Trouble with iTunes organisation

I have lots of different albums that i keep in one folder and then lots of different singles i keep in another.

When it comes to organizing all my music in itunes i am having trouble as they are always mixed up.

On my artist list on my ipod some artists have lots of songs because they are all from an album but other artist just have 1 song as i don't have the rest of there music.

I also find sometimes I have duplicated of songs as i may have downloaded the single then downloaded an album with the same song in it.

When i sort by album, i may select an album where a song is from but there would only be one track in that album as i only have the single and not the whole album.

All these problems I have make it difficult to look through and play my music on my ipod. Im a neat freak and i'm in pain!


What do you suggest I should do? What do you do and what do you find best to solve some of these problems?

For duplicate tracks View > Show duplicates (not that it shows the track as duplicate even if you have one live version and one acoustic or something).

Now if you have just started using iTunes, it will feel very weird. I remember the days when I was so used to folders and artist folders, new song folders, classical folders, and whatnot. iTunes sort of put it all together and threw out my organisation. But after a while I come to realise that the iTunes way is a much better way of organising.

Just make sure you tag your music correctly, neat freak that you are.

After that it's just a matter of making smart playlists, playlists and using search tools like quicksilver or better yet, Coversutra. That way you don't even have to use iTunes to control your music.

Also, as well as the artist tag you can use the Album artist tag to corral singles in to a container artist folder

lets say a load of tracks by different artists are all James Bond themes, I can keep the artist info intact but bring them all together in an Album artist called Bond themes

Or I have a compilation album produced by Mark Ronson, with different artists on each track, I can keep the artist tag as is but get iTunes or organise them in to a folder called Mark Ronson with the Album artist tag