why has itunes moved my music files out of the Music folder?

Hi,

Have a look at this http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847

Jim

I have a similar question. I have brought my iTunes forward for years and even though I have organized the iTunes several times over the years, it is still not anything like the Apple Support article HT3847 says it should be.

As you can see, I have a mis-mash of of the two organization styles. With all types of media files on both sides of iTunes Music. I have not had any problems with the library for years.

Would it cause any problems to manually rename the iTunes Music folder to iTunes Media, consolidate the contents of the folders, and then move the various media folders?

iTunes on a Mac may be more forgiving if you move things around manually, but it isn't really recommended.

Here are typical layouts for the iTunes folders:

If you have upgraded from version 8 (or earlier) to iTunes 9 (or later) at some point, then your media folder (everything inside the red outline) may still be called iTunes Music instead of iTunes Media. The extra Music folder inside the media folder is used if you had an older library and have allowed iTunes to Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization (iTunes 9) or used File > Library > Organize Library > Reorganize files in the folder "<Media Folder>" (iTunes 10/11). Depending on your choices for Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library plus a little bug in which one build changed the name of the file storing the choice of layout it is quite easy for some of your files to be organized according to one layout and some the other. (Recent installs of iTunes on a Mac now give the library file the .itl extension)

Assuming you're happy letting iTunes organize your files the following steps should tidy things up (should it be necessary):

1. Select File > Library > Organize Library... > Tick Reorganize files in the folder "<Media Folder>" and click OK. Skip if this option is grayed out (already upgraded) or you prefer the older layout.

2. Select File > Library > Organize Library... > Tick Consolidate files and click OK. This will bring any files currently organized outside the designated media folder into it. N.B. This will create duplicate copies of any file that needs to be consolidated, and you will need to manually clean up afterwards.

3. Select iTunes > Preferences > Advanced tab, uncheck Keep iTunes Media folder organized and click OK.

4. Select iTunes > Preferences > Advanced tab, check Keep iTunes Media folder organized and click OK. This triggers iTunes into reorganizing everything according to your preferences.

5. (Optional, if applicable) Close iTunes, rename the media folder iTunes Music as iTunes Media then restart iTunes. Check under iTunes > Preferences > Advanced tab that the location has automatically updated. If you can't access the media for any reason just undo the folder rename.

PS If you really prefer the older layout, but it is already in the new one then, edit the hidden file .iTunes Preferences.plist in your media folder and change the integer from 1 to 0 before doing step 3.

You should backup your library before attempting any major reorganization.

If iTunes is still creating files or folders in the wrong locations there is a possibility of permissions problems. Offhand I'm not sure of the correct OS X terms but on Windows both the system and user accounts should have full access permissions to all files & folders within the iTunes folder in order for it to work properly.

tt2

Josue, I thought you were done with the thread. I am having similar issues with music, audiobooks, artists and authors being scattered all over the place in not apparent order other than alphabetically on both sides of the iTunes Music folder. I have organized them a couple of time with iTunes and it does not seem to work and even thought I set it not to copy files into iTunes it appears to still do that.

I was posing the question to Jimzgoldfinch, asking for another opinion.

I keep my iTunes library remotely on a Drobo that is hardwired to my Mac. It only seems to be an issue if the Drobo is asleep when iTunes tries to access it, and the results is that iTunes created a second library on my Mac HD and sometimes changes where iTunes looks for it in iTunes prefs. This behavior seems to have changed in iTunes 11.1, as before iTunes will open now, or any other activity in iTunes, the Drobo wakes up. It is situated a little behind my right ear so it is easy to hear it.

TT2 & Jimzgoldfinch,

I have used iTunes to Organized, Reorganized, & Keep iTunes Media folder organized several times, will no noticable change only lost time waiting for it to complete.

I'm going to attempt to manually reorganize it following the directions in TT2's post. I have already changed the folder name to iTunes Media, and iTunes Prefs correctly point to it.

One thing that I have done differently and will maintain is to keep my nearly 800 audiobooks in a separate folder called Books Audio, below Music, but at the same level as the iTunes folder. I don't like the way iTunes.app files them.

I am off to make a 115 GB back up of the iTunes folder.

Have you also consolidated?

Can you give two specific examples where one track is in the correct location, and one is in the wrong one? For the wrong one is this definately the copy of the track that iTunes is connected to if you show in Finder?

