Cleaning Up My ITunes Library

I am up to about 17,000 songs in my library.... and have come to the realization that the underlying directory structure is a real mess (IE There are 15 different directories for my Beatles tracks). I realize how this happened.... (inattention to detail on my part).

I believe I need one directory for each artist with subdirectories within for each album. I think I will need to rearrange things manually. This being the case, I know that once I clean up the directory structure my library will be messed up.

So I am thinking that I should:

1) Fix my directories and subdirectories
2) Follow the instructions in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4882558?start=0&tstart=0 in order to recreate my library.

Questions:

1) Is this a good process to follow?
2) If not how should I approach this?
3) Am I on drugs? ;-)

Why not leave it alone and just let iTunes handle it for you? You can sort by Artist, so iTunes will gather up all those Beatles tracks for you when you want. Leave the file structure to iTunes, just enjoy the music.

@MacInWin: I am just too anal I guess. What happens if I start messing with the source subdirectories? Will iTunes catch the changes?

"Catch?" In one sense, yes, iTunes will see that the tracks are not where it put them and note them as missing and unable to be played. It will NOT go looking for them in any new place. You'll have to do that by adding the tracks back in and then deleting the old tracks. For 17,000 tracks, that's a ton of work with almost zero benefit. Which is why I suggested just leaving it alone. iTunes knows where they are now. Relax and enjoy the music. The fact that you "feel" the folder is disorganized doesn't mean it's inefficient. OSX and iTunes will keep track of everything for you, and give you the tools to view the tracks in just about any order you want.

MacInWin said:

"Catch?" In one sense, yes, iTunes will see that the tracks are not where it put them and note them as missing and unable to be played. It will NOT go looking for them in any new place. You'll have to do that by adding the tracks back in and then deleting the old tracks. For 17,000 tracks, that's a ton of work with almost zero benefit. Which is why I suggested just leaving it alone. iTunes knows where they are now. Relax and enjoy the music. The fact that you "feel" the folder is disorganized doesn't mean it's inefficient. OSX and iTunes will keep track of everything for you, and give you the tools to view the tracks in just about any order you want.

Click to expand...

I get it. Thanks for the help & suggestions!