When I download music it goes to my Music folder...

Question

When I download music it goes to my Music folder, than I put it into iTunes,but in my Music folder I have categorys like Alternative, Hip Hop.etc..also tha same in itunes,Now when I put it the song into the category in my music folder iTunes than cant find it,,so I have to go and relink it again and its a pain in tha butt..I hope u guys understand what im saying..:) I Would apreciate any help.

Answer 1

If you mean you first put songs into the top level of your My Music folder, then add them to iTunes by "add folder to library" or by drag and drop, and then you go back later and change the location of the file on your hard drive, such as putting it into a subfolder within My Music called Hip-Hop, then yeah, iTunes will loose track of the song and you'll have to relink it.
The feature that I most want in iTunes is integrated folder management, so that you can do that within iTunes and iTunes would follow where everything went. But they don't have it. They have a feature where iTunes goes through and renames every file and generates its own folder structure (preferences/Advanced/General: check "keep iTunes folder organized", and set the iTunes folder to the top folder where you keep your music. Warning: this will immediately begin the renaming process). I don't like iTunes' folder structure. If iTunes were to be the only music player I would ever have for the rest of my life, it could keep all the songs in a single encrypted database and I wouldn't care. But it's not, and I do care.
Here's what I do: I just move the files. Or I rename the files. I do this to too many songs to manually relink each changed file. Then I choose "add folder to library", and I choose my top level music folder, in your case My Music. ITunes will go through and add all songs that aren't already in its list, and for songs that you moved this will create two duplicate entries for the song, one new and good and the other pointing to an invalid path. Eventually, when iTunes tries to do something with the invalid song, such as play it, it won't find it and will put the exclamation by it, as you've found out. Before you delete the old duplicate bad entry, copy your star rating the the new songs, if you use them, and to keep your playlists intact, click through each one to see if there are songs with exclamations and replace them with the updated entry.
To sort and remove all dead links at once, see this post:
MacMuse, "Removing "!" / dead links in iTunes library", 11:37pm Oct 8, 2004 CDT