My mp3 files are organized hierarchically, ie, 
Classical\Chopin Piano Concerto No. 3\01 - Name of Track.mp3
How do I preserve that schema into iTunes? Currently when it "Adds
folder" it strips out all information but the filename. I'd like it to
at least organize the tracks by album name. I want it to do this
without having to manually relabel things.

Thanks, Chris

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Request for Question Clarification by leapinglizard-ga on 18 Oct 2005 15:35 PDT

If your mp3s were extracted from CDs, you may be able to retrieve the
full track information from a publicly accessible database called
CDDB. To do this in iTunes, you'll need to use the Advanced > Get CD
Track Names menu option. If you have no such menu option, upgrade to
the latest version of iTunes.

If you do, then try importing some folders into iTunes, and select all
the new tracks. To select a range of files, you can click on the first
item, then hold down the Shift key and click on the last item. Once
the range has been selected, choose the Advanced > Get CD Track Names
menu option and wait for the magic to happen.

If it didn't work, it's either because (a) your files were not
extracted directly from a CD or (b) the CD from which your files were
extracted has not been registered in CDDB. In either case, the
remedies become more complicated. Would you be interested in a
solution that lets you manually edit track information for entire
albums at a time rather than track by track?

leapinglizard

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Clarification of Question by chrissfbay-ga on 26 Oct 2005 07:14 PDT

Hi LeapingLizard,

Sorry for the delay - have been travelling. I installed the latest
itunes as of this morning. The File -> Import only allows me to import
files of type .txt, .xml, or .m3u. I have only .mp3. (I searched for
.m3u with no luck)

I did File -> Add Folder to Library and brought in an album I had
ripped earlier and had been named with CDDB. In itunes it displays
under the name, only the Trackno - Track Name, and the running time,
but no info on album, genre, etc. I selected those tracks for the
album and chose Advanced -> Get CD Track Names. I got the error:

Itunes cannot get CD track names for songs that were not imported
using Itunes. Import the songs again using Itunes.

I guess what may be needed is a way to automatically generate the .m3u
files it needs. Or, better, a way for itunes to preserve the
hierarchical organization I have on my HDD. Other players I've used
seem to do this, such as Creative Zen. A manual edit thing is not
workable - too many albums and not enough time - I'll lose my new ipod
before I do that.

Thanks, Chris

It looks like you may have to take two steps to acomplix your goals
but it shoyld be pretty easy overall.

Your first step will be to get the tags written on the mp3 files. 
There is a program called "1st MP3 Tag Editor" which can be found
here:

http://www.1st-mp3-tag-editor.com/

It looks like you can have a 30-day free trial but then it will be
$24.95 if you want to continue using it.

The beauty of this program is that it can tag the files based upon the
file location.  For example, if you were to have your songs organized
in the following manner:

ROOT\Genre\Album\Song Number - Title.mp3

Then you can have the program tag the file using the following format:

%G\%L\%# - %T

That right there should at least tag the genre, album, track number
and track title onto the mp3 but still you need the artist.  If you
could organize your albums by ROOT\Genre\Artist\Album\Song Number -
Title.mp3 that would solve the artist problem but at least you get the
idea.

The next step would be of course to get your newly tagged files into
iTunes.  I personally don't like the way iTunes organizes music files
so I make sure to turn off the option in iTunes that tells it to
organize the music.  Now lets say you are like me and you have all
your music on a seperate drive (lets say the D:\ drive then all you
would need to do is "Add Folder..." and select the D:\ drive (before
doing so I would first clear out the entire library that has already
been added but do not let iTunes delete the files off your computer). 
iTunes will then begin to locate all the compatable music files on the
drive and add them to the library.

And that is a wrap.  Let me say that I can understand your frustration
with iTunes as it is a great program for some but very limited for
others.  I personally import all my music with one program, encode it
with another and tag it with a third all before adding to iTunes.

Sorry about my spelling but I also remembered one other thing.  I am
not sure but I am pretty sure that iTunes has a default location for
storing music such as My Documents\My Music\iTunes\ and if you were to
store yours on the D:\ it may copy and or move the files to the
default location.  I would only add maybe one genre or album to the
library before doing the whole thing just as a test to see how iTunes
is reacting.  Good luck!

Thanks deezeal-ga for the clear explanation and answer. The program
works perfectly for my needs and I am very happy!!