Worflow for adding music in structured folders to iTunes

June 14, 2009 7:24 AM

I want to keep my existing folder structure for music files, and thus do not use the "keep my music organized" feature on iTunes. What is the best workflow for adding new music to this collection? I want to be able to add my new files to the folders I choose, and then update the iTunes database to reflect that these new files are there. "Copy files to iTunes music folder" doesn't create the folder structure I need. How are other people doing this?
posted by Area Control to computers & internet (13 comments total)

After you put a new album where you want it, drag the folder containing the album into iTunes. If you don't want to pick-and-choose, you can just drag your "top level" folder of music into iTunes; it will scan through and only add things it hasn't already added.
posted by bcwinters at 7:35 AM on June 14

Make sure in the preferences, under the Advanced tab that Keep iTunes Music folder organised and Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library are unchecked. Then, when you've added music files wherever you want to add them, just use File->Add folder to library. That was iTunes won't move your music files, it'll just add the locations of the files to its own library database.
posted by bjrn at 7:35 AM on June 14

Yes, as long as those two prefs are OFF, iTunes won't do anything at all to your files. When I'm adding to my static collections, I will usually first put the files where they are going to live, then I drag the folder onto the iTunes window which adds the files to the iTunes list.

If you reverse this (add files then move folder) iTunes will likely get mad and pout.
posted by Aquaman at 8:34 AM on June 14

This works for me:
1) Make a folder on your desktop
2) Put the music you want to add in it.
3) Click "Add folder to library"
4) Click "consolidate library"
5) delete the folder off the desktop.

This copies all the music into your itunes folder, and you don't have to have itunes organize your music (which on PCs I can say with full certainty, Itunes randomly deletes files. I know it sounds weird but I know it to be true).

Anyway, kind of hamish but that's the way I do it and it's worked rock solid for me for a long time.
posted by sully75 at 9:09 AM on June 14

If you don't want iTunes to add things twice, be sure to remove .pls (playlist) files out of your album folders. iTunes will add the individual files, then the playlist that references the individual files. Duplicate cleanup is not fun.
posted by ijoyner at 9:48 AM on June 14

I think Folder Actions will do what you want: you can attach an action to the root folder of your music hierarchy so that when anything is added to the folder it will be added to iTunes by the magic of Applescript.
Here is a how-to, but you can turn up many more with a google for "folder actions applescript".
I would suggest setting up a new folder with this and dragging a few folders in to test that it will deal with your nested hierarchy; I can't vouch for that as I don't use it myself.
posted by nowonmai at 9:50 AM on June 14

Not sure if you're on a Mac, but I am so this may not apply for Windows. Set up as bjrn describes above, and I just download/copy songs into an "Incoming" folder. I add them to iTunes by dragging some or all into the iTunes window or onto its icon, or just double-clicking.

I use the rating system in iTunes; new music that I'm keeping gets a 3-star rating (unless I decide I love it, then it gets 4 or 5). If I'm not sure I like it but still plan to keep it, it gets a 2-star rating. Don't like and plan to toss: no stars. After I've added a batch of music and listened to a few tracks from each album, rated for keep/no keep, I sort by rating and toss the zeros.

Then I copy the ones I'm keeping into the appropriate folder (on the same volume - that's important) where they'll stay. iTunes doesn't have a problem with me moving the files.
posted by TochterAusElysium at 9:54 AM on June 14

> Folder Actions … magic of Applescript …
Oops; should have mentioned that this will only work on a Mac! There may be an equivalent Windows solution but I know nothing of the dark magicks.
posted by nowonmai at 10:04 AM on June 14

Thanks everyone.
posted by Area Control at 10:44 AM on June 14

you can free yourself from iTunes and use Jriver Media Center. Worth every cent for the control you get back over your music.
posted by merocet at 11:20 AM on June 14

What about using aliases? Either the iTunes library or your custom library would be made of aliases pointing to the actual files in the other filing hierarchy. It would be a lot of work to set up but you would have complete freedom without affecting the other filing system.

Another thought is to use metadata tags on the music files. If you are on the Mac, a program like Leap would help you tag and sort in custom order.
posted by conrad53 at 4:16 PM on June 14

Aliases, no. I'm not setting up 60,000 aliases and a second layer of abstraction between me and my music. And I don't want the overhead of tagging everything. Part of the reason this question was asked is that I have many hundreds of untagged mp3s, including field recordings and other unusual items. In many cases, they are only identifiable by their folder location (a field, I am sad to say, cannot be added to the iTunes grid).

I don't think folder actions will work, as I don't want files moving into the library without my selecting their location first. "Consolidate Library" seems to be a license for iTunes to reorganize everything, and I'm not going to trust it with that task. ITunes is just not a great solution for managing my collection. Unfortunately there are not a lot of alternatives out there. I'll check out Jriver.

Thanks especially to everyone who did not answer with the following: "You should just do it the iTunes way and stop trying to think for yourself." I have found that iTunes people are sometimes very scary zombie-like creatures who cannot conceive of anyone ever wanting another music player. I'm sure it's fantastic for people who never want to think about the file system. "Think different!"
posted by Area Control at 7:45 AM on June 15

> I don't think folder actions will work, as I don't want files moving into the library without my selecting their location first.

I don't really understand what you mean.
If you use the folder action approach I suggested, it works like this:
1) Add the folder action to the root folder of your collection, eg "Music"; you can do this with more than one folder if you have things in different places.
2) When you add new music to such folders, it will be added to the library.
3) If you want to subsequently move files around, iTunes is cool with that as long as it's on the same volume. (I think the person who said otherwise above was just guessing).

I'm sure this workflow can be adapted to work for you!

Depending on your folder structure, you will have to decide which folders need the folder action attaching so they get added. It might be more convenient to have a "staging area"where things get tagged before .

eg. if it's Music>Artist>Year>Album it would be a pain to add an action to every "year" folder in every "Artist" folder, so you might prefer to make a folder in eg "Music > incoming" which has the folder action, then drag your new new stuff in there, allow iTunes to catalog it, then sort it into its rightful place.

I realise you said you wanted to do this stuff in the opposite order; the first three answers in the thread probably achieve that.
posted by nowonmai at 1:13 PM on June 15