Folder Structure in iTunes

[Andrew S.]

Is there any way to replicate your Folder Structure in iTunes?

 

It has made a complete dog's bollocks of my classical - 600Gb of neatly sorted albums broken up willy nilly etc etc. I just want to be able to see my folders in iTunes, select an album and play. Any way to do this?

 

Thanks

Andrew

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Andrew - I'm not totally sure I follow what you're trying to do. My suggestion is to edit the metadata for the albums and tracks so it's just the way you want it. The folder structure should follow the metadata.

 

For example make sure you check for the Compilation option on your albums. This causes some weird folder placements for albums tht aren't compilations etc...

 

[Andrew S.]

Hi Chris

oh I wanted to view my music in iTunes by HDD Folder Structure ie how I have it arranged on my HDD; not the iTunes Folder structure ie what the meta tags are. If I have no choice but to edit my meta tags what is an automated program to do this with?

Ummm - with the "compilation's" button do you recommend it being "on" or "off"?

Cheers

A

 

[Audio_ELF]

iTunes stores the music files in a %artist-name%/%album-name% under the iTunes Music folder by default in ~%username%/Music/iTunes on the Mac. The exception is compilations that go under Compilation/%album%

 

The compilation tag should be off for any single artist CD or on for multiple artist compilation CDs, eg off for "Queen Greatest Hits" but on for "The Ultimate Eighties". You may find some single artist disks have been tagged as compilations because it has a track with guest artist dueting. For these I put "[with second artist]" as part of the track title and then set the Artist field as the main artist; then you can correctly set Compilation off.

 

Eg Under Pressure on the Queen Greatest Hits album has the Track Title "Under Pressure [with David Bowie]" and Artist "Queen". As default iTunes / Gracenote have Artist as "Queen and David Bowie" and the Compilation tag set on.

 

Obviously YMMV and there is no right way but this is what I've found works well for me and makes logical sence.

Eloise

 

 

[Andrew S.]

Thanks Eliose

may I ask - how do you turn it on and off per album?

Can you suggest a Mass tagger that has a simple GUI? The easier for me the better. AIFF format.

Cheers

A

 

[cfmsp]

 

Andrew,

 

under Advanced tab of iTunes preferences there's an option to Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized. Sound like you may have this box checked? It's possible that this is the source of the evil you've experienced.

 

If so, uncheck it, although it may be too late (unless you start with a backup of your music files in your preferred naming structure).

 

[note: I could be wrong since I actually do allow iTunes to organize my music, but I don't ask iTunes to copy music to its library.]

 

Also, I don't recommend that anyone ever ask iTunes to Consolidate Library.

 

Clay

 

[Andrew S.]

It's a pig of a program that thinks it knows better than you.

How do you delete the library and start over?

 

[Audio_ELF]

... at least it knows better than the 90% of people who use it. Personally I think if you use iTunes, you have to use it fully and let it manage your library completely. Use the "copy files" and "manage library" functions and (personally) I've never had a problem with it. For most people, the fact that it copies the music files to it's own folder is actually of benefit and it makes backups easier (IMO). As I say, occasionally you have to edit tags, but then what CD Ripper don't you have to edit tags. I also wish it supported more tags designed for classical music (i.e. along with composer and artist, it had orchestra and conductor for starters), or allowed you to add custom tags.

 

As for Andrew's other question ... how to change the "Compilation" tag ... if you select the tracks to change, right click and then choose Get Info, you'll get a tabbed information window. On the final tab (labeled Options) there is a drop down box to select Yes or No.

 

Hope this helps.

 

[Andrew S.]

Thank you - useful post as always.

It is all abit of a moot point for me know.

 

iTunes is far too much work for the outcome. I will give you one example. I have all the Gramophone Magazine Winners by year and CD. All with artwork etc. I imported them into iTunes Library. It gave me 5 genres of which the largest by far was "Unknown" with all the albums lumped in together, no artwork to be seen and no separate CD's. Sorry but I am not going to retag an entire Classical collection just so I can use iTunes. There are better alternatives.

 

As for Amarra - will it may sound great but IMO it is beta software. Not for me at this point.

 

[Audio_ELF]

I completely respect your point.

 

As I say, for me, iTunes works well for me. But I equally support that you should use exactly what you think is best. Thats the great things about computer audio, so much of it you can try for free and find what you like best.

 

Eloise

 

[AudioExplorations]

I am having the exact same issue as i am considering replacing my Music pc with à mac mini and iTunes/Amarra. I have my large flac library very well organised and browse the library within foobar by directory structure.

 

I am testing out iTunes and so far it's looking like I will need to tag my entire library in order to use the software which is not really an option.

 

Just wondering since these last posts almost 2 years ago there is a way to do this?

 

Bootcamp with win7 and foobar kernel streaming?

 

[wgscott]

Uncheck the two check boxes I have checked in the "advanced" preference pane:

 

 

 

[AudioExplorations]

Sorry i was unclear in my post, the issue is not that iTunes messes up my music structure.

 

The issue is that I want to browse my music collection within iTunes by the way I have it structured/organised on disk.

 

I have a large FLAC library (> 1TB) very well organised by: GenreArtist [YEAR] Album [FORMAT SOURCE]xx.flac with a folder.jpg in every folder containing the album art.

 

e.g. JazzMiles Davis [1959] Kind of Blue [FLAC VINYL]

 

With foobar the media library was mirrored directly and I was able to browse the folder structure as it is on disk hence expanding a particular genre, getting a list of all albums within, and then selecting a particular album to play (seeing from the folder name the only details I need, artist, release date, album, and format).

 

I want this structure to drive the way I browse my music in iTunes and NOT rely on any tagging (the current tags in my library are all over the place + I have WAV files that do not support tagging).

 

Is there any such way to setup iTunes so that this is possible?

 

[wgscott]

I had a bad feeling I had missed the point.

 

The first problem is iTunes doesn't recognize FLAC. (You could use XLD to batch-convert everything to ALAC while preserving the directory heirarchy). But you are also right in that it doesn't organize stuff using a directory tree, which isn't a problem for me, so I haven't had to figure out a work-around. I worry that there isn't one.

 

The best I can come up with is to make a playlist for every album (there is an iTunes applescript available on Doug's Applescripts sites that does this) and then organize the playlists in folder heirarchies. There might be an automated way to do the latter as well, if you have an impossibly Sysiphian task.

 

The other option is to use something like Play.app, which is sonically superior, reads FLAC, and recognizes the directory structure without modification: http://sbooth.org/Play/