every new file in it should be treated that way from then on.
How Locker does it
Locker connects to Dropbox, Google Drive and folders on your Mac. It reads each file to work out whether it is a track, a version, a stem or a session, groups every version of a track under one title, reads tempo and key from the audio, and keeps watching for new bounces. When it is unsure, it asks, and it remembers your answer. The point is simple: getting a catalogue in should take an afternoon, not a weekend you never find.