Organized Music Outside iTunes Media Folder

iTunes allows to organise music folders in the Media Folder within iTunes, by using Artists Names and Albums. What if I wanted it to be organised outside the iTunes folder, say in another Music Partition of the disk ? Here is a simple step-by-step instructions to set it up.

I find it easy to keep Music in a separate partition (or external Drive). iTunes natively uses the My Music folder to put the music.  What if I have limited space in My Music Folder ?

1. Copy all music folders (from any hard drive or memory) to iTunes Music Folder (usually My Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music). 
2. Select the folders in Music folder which is to be kept organised. 
3. Drag and drop this selection in iTunes. The files are imported in iTunes Music (left pane).
   
4. Reorganise music. Usually with very old or imported Carnatic or Hindustani or Indian Film Music, the Artists, Album information is rarely complete. Use iTunes to do a multiple selection and edit the entries.
1. Multiple entries can be easily selected using Smart Play list. Create a smart play list for entries selected by Date, and enter today's date (which may be automatically prompted).
2. If it is a few, simply select using control button pressed.
3. Correct Spellings in Artists name, using a consistent syntax.  (Leaving out Titles like Pandit etc and other details in the artist field),
   
4. Enter keywords.  I find it useful to use the "Grouping" field to enter some details, such as "Vocal", "Violin", "Saarangi" etc.
5. Change the Genre (eg: Tamil Film, Hindi Film, Carnatic, Hindustani, Ghazal, Stotram, etc)
6. Grouping and Genre can be used to create "Smart Play list": say Carnatic instrumental can be obtained by a simple AND | OR logic:  Match all of following (Genre = Carnatic) and Any of the following (Grouping = Violin OR Grouping = Veenai OR Grouping = Flute).
5. By the end of the exercise, all the folders will be reorganised by Artist/Album
6. Now go to the Music selection in left pane of iTunes, sort the right pane entries by date, select all of todays entries that were modified.  DELETE them from iTunes. But iTunes will prompt you to keep the files. ACCEPT it.
7. All the entries in iTunes library are gone now, but the files are still intact and organised in the iTunes Media/Music folder.
8. Use Windows to cut and paste these folders to your favorite partition.  This means they will be removed from the iTunes Media folder.
9. Import the new folders from your favorite partition into iTunes.
10. sync your iPod with smart playlists and "Off-You-Go" ... !

Some Notes:

1. When a music is deleted from iTunes library, and if the file resides in another folder than iTunes folder, then iTunes will not delete the file.