iTunes music sorting on disk

[adsl3g]

Just another ques?

How can I make iTunes store my music on the HD according to album name and not according to artist name without having to mark the tracks as compilations? Is this possible.

I would prefer the artist name not to be created as a folder - only the album name. (does this make sense)

 

[BobJones]

Don't sweat the small stuff. Let iTunes organize the files on the HDD, you interact using the iTunes GUI. Believe me it just works better that way.

Digging around in the files system trying to organize things that way is just asking for a headache. Just forget about it and use the GUI. You can do pretty much everthing via the GUI.

 

[adsl3g]

I hear you, it works great in iTunes but I want to copy the files to an external to play via my PS3 and the current structure sucks on the PS3 - oh well not the end of the world - will just have to change the way I access the files..!

 

[Lydon]

Can't you share the media with your PS3 instead of copying it over? You'll save space as well as time It works very well on my 360.

 

[adsl3g]

Yes, works fine but my mac is not on all the time and I thought of copying it to an external and hooking it up to the PS3 - but not a problem..
Just thought there was a easy way of getting itunes to not store under artist name (I have a lot of singles and the number of folders with one song disrupts my somewhat functional thinking) - without selecting a compilation.

 

[bwana]

I wonder if you could create a smart folder with aliases and have the ps3 just look at that.

EDIT - never mind - only just saw that you didnt want to have the mac running.

 

[adsl3g]

I wonder if you could create a smart folder with aliases and have the ps3 just look at that.

EDIT - never mind - only just saw that you didnt want to have the mac running.

Yup, works fine when accessing the mac via a media server - you can access the music via artists, album or genre -

 

[Ou grote]

If u want to burn a cd like that. u can use this:
http://www.everythingitunes.com/os/mac/2008-02-03/burn-an-mp3-cd-with-folders/#nav

 

[koffiejunkie]

Just thought there was a easy way of getting itunes to not store under artist name

I think the time of sorting any kind of media by file name is long over - metadata makes more sense.

(I have a lot of singles and the number of folders with one song disrupts my somewhat functional thinking)

How is sorting by album going to alleviate that? It would still be one song per folder. I would have thought something like:

artist1 --- album 1
|- album 2
|- album 3
artist 2 --- album 1
|- single 1
|- album 2

would make more sense on a file/directory structure?

 

[adsl3g]

I think the time of sorting any kind of media by file name is long over - metadata makes more sense.



How is sorting by album going to alleviate that? It would still be one song per folder. I would have thought something like:

artist1 --- album 1
|- album 2
|- album 3
artist 2 --- album 1
|- single 1
|- album 2

would make more sense on a file/directory structure?

@koffie

I understand your point and agree with you - the issue here is not the filing of music on iTunes - i am actually trying to find a quick way of getting all my music onto an external that I can just plug into the PS3 and access them with one click instead of having to display all folders and then navigating to the relevant folders - the PS3's somewhat crazy filing system does not like folders within folders - so you looking at

album name
|- song 1

album 2
|..song1
song 2

thus cutting out the extra folder of artist.

I can do it manually but its going to take some time but once its done its done - adding a new album will then be a piece of cake - its just getting the 12gb of music sorted the way I want thats going to cost a few hours.

 

[HavocXphere]

Google something called "The Godfather". I think its the only tool that really does HDD organizing on any scale. JUST MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR COLLECTION BEFOREHAND.

 

[koffiejunkie]

the PS3's somewhat crazy filing system does not like folders within folders

Right. Sorry, I misunderstood the bit about the PS3 not liking that. So this is why I absolutely love the terminal. Check this out:

$ cp -Rv Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Music/*/* /Volumes/<EXTERNAL>

Replace <EXTERNAL> with whatever the volume name is of your external drive. When you get to the /Volumes/ part just hit TAB, and it will show you the directories under /Volumes. Then type the first few letters of the one you want and hit TAB again - this should complete the name. Take care, it's case sensitive.

This of course, will only copy the albums so you'll end up with the album names, and no artist names. But if the PS3 can read the metadata, that might be enough.