Is there an alternative to iTunes for larger song collections?

Matt,
The scheme in the link only works if you let iTunes manage your library. When I do that I am confronted with something like 2000 folders at the same level inside the Music Folder, and in the most perplexing disorder. Popular music is bad enough: with an artist like Count Basie iTunes will create a new folder with each permutation (e.g. Count Basie, Count Basie and His Orchestra, Count Basie and his orchestra, Count Basie and Milt Jackson, etc.) It is even worse with Classical music, as you can find CDs files by composer, artist, and even by album names. Sometimes when there are two CDs in one box, iTunes may created a folder for each. Any file management approach that puts hundreds or thousands of files at the same level is problematic.

iTunes should have the ability to keep track of all files in a folder, and it should be possible to force the app to relocate the files when they have been disconnected. That is a reasonable expectation for a database manager.

Matt,
Add to Library relates only to new additions.

I described the problem with allowing iTunes to manage the folder (as it gets larger). It wouldn't be so bad with Rock, for the most part. If you had a group such as "Aerosmith" then iTunes should put all that group's albums in the same folder. That is, unless the CDDB name is misspelled. But when you get to more the more elaborate musical collaborations of Jazz and Classical, chaos reigns. I can't begin to describe the horror of the disorder iTunes creates when you let it manage. Having a couple of thousand folders created at the same level for 30,000 songs shows the scale of the problem: some by artist, some by composer, some by album title, etc.

When you have a diverse and large collection managed by iTunes, it is like having a dyslexic monkey organize a record store.

I wouldn't hesitate to pay $100 for a jukebox application that managed a large collection well. I know it has been suggested in the past that Apple produce a "pro" iTunes, but I doubt that there is a large enough perceived consumer base for Apple to become interested.

Matt,
I guess it isn't obvious that well organized is better, so I'll try to answer your question in another way. Suppose a Beethoven playlist is mistakenly deleted, life having moments of imperfection (and me having a small child who likes keyboards). If the song files are organized in some cases by composer, some by artist, and some by album, then how long will it take me to recreate that playlist, if I ever can? With my present collection size I will have to wade through about 2000 Music Folder root files, then I would have to look within SUSPECTED folders, say "Leonard Bernstein," to see if there was some Beethoven inside. Then many Classical albums contain multiple composers, which would leave me virtually unable to locate the relevant portions except by adding the album to the Library so I can see the file details. The answer to your question seems as self-evident to me as why dictionaries are organized alphabetically: it isn't possible to find things very easily otherwise. And I find myself looking at and fine-tuning song file organization (on the hard drive) frequently. I couldn't begin to calculate the hours I've spent changing the ID data so that it is more accurate and better organized.

I have 943 songs in my Count Basie playlist. Why would I not want to find all those Basie songs contained in subfolders withing the root folder "Count Basie."? I remember quite clearly the huge advance that came with the Mac's heirarchical filing ability in 1984. Now that was actually meaningless and the better way is just to let iTunes jam huge numbers of disparate folders inside of one large folder? Why restrict it to music. Why not have every application dictate the name and location of each file it creates, maybe putting every file on the Mac in one folder called Jumbo?

Should computers adjust to the way people work, or should people be forced to conform to the demands of computers?

It's fine with me if people have iTunes organize their songs, but for iTunes to be able to keep track of the disc location of added tracks is not splitting the atom. Databases, including, for instance, Extensis Portfolio, have been able to do this for many years.

Mike,
I have a problem with the idea that ID info must be entered erroneously for iTunes to maintain a coherent collection. Doesn't this illustrate the flaw in iTunes? But if that was done, then what about a Classical album containing "songs" by two artists (not performing on the same tracks) and 3 composers? This isn't unusual.

Let me say, once again, that I think iTunes is an A+ jukebox, and I enjoy using it. My complaint is that it should be able to keep track of any file that has been added to it. Actually, it presently does that almost perfectly, so long as the song files are small. In my present predicament iTunes is able to locate every file 192k or lower and no longer than 8 minutes (at 192k). But it has lost track of every one of thousands of Apple Lossless song files that are obviously larger files. Something is amiss.

I'm sorry that you chose to ignore my descriptions of practical problems that arise when iTunes does the file managing. Ignoring them doesn't make them disappear. There is the additional matter of having to scroll through 2000 and more folders when a new folder is moved to the hard drive whose contents must be added to iTunes. I can't think of any other time in the past 22 years when I've had to scroll through a folder list that large. That was something that HFS was designed to obviate.

That is exactly what I do, but when you move them to another external hard drive, the links to many song files are lost. That's why I not have to reimport thousands of song files: I've outgrown 400 GB drive and have moved to 1TB.