- It sounds like you have in your preferences inside iTunes, to allow iTunes to organize your music. When you do this iTunes changes the directory structure and makes folders named " - ".
Uncheck that setting if you want to preserve your custom directory structure.
You can then rerun Jaikoz, and have it save the files the way you want based on your preferences. I think by default it makes \\Album\Song. you could change this to \Artist\Song if you wanted.
- If you are asking for opinions about best way to organize files on your system, here’s my opinion (I’m pretty anal about folder structure but your needs may be different):
On my Mac, I have a drive/volume called Jukebox that holds all my media.
My iTunes preferences point to Jukebox\Music-Main so this folder also has a podcast directory, a movies dir, a ringtones dir. It is named main to keep it separate from a Karaoke directory and my Jaikoz working folders. Music here is “live”.
Music is in Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted] and under [Sorted] I have folders
Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted]\[1-F]
Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted]\[G-L]
Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted]\[M-S]
Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted]\[T-Z]
Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted]\[The]
Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted]\[Various Artists]
which then break down to, for example :
Jukebox\Music-Main\[Sorted]\[1-F]\\\
Why? Well having almost 7000 different artists makes dealing with a flatter directory structure rather unwieldy. Opening up a folder of all Artists sucked. I used to go with 27 folders (one for each letter of alphabet and one for artists whose name began with a number like 311), but that was a bit too much.
Why do I have the extra layer of a folder called [Sorted]? Because if I buy anything from iTunes Media Store or one of their free songs of the week, it makes an Artist directory inside Jukebox\Music-Main\ for it. I just periodically look for out of place folders inside here, jaikoz them to add lyrics and then move to proper place in [Sorted].
Why have a [The] folder? Because sometimes bands like The Beatles are listed under just Beatles or The Beatles and someday I will make a decision what I want to do about such an issue. But until then, musicbrainz and then jaikoz will put some songs under “Beatles” and some under “the Beatles” (unless I make the effort to catch that before the files are saved). Yes, I am aware I can make an effort to make sure the Sort Artist fields for both situations have the same value, but if I am making that effort I could make a determination on whether to standardize on keeping the “The” or not.
Why have a separate directory for [Various Artists]? Well, I plan to change the way I name the filename of my songs in the future and I will begin with the various compilations first. I want my files names to be trackno-title-artist.mp3 or maybe trackno-artist-title.mp3. I haven’t decided.
Wow, so now I look like a crazy madman… Mind you this is just my opinion and like belly buttons, we all have them.