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.

Configuring the Location of the Music Folder

In most cases, the default location of your iTunes Music folder will be fine, and you don’t have to do anything about it. However, there are some cases in which you will want to change the location of this folder. For example, suppose you have several hard drives in your computer and the one on which the folder is currently stored doesn’t have a lot of room. Even though individual song files are relatively small, you are likely to end up with thousands or tens of thousands of them in your Library.
That can add up to a lot of disk space. You might want to change the location of your iTunes Music folder so that it is on a drive with more room.
To change the location of this folder, do the following:

1. Open the Advanced pane of the iTunes Preferences dialog box.
2. Click the Change button. On a Windows PC, you will see the Browse For Folder dialog box (see Figure). On a Mac, you will see the Change Music Folder Location dialog box
3. Use the dialog box to move to and select the folder in which you want your iTunes Music folder to be located.
4. Click OK (Windows) or Open (Mac). You’ll return to the Advanced pane, and the folder you selected will be shown in the iTunes Music Folder Location area.
5. Click OK to close the iTunes Preferences dialog box.

Working with the iTunes Music Folder

As you import music into the Library, files are created for each song you add (whether it’s from a CD, downloaded from the iTunes Music Store, or imported from an existing file). When you first started the application, iTunes created a folder in which it stores all the music it manages for you.
The default location of this folder depends on the kind of computer you are using. On
Windows computers, the folder will be stored in a folder called iTunes Music, located within your My Music folder. On Macs, this folder is also called iTunes Music, but it is located in the Music folder within your Home folder.
To see the current location of the iTunes folder on your computer, open the iTunes Preferences dialog box and then open the Advanced pane (see Figure). At the top of this dialog box, you will see the iTunes Music Folder Location box. Within this box, you will see the path to your iTunes Music folder.
Just for fun, go ahead and open your iTunes Music folder so you can see it for yourself. Use the path you see on the Advanced pane to find it. If you haven’t added any music to your Library yet, it might be pretty dull. To see what a full folder looks like, check out Figure.
As you can see, within the iTunes Music folder is a folder for each artist. Within the artists’ folders, each album from which you have added music is shown. Within each of those folders, the tracks you have added are individual files.

Gathering Your Music from All the Right Places

If you are going to add music to your Library, you have to get it from somewhere, right? The following are the three main sources of tunes for your Library:

• Audio CDs—Who wants to bother with audio CDs? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could store all of the content of your CD collection in one place so you can listen to any music you want to at any time just by browsing or doing a quick search? Obviously, that is a loaded question because you already know you can use iTunes to do just that. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to copy the music from audio CDs into your Library so that you never have to use the original CDs again.
  
• MP3 and other audio files—You can add audio files in just about any format to your Library. For example, there are lots of free and legal MP3 files on the Web that you can add to your own Library. In this chapter, you will learn how to add music to your Library in this way too.
  
• iTunes Music Store—With the iTunes Music Store, you can browse and search among hundreds of thousands of songs.

When you find music you like, you can purchase an entire CD’s worth of songs or you can buy individual songs (can you say one-hit wonders!). When you buy a song, it is downloaded and added to your iTunes Library. Instead of ordering a CD or, even worse, buying one in a real store, your music is available to you instantly, and you don’t even have to import it. Because the iTunes Music Store is so cool,