Automator - organize music into folders a-z

[ashok77]

Hello everyone,

So I've been tinkering around with Automator lately and have been having some moderate success and fun coming up with different little workflows. I have now completely stumped myself on this one. I feel like it should be relatively simple but I just can't get it to work. Here's what I am looking to do...

Within the iTunes Music folder I have all my artists listed alphabetically (I have iTunes set to keep my music organized). As part of my new backup plan I would like Automator create new folders based on the letters of the alphabet and then copy the artists over that belong to each letter so that the end result on my external drive looks like this

A
-Alexisonfire
-Audioslave
B
-Band of Horses
-Beastie Boys

and so on.

I've been able to do certain things in little pieces but they have all require manual intervention, ie. filter finder items to items that start with "a" and copy to folder "a" but i have to manually enter the filter criteria and destination criteria. Is there anyway to do this without manually creating the folders and manually selecting the filter criteria and destination folder? I did find an applescript that will create the folders for me, can i add this to the workflow?

thanks in advance!

 

[mysterytramp]

If you take this to its logical conclusion, you are guaranteeing that iTunes will "lose" your music and render the software worthless. It's probably not worth the effort.

mt

 

[ashok77]

i'm not looking to rearrange how itunes organizes music day to day, this is how i would like to backup my music, so this shouldn't render any software useless or "lose" my music.

i have the script to create folders A-Z and I know how to filter and copy files based on the letter they start with, I just need to know to loop the routine and get it to accept the next letter of the alphabet without me having to type it myself.

 

[darealwy]

Did you ever get it to work the way you wanted? If so, how.

 

[ashok77]

i did finally back up the music the way i wanted to however i wasn't able to do it with automator. i was already using Media Rage to tag all my mp3's and as i was poking around in it i found that one of it's tools was an Organizer. go figure. it works like a charm and all my music is now backed up the way i wanted. hope this helps.

 

[dhd]

Wouldn't be easier just to use time machine/CCC or super duper?

 

[ashok77]

it would have been yes but because i wanted the file structure to be different so i needed to find an alternative. this makes it easier to manage on sd cards for my VW.