Comments on: Keeping iTunes Organized

By: Omar

Omar — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 23:48:27 +0000

can someone help, my music folder is no longer puting songs into their folder automatically. Before when downloading a song from a different source than itunes, would cut from the downloaded folader and paste into my external hardrive where i have all my music and it would automatically creat a folder with the artist name, going forward any downloaded song with the same artist name as soon as pasted into the music folder automatically redirect the song to the artist name folder, this is not happening anymore…. help!!!!!!!

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:37:45 +0000

Wow … I realized ages ago that iTunes was totally screwed in how it claimed to ‘organize’ your music library and then instantly doubled it’s size with useless duplicates. This is one killer tip!

By: Martin

Martin — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:48:17 +0000

There is now a very simple way to solve moving files into iTunes instead of copying – just drop files (e.g. move them) onto a shortcut to the folder “Automatically add to iTunes” (details in my blog post: http://blog.ripperdoc.net/2011/01/25/how-to-move-files-into-itunes-instead-of-copying/ )

By: Darlene

Darlene — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 23:07:13 +0000

David, i am so very confused.
This is how my “tree” looks
My Documents
My Music
(listed by artist) among this listing is
itunes
itunesmusic
music (and repeats all the songs listed under My Music

What am i doing wrong.i have 2 copies taking up 50 GB of space on my HD. I have copied the whole “mess” to an external HD, but i am afraid to delete anything from my C Drive.
When i am using itunes, i have all these ! marks before my songs, and i have to LOCATE where they are.
Am I a lost cause, or can u help me.
Thank you so much
Darlene

By: cbaulies

cbaulies — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:08:07 +0000

This is great, but I have a question. The only thing I do not like about the “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” checkbox is that it renames all the files, and if the name of the file is quite long, it cuts it off. Is there any way to have iTunes save the files with the full name of the song?

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:51:12 +0000

I’m wondering why the following approach isn’t preferred… I have my music collection on an external WD WorldBook drive… it’s got a pair of 500GB drives in it (1TB total) that I configured as a mirrored RAID configuration. So I have a bit less than 500GB of redundant storage (in case one drive fails I still have my music).
I leave the default iTunes setting for organizing my music (the box is unchecked rather than checked as advocated in this thread).
Then what I do is tell iTunes to import the base folder into my library. It reads all the music into my library without moving or copying it. This way my c:drive is not stormed with music copies and I have my music on an external redundant storage device.
When I download music from iTunes (buy more) it does go to my c:drive location (I could probably configure iTunes to have this location be my external mirrored drive so I have automatic backup).
Seems worth mentioning now that these external mirrored drives are readily available.

By: John

John — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:26:57 +0000

Hi David

Found this post and fixed my ipod problem

Updating in itunes not on the ipod

Thank you again

John

By: JD

JD — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:26:50 +0000

For those of you that want a little more out of the way you organize your music, I would strongly suggest looking into a little product called TuneUp Companion by TuneUpMedia … http://www.tuneupmedia.com …. NOTE – I do not work for this company or know anyone that does, I found it a few months ago and bought the product, its cheap and works splendidly … all my music is now in the right order, right artist, and takes care of other fields for you as well … just try it out and you will see what I mean

By: al

al — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:58:47 +0000

wicked tip man

also in response to xsnrgman if the tracks play in the wrong order on iunes you have to manually label them. to do this righ tclickon the first tune of the album, select get info, then the info tab. now all you have to is type in the ‘track number’ and ‘out of’ in the boxes

hope this helps

By: jTunes

jTunes — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:53:07 +0000

Damn! That’s genious!

By: Randall

Randall — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:23:35 +0000

Thanks for your advice BUT !!!! I am so confused, I use a PC. My music is every where , I do have an external HD, WHY cant you just go
c:\ David \ my music \ itunes or ??? why the my docs documents and settings etc. again i am so F—— confused, I have lost all my music once now just over 3600 songs and dont want to have it happen again. Also if all my music is lost in I Tunes but my I pod has it how can i transfer it back. Again Thanks for all your imput and time.

