iTunes advice

[Paul Mather]

On Jul 8, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Albert Bouchard <altbouch at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> Forgive me if this answer has already been given but iTunes lets you specify where you want your files to be stored. In the preferences menu under advanced you can specify where you want your files to be kept. It can be anywhere you want.

I believe that setting only allows you to change where the root directory of your files live.  Keith's complaint is (as I understand it) that the arrangement of the lower-level subdirectories isn't to his liking, and so changing the "iTunes Media folder location" wouldn't help with that.

You might be able to get completely manual control (like Keith seems to want) if you changed that setting AND unchecked both "Keep iTunes Media folder organised" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library."  Unchecking the latter would mean (I believe) that iTunes would retain a pointer to the original location, which could be whatever OCD arrangement you fancied. :-)  (Unchecking the former would presumably prevent iTunes from moving things around when you subsequently edited the metadata.)

Of course, unchecking these means iTunes would easily lose track of content if you happened to move the songs after you'd added them to the iTunes Library, and so probably isn't entirely wise to do so.  Like Carl says, iTunes doesn't really expect you to worry where specifically your music lives, and you're supposed to impose order on it via playlists and searching/browsing restrictions, not by moving the files about.  Having read the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, I understand the Jobsian philosophy is "Steve knows best, not the end-user, and we'll do things Steve's way thank you very much."  That approach works out fine, except when it doesn't. ;-)

Cheers,

Paul.

> 
> Hope this helps,
> Al
> 
> On Jul 8, 2013, at 9:03 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
> 
>> On 07 Jul 2013, at 13:35 , Keith Henderson <khenders64 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>>> 
>>> So my question...what the hell *really* controls the subdirectory structure and filename editing?  And why can't I keep my sh*t where I want/put it?
>> 
>> I think the short answer is that iTunes controls this, and your desire to control the location and form its directories is fundamentally at odds with (what was) Steve Jobs's desire to make everything increasingly seamless and invisible. (Witness, for example, iOS ....)
>> 
>> The Apple philosophy is (or at least seems to have been up to now) that you don't need to know where things "really" are (not that they are "really" there in the "file system" as such, but it's a familiar abstraction to long-time computer users). So while I can appreciate the desire of the individual to exercise detailed control over the traditional UNIX-style directories etc. that iTunes uses to place its UNIX-style data files, etc., iTunes was not designed with the interests of such a user in mind, and you might as well give up on it.  
>> 
>> For practical purposes, I think you have 2 choices regarding iTunes: either use it as-is, or not ;) and find some other media-organizer/player that annoys you less (though to get one that does _exactly_ what you want, you would probably have to write it yourself!).
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Carl
>> 
>> --
>> Carl Edlund Anderson
>> http://www.carlaz.com/
>