Sort by the date a file is placed into a folder? (Date Modified/Created not working)

I have a folder where I place an ever growing collection of my favorite songs. Before I switched to Mac, on Windows, when I wanted to revisit songs I most recently added to the folder, I would sort the songs by the Date Modified and it would order the files I placed in the folder by date.

In OSX, however, there must be a slightly different meaning to "Date Modified," as it does not quite sort my songs by the order they were added. It gets some of it right, but there's plenty of files that are out of order--tune "x", which I know was placed in the folder a week ago is actually listed further down the list with songs placed in the folder months ago.

Is there a way to have OSX sort files in order of the date it was placed in a folder? Neither "Date Modified" nor "Date Created" works 100% as I thought it would. Or is the OSX definition of Date Modified/Created slightly different than Windows?

(Just a guess: Perhaps the date I ripped/purchased an mp3 takes precedence over when I placed the song into the folder in question?)

Thanks.

 

I import it without the "copy to iTunes Media Library" option enabled. The problem with the "Recently added" smart playlist is that it includes all new music that's added. I haven't found any way in the smart playlist options for it to only maintain songs that are located within a specific folder. That would be quite perfect for my needs.

For the first one, I would simply copy and paste "touch /path/to/file," then press Enter in Terminal? What exactly does that command do? Does it also become a permanent setting for the entire OS, whereas the second command will pertain to only the folder I specify?

What are all the actions that count as modifying a file? I found that even renaming a file doesn't count as modifying it, whereas changing the mp3's ID3 info by adding album art appears to update the modifying date.

Since moving (or even renaming) a file doesn't count as modifying, I assume the date I ripped/purchased an mp3 ultimately determines both Date Modified and Date Created, which is why they're both usually identical?

I'd like to better fully understand miles' Terminal instructions first, since I'm not familiar with Terminal. So for now, you don't need to figure out a solution. I don't wanna waste your time. Thank you though.

 

When I was on Windows not too long ago, I always used WinAmp and never used it's Library feature (like most, it seemed). I organized my music folders into a particular file structure, so when I switched to Mac, I decided to keep it. From what I could tell, iTunes' sorting method would do away with most of the conveniences I'm used to with my folder system. Conveniences that could only be maintained if my files were perfectly tagged, but many of them aren't as I didn't bother with it when using WinAmp. When I eventually get to finding the best program to fix the metadata in my collection, I might try iTunes' sorting method. But my collection is huge. I don't know if I'll have the energy to tag every single file properly.

Thank you so much for that explanation. Now that I understand it, I can see that while it could help with future file additions to my folder, it, a) cannot be applied to pre-existing files in my folder since it would simply change all their dates to today's date and, b) it would involve always having to open up Terminal to put in that command every time I put in a new file.

Got it! Thanks.

I don't know how I overlooked the "Folder Actions Setup" feature in the contextual window when I've been so meticulous in trying to learn and use all the obvious and little things in Finder. Googled it. Looks incredibly useful. Though the predefined scripts are very limited. So maybe I'll learn a bit about scripts so I can make use of this. The Apple Script Editor looks very daunting though.

Wow, looks like it should do what I need. Admittedly, I'm not entirely comfortable just typing out your script in the screenshot, since I've never worked with scripts before, but I'll keep it mind if I acquire some basic script knowledge. Thanks.