By: orangeek

orangeek — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:59:21 +0000

Hi, nice post. I’m a new apple user and I found it very useful.
I’ve a question though: since I’ve many compilations (like OST), I’d like to keep those albums organised in this way
name_of_the_movie_OST/title.mp3
Activating the option ‘keep files organized’, itunes would change the structure in the usual artist/album/title.mp3.
So, for the initial import of all my mp3, I should at first uncheck the ‘keep files organized’, import the files, tag the OST as ‘part of a compilation’ and _then_ check the option. In this way iTunes will keep the original dir structure.
Now I’m wondering if there is a way to do this trick every time I ll add in the future a OST to the Library.
I also noticed that itunes when reorganizing files (for example, the files in the itunesstaging location to the correct artist/album/ structure) leaves some files in the itunesstaging dir: in my case it left the dir in the staging dir, without any mp3 files but with the folder.jpg file.
Do you have any suggestions for these 2 questions?
thank you

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:54:00 +0000

I’m using a Mac and have had inconsistent results from this approach. I did the files in batches. Some batches moved out of ~staging cleanly. Others didn’t come in at all (might be bad files). And some show up in the iTunes library but remain in their original disorganized mess within the ~staging folder.

I also tried following some advice from another site and unchecking “Keep files organized,” exiting iTunes, reopening iTunes, and checking the box again. Immediately, it began organizing all of the files in my library. I left for the day, came back, and nothing had changed in my directories. Any additional suggestions?

By: Vishal

Vishal — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:51:24 +0000

Great idea. Something else I discovered after trying this out: if the ‘iTunesStaging’ folder (or whatever you choose to call it), is empty after iTunes does its reorganization, iTunes will delete the iTunesStaging folder. To prevent this, you can create a dummy file in the staging folder. On OSX, you can do this by running something like the following command (in the iTunesStaging directory):

touch dont_delete_this_dir

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 17:01:35 +0000

OMFG Thank you SO much for showing me this little tip. My problem isnt just the inconvenience of it, but the fact that I dont have enough space for it on my hard disk, so I would have had to copy a few, delete the orginals, copy the next few etc etc

Muchly appreciated…

By: Jock

Jock — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:43:06 +0000

David,

Thanks for this clear outline. It helped me to plumb the secrets of the iTunes folder organization, and assisted me hugely in transferring my old iTunes Library to my new computer.

A note … to get the MOVE instead of COPY to work, I had to nest the Staging Folder INSIDE the iTunes Music Folder. To use your “David” example, it would look like this in my Vista64 bit computer:

C:\Users\David\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\iTunesStaging

Then it moves like a charm when I add new downloaded music files.

Best,

Jock

By: xsnrgman

xsnrgman — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 03:43:35 +0000

My issue really has been with tracks playing in the wrong order. It seems from when you have an artist and album iTunes plays the tracks in alphabetical order and ignores (sometimes) the track numbers of where your songs are in the info. To remedy this I type an initial or sign before the song title and put in track number in the title. Fixes my problem but I have to do it with a LOT of albums. iTunes isn’t very friendly and smart with organizing your albums at all. FACT!

By: Sam Hosein

Sam Hosein — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:11:46 +0000

Hi David
The files in my iTunes Music Folders are listed under folder “Artist”. How can I change it to list under folder “Album”.

Thanks
Sam

By: dvg

dvg — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:06:10 +0000

When I wrote this post I was a PC user. I have since switched to a Mac and — running OS X — this has worked and is working just fine for me. I’ll have to disagree with you, Mystic.

By: Mystic

Mystic — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:54:07 +0000

This does not work on a Mac, it still does a copy

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:34:31 +0000

And, as a tribute to you, perhaps one day I’ll start a band named “iTunesStaging.”

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:27:26 +0000

You are amazing! I absolutely love you for this! I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it yet… I imagine I would’ve eventually, but you saved me loads of time (Well, assuming it works, which it should.). I’ve been trying to figure this out for like two hours, trying all sorts of seemingly clever things, and it’s 2:30 AM and I just want it to work. You saved me! Thanks a lot.

By: frank

frank — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:08:06 +0000

nice tip. thanks!