Have you checked/corrected permissions on the iTunes folder and all subfolders?

tt2

TT2,

I do not understand what you mean by consolidated? Please explain. Do you mean me manually moving then like your diagram, which is my plan?

With the problems I have been having with iTunes 11.1.1 I repaired permissions twice and have found tons of repairs to the permissions in iTunes, like many others who are having issues with iTunes. This was for the Mac HD using either a recovery thumbdrive or the recovery partition.

I have not looked for duplicates in different locations, so I have not looked for permissions errors. During the few quick looks I have made, in the past, for duplicates, I have not seen any duplicates. Nor has iTunes interface show any dups.

What I have is artists, authors on both sides of iTunes Media. I folder for the following on both sides: John Lee Hooker, Lian Hearn, Mitch Albom, Muddy Waters, Robert Ludlum, Stevie Ray Vaughan (w & w/o Double Trouble).

I also have some folders for books before iTunes Media. That might have to do with how I brought some books into iTunes.

Then I have some of the category folders like Books & Movies on both sides.

OK, I found the reason for my confusion. When I was organizing my library, I did not throughly read the choices. I had not notice one was for the iTunes Music file and the other was for the iTunes Media file.

I really don't want to Cosolidate my files, because I don't want to copy all of the media files into the iTunes Media folder. I want my audiobooks separate from the iTunes Media file.

I manually moved my media files and folders, using the diagram TT2 provided. I then manually checked for duplicates and removed about 14 GB worth.

It seems the Organize Liabrary dialog box has changed to offer two different options, both to the iTunes Media folder, but the second is grayed out. It will not offer to reorganize, but not copy files into iTunes.

Let's see how this works for me.

MacinNW_Brent wrote:

... It seems the Organize Liabrary dialog box has changed to offer two different options, both to the iTunes Media folder, but the second is grayed out. It will not offer to reorganize, but not copy files into iTunes.

The consolidate option copies any file location outside of the designated iTunes Media folder into it, and reconnects iTunes to the new copy. Tidying up the original copy outside the media folder is left as an exercise for the user.

The rearrange option tells iTunes that it should use the new layout, however the option is only presented if iTunes thinks it is currently supposed to be using the old one.

The keep organized option in preferences controls what iTunes does with media located inside the iTunes Media folder when tags are updated. New media consolidated in from outside, ripped or downloaded from the store will always be arranged the "iTunes way", but if you keep the option turned off you can arrange anything else the way you like.

tt2

Thank you, turningtest2.

I will have to ponder that a bit.

The reason audiobooks and ebooks, inside the Music folder, even with the iTunes folder, is in the past iTunes made a mess of how it stored them. I have few ebooks, but about 800 audiobooks.

Looking at the Author folders that I just manually merged, there were lots of folders called Unknown inside them. The extra level of Unknown folders was a pain to deal with. And it does not look like it had improved much.

I just sync'd an audiobook and iTunes created a folder for the Author, no book title folder, and then dumped all the individual parts of the book into the Author folder, without folders for the various parts of the book. That is 230 plus audio files in a horrible mess.

Most audio books that are imported into iTunes, especially from disc, have poorly named or purposely mangled the names, so that iTunes will not play them in propper order. And often if you import the parts of the book, iTunes will not place those in proper order either.

As to the ebooks, iTunes did not and does not keep all of the files it presents in iBooks.app inside the iTunes Media/Books folder. I keep a couple of PDFs sync'd to my iPhone and only one shows in that folder. It does not show the PDFs of the iPhone manual, "The Macintosh Way" or the US Constitution that I keep on my iPhone.

Is there a way to prevent iTunes from copying the audiobooks into the Audiobook folder, since it mangles them so badly? I just removed over 14 GB of duplicates from the iTunes folder just last night and it is back at it, duplicating files again. It took 4 hours to make a back up of the iTunes folder yesterday, and several hours merging and deleting dups last night.

BTW, you have chosen an interesting username.

Brent

You're welcome. 🙂

I'm not entirely sure why either. I just recall there has been at least one occasion when an update has triggered iTunes into using the newer layout for all new & edited media thereafter, without making it rearrange anything in the older layout. Now it is all in the new layout it should stay that way.

tt2