Looking for an app to manage an archived music library

Question

My iTunes library is huge, so I am dragging music I no longer listen to, but I'd like to keep out of this into an archive folder.

The problem with this, is that the folder structure isn't preserved, and since many songs have the same name, I may lose some things if they are copied over. It also makes it hard to find artists or albums I want to retrieve.

I'm looking for something like iTunes which will be able to watch a folder (or even manually import) and then create a folder structure to organise the music based on artist/album/track or something similar.

I've tried 8 iTunes alternatives so far, and they either rely on iTunes existing library, or they simply create a structure within their own app and leave the folder unorganised.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Answer 1

iTunes will actually let you use multiple libraries if you want, and then can switch between them on launch. So if disk space (and just keeping the files where they were wasn't an issue), you could use a second library.

If you launch iTunes while holding down the Option key on your keyboard, you will get this dialog.

You could choose 'Create Library' here, and make a second library.

Unfortunately, the storage location of your music is a iTunes general setting versus per library. But, there is the options in Preferences -> Advanced to not copy files into the iTunes Media folder. Changing this though would affect your main library too though.

Answer 2

How about creating a new Mac user, and maintaining a separate iTunes library in that account?

You get a full and separate iTunes library which will be protected by system user permissions. It is easy to stage the music for copying via your public folder too. This would bring with it easy backups in the form of Time Machine as you would do for your own account. Restoring from a backup would be as simple as adding that user at the Migration Assistant stage.