iTunes folder organization help

[williedigital]

Is it possible to convert an itunes organized music directory (aka itunes has created "artist/album/songs" structure based on id3s) into an alternate structure? Specifically, an "artist - album/songs" structure.

It seems like an easy enough thing to do, but i can't find any applescript or etc. that will do it...

 

[roland.g]

Don't understand what you are asking?
You want to change it from artist/album/song
to folders named artist - album with songs contained within the folder, where each album has a folder, as in

Dave Matthews Band - Everyday
Dave Matthews Band - Busted Stuff
etc.

rather than Everyday and Busted Stuff as subfolders to Dave Matthews Band

 

[williedigital]

exactly

i want each album to converted into a folder containing the files associated with that album.

 

[roland.g]

i want each album to converted into a folder containing the files associated with that album.

That's how it already is. Each album is a folder within the artist folder.
And each album folder contains the songs/files of that album. The only exception is that compilation albums are contained in the compilations folder, but that can be changed.

What I understand is that you want to have separate artist - album folders for each artist's albums, rather than having the albums be subfolders of the artist. And for the life of me I have no idea why you would want to do that.

 

[williedigital]

why i want to do that

my music is in a fat32 formatted external drive located on a windows machine.

it is D:music\library\artist\album\mp3s

When people come over and want to "borrow" music from me, they will drag folders from this location to the external drive which they have created. The often only want one album from an artist with multiple albums. To borrow this music in an intelligible format, they must either create a folder manually for the artist (say "beatles"), navigate to the beatles subfolder, then drag the folder for the album that they desire into the newly created "beatles" folder on their drive OR they may skip the manual folder creation step and go home with a drive full of album name folders with songs residing in them. It's sort of hard to figure out what artist each of these albums correspond to. I just think that it's easier to have things organized at one level. Image if you go to a record store, and only the album names are printed on cds, and the artist name isn't. it's easy to find the album at the store, where all the albums are in drawers that correspond to the artist that created them, but when you get home and have a bunch of cds with just the album name, you wish you had jotted down the artist name on the cd somewhere.

 

[roland.g]

my music is in a fat32 formatted external drive located on a windows machine.

it is D:music\library\artist\album\mp3s

When people come over and want to "borrow" music from me, they will drag folders from this location to the external drive which they have created. The often only want one album from an artist with multiple albums. To borrow this music in an intelligible format, they must either create a folder manually for the artist (say "beatles"), navigate to the beatles subfolder, then drag the folder for the album that they desire into the newly created "beatles" folder on their drive OR they may skip the manual folder creation step and go home with a drive full of album name folders with songs residing in them. It's sort of hard to figure out what artist each of these albums correspond to. I just think that it's easier to have things organized at one level. Image if you go to a record store, and only the album names are printed on cds, and the artist name isn't. it's easy to find the album at the store, where all the albums are in drawers that correspond to the artist that created them, but when you get home and have a bunch of cds with just the album name, you wish you had jotted down the artist name on the cd somewhere.

I see your point, BUT, because of the ID tags, when they copy those albums into their library on their own computer, it will populate the artist data, as it is already stored in the file. And it will be correspondingly stored in their library in the same structure that it is in now in your library.

 

[williedigital]

sorta

that will work IF they use itunes, which many don't. And what if i one day want to switch to something other than itunes. I don't want hundreds of gigs of stuff in a format i can't change.

 

[Rantipole]

They could drag, say, "White Album" to their drive. When it finishes copying, take 1.5 seconds to rename the folder "Beatles White Album".

 

[aristobrat]

For Windows (IIRC), Tag&Rename could do that:
http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm

Haven't seen an OS X version of something like that, but I'm sure it's out there.

I'm sure you already know this, but remember to turn off the feature in iTunes that tells it to organize your music (if you go with an alternative folder structure).

 

[williedigital]

nice idea

They could drag, say, "White Album" to their drive. When it finishes copying, take 1.5 seconds to rename the folder "Beatles White Album".

but I've got about 40K albums.

 

[panoz7]

but I've got about 40K albums.

Good god. What do you store those on? I'm just curious.

40k albums = around 400,000 songs @ 4 MB per song = 1.6 TB

 

[roland.g]

Really based on everything you've told us so far, it seems you are trying to go out of your way to convert your library structure in such a way that it can more easily be shared, and at that volume of music, I don't know how many "friends" you are doing this for nor how much per friend etc, but if they can't simply rename a few folders or create them on their drive to drop the album into, then it sounds like some serious or at least substantial volume there. Now I'm not saying that you are enterprising this, but at this point it sounds like you are past the gray area and any more advice in that arena is assisting you in something less than legal. That is not really what this forum is about.

 

[xUKHCx]

Good god. What do you store those on? I'm just curious.

40k albums = around 400,000 songs @ 4 MB per song = 1.6 TB

If i had 40K worth of albums they would all be encoded lossless so it would be more like 10TB so 2 Xraids.

 

[bousozoku]

but I've got about 40K albums.

So you've got all this music, probably "borrowed", that you are letting other people "borrow" and you need a better solution?

We don't help people with piracy in these forums.