To let iTunes organize, or not to organize... and problems with folders...

Question

Okay, I have a question that I can't seem to get a good answer to.
I am a manager of a couple of local bands that are always sending me MP3's. Most of the time, its jus part of a song, with no ID tags. I have a folder on my desktop that I save all the songs to, where I customize the filename of each song so I know when it was sent to me, what the song is called (today), and what band sent it.
Right now I have iTunes set up to organize my music.
Here's my problem. I want to be able to see the music in iTunes. So I tried dragging the folder over... okay, except now the music is showing up with blank artist and song info. BAD. And then I figured out that iTunes doesn't 'monitor' this folder, as I saved new music, and it didn't turn up in iTunes. So I dragged the folder over again, now things are showing up TWICE - thank you very much for making my life difficult. And since they aren't showing up all in one place, I can't go in an delete them all and start again.
What I REALLY want, and I'm not sure if this is possible or not, is to have a FOLDER in the iTunes library called mybands, and have all the songs there. Now, songs are constantly added (sent via email, saved to this folder). So I want iTunes to monitor this folder and show the recent additions. But I also want iTunes to delete songs from this folder when I delete in the Library, instead of doing that stupid 'show file' thing.
I'd like to be able to make all the changes to the ID3 tags there too.
Can I do this? If so, does the folder have to be in the iTunes library folder to make this happen? I'd LIKE to continue to use the iTunes organize my music feature... I've never turned it off so I don't know what will work and what wont.
Thanks.
iTunes 6.042   Windows XP Pro  

Answer 1

If you turn off the auto-organize feature, then you can allow tracks to reside in whatever folder you want. Trouble is, iTunes doesn't do ANYTHING to display tracks by folder - only tags are used.
Overall this is a sensible approach - in my 15,500 song library I certainly don't care what the folder/file names are, that would be a horrible organizational scheme when there are so many useful parameters to use (genre, year, compilations, comments etc.)
I would recommend that you install a second media player that is "folder centric" like Winamp for use with the files sent to you by bands. You can setup a "watch folder" and listen to tracks in Winamp without disturbing iTunes in the least.
An alternative that requires a bit of work is to manually tag MP3s in the folder BEFORE dragging them into iTunes. A utility like ID3-TagIT can be used to add some special tags en masse to allow you to identify songs in the "mybands" folder, etc.