ITunes: Bulk of music is in media folder, not in Library.itl file

Question

Hello,
Windows 8.1
iTunes 12,1,1,4
The bulk of my music is in my iTunes Media and cannot be accessed by the iTunes Library.itl file.  (The Library.itl has approximately  900 songs and I have over 7,000 in the media folder.)  I can open the individual files under the Media Folder and actually click and move those files onto the iTunes "My Music" section and they become a permanent part of the Library.itl file and stay there with no more issues.  The songs are no longer in the Media folder after moving them to the Library.itl file.  Is there an easier and quicker way to move the files from one to the other?  I have tried consolidating and organizing.  I have moved the Library.itl file to the desktop, deleted the one within iTunes, and attempted to have it import the playlist, and that didn't work. 
I would appreciate any input.  Many thanks in advance.
Wordy

Answer 1

If you apply either method to the folder Broken Social Scene this will add the album(s) to your library.  The location of your media folder may indicate that your library is misconfigured, or that some other application (typically Windows Media Player) is conflicting with iTunes and moving files and folders to locations that iTunes then can't find.  See turingtest2's user tip on Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely for guidance on this issue.  At this point I'd also take a backup of your current iTunes folder and all its contents so that if necessary you can revert to the current state in case anything doesn't work as intended.  I'd also suggest looking at another of tt2's documents on Repair security permissions for iTunes for Windows - sometimes you end up with a structure as you describe if iTunes can't access its default locations due to issues with Windows permissions.
Unless you have specific needs to do something different, I'd recommend configuring iTunes as follows, under Edit > Preferences > Advanced:
This is the location of your iTunes Media folder.  For best results this should be contained in the same folder that holds your iTunes database (the iTunes Library.itl file).  The example above is from my library, which is located on external drive, so the database file is in K:\iTunes and the media folder is as shown in the screenshot.  In the default case:
the iTunes Library.itl file is in C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes
the media folder is C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media
When this option is checked iTunes will place everything in folders and may rename files based on the metadata held within the database and/or embedded within the media files - for music, this will be folders of the form iTunes Media\Music\artist_name\album_title with files named according to the values of disc number (if set), track number and song name.  The one exception to this is for albums that are grouped by having the "Part of a Compilation Flag" set - these will be found in iTunes Media\Music\Compilations\album_title.
This option works in conjunction with the different methods by which media can be added to the iTunes library, as shown in the table below:
Having both the Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder ... options checked results in a completely self-contained library structure.
Just to reiterate what was in my original response, using your example, either:
in iTunes, make sure that the menu bar is visible (press Ctrl-B if it is not), then select File > Add Folder to Library... navigate to your iTunes Media folder and select the Broken Social Scene folder (just select it, don't open it to see the contents), and click Select Folder, or
in Windows Explorer, select the Broken Scene Folder and copy (or drag and drop) it to your iTunes Media\Automatically Add to iTunes folder; assuming iTunes is running, the albums/songs will immediately be added to your library, the media files moved into the iTunes Media\Music hierarchy, and the Automatically Add to iTunes folder left empty (if iTunes isn't running when you do this, the process will start automatically when you next start it)
In either case you'll find that:
the Broken Social Scene album(s) will now be in your iTunes library, i.e., you can see / play / sync to iDevices from the iTunes UI
the media files for the album(s) will have been placed in iTunes Media\Music\Broken Social Scene\album_title
Continue this process until everything's correctly added to your library - you can add multiple folders using both methods I've described.  Once everything's done, you can delete any folders/files that are still sitting outside the iTunes Media\Music folder hierarchy.
Then make (and continue to maintain) a backup of your library so that you have a duplicate in case of any disasters