When is Apple going to get it together with iTunes?

Question

I recently purchased an iPhone and therefore had to install iTunes. Realizing that the only effective way to get my music from my library to my phone is through iTunes, I decided to check it out. I have over 3000 house music CDs that I have been encoding over the last year. These are CD collections that have multiple volumes. Each volume has multiple CD's. Each CD has multiple artists.I have struggled forever to find a tagging application that was as sufficently complex as my music collection.
I made the terrible mistake of allow iTunes to manage my music library (well over 1.5 terra bytes of audio) and since it was going to take forever to catalog all of the tracks, I let it run over the weekend while I was out.
Now I have so many folders in my Library folder that I can't open it in Explorer. Most of the files are inaccessible by conventional means even though I am running 8gB of RAM. Within each folder there are more folders. Because these collections have multiple artists, I have hundreds of folders that contain a sub-folder named for the album and another subfolder named for the volume....you get the point.
So, I was able to grab a couple of folders and I frantically started reordering my files so that my favorites are back together.
Sometimes I want the files to be setup like:
Hed Kandi Collection
---Deeper
-----Deeper, V01CD01
--------01 So Alive (orig mix)- Rurals.mp3
Seldom do I want the files to be setup like iTunes does it:
Rurals
---(orig mix)
------01 So Alive
---------V01CD01
------------Deeper
--------------01 So Alive (orig mix)- Rurals.mp3
Is there anyway to undo the damage that iTunes has already done to my file structures? Is there any way to customize the way iTunes handles music cataloging? Is there any way to get iTunes to quit being so darned grabby with all my music info?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Best wishes,
jase

Answer 1

iTunes is a music manager. You don't need to manage thru windows Explorer.
iTunes puts songs into Artist/Album/Song. That's it. Can't change it.
Is there anyway to undo the damage that iTunes has already done to my file structures?
No
Is there any way to customize the way iTunes handles music cataloging?
No. But you really mean you want to organize how it stores the files in the directory structure.
iTunes is a catalog itself. The directory structure is pretty much irrelevant to how you see the music ion iTunes.
Is there any way to get iTunes to quit being so darned grabby with all my music info?
You can leave the music as you organize it yourself.
In iTunes prefs -> Advanced, uncheck *Copy files to iTunes music folder* and uncheck *Keep iTunes music folder organized*.