Setting Other Organization Preferences

The location of the folder in which your music will be stored is likely the most important part of the organization preferences. However, you’ll need to understand a couple more preferences.
These are also located on the Advanced pane of the iTunes Preferences dialog box:

• Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized—This preference causes iTunes to organize your music as described earlier—that is, by artist, album, and song. Because this is a logical way to organize your music files, I recommend that you leave this option active by making sure this check box is checked.
• Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder when Adding to Library—This preference causes iTunes to make a copy of audio files that already exist on your computer (such as MP3 files you have downloaded from the Internet), and it places those copies in your iTunes Music folder, just like files you create by importing them from a CD.

If this preference is inactive, iTunes uses a pointer to song files you are adding instead of making a copy of the files; it doesn’t actually place the files in your iTunes Music folder. I recommend that you make this preference active by checking its check box. This way, all your music files will be in the same place, no matter where they came from originally. If you don’t have iTunes make copies when you add songs to your Library and then you delete or move the song files you added, iTunes will lose track of the song and you will experience the “missing song file” problem.