Do you keep music on multiple hard drives? Or do you like to organize your music files your own way--say first by genre--and don't use the iTunes option to keep music folders organized? If you're like me, when you get new music you have to manually move album folders around your file system. So, I wrote an AppleScript to help with this, called Sort Organized MP3 ƒ & Add. It is included in my freeware WBC iTunes Scripts Collection, which I've just released -- see the Advanced Only folder in the Grab Bag folder. Download it from this page (scroll down to the WBC iTunes Scripts Collection section); or click here [1.8MB] to download it directly.
The script depends on first sorting new music files to a target folder organized by artist and album, using a tool such as Media Rage. The script then takes that organized folder (or folders) as its source folder. It then searches your iTunes library for matching artists, moving each album to the artist folder that already has the most albums in it. It will gracefully copy albums across volumes and trash the original if necessary.
Once all the albums are moved to the proper location, each album will be added to iTunes, each enclosing folder will be (optionally) opened in the Finder to double-check, and each move will be (optionally) copied as a log to the clipboard. Optionally, it will play a random track from the added music. Target playlists -- static and constructed and dynamic -- can be specified in the script. Compilations are also handled gracefully whenever possible, and it is possible to specify special target folders for compilations.
The script is designed for more advanced users who know a bit of AppleScript, which is why I am posting this as a Mac OS X Hint. To be used optimally, you must edit the script properties to specify default source and target locations, and other options. Everything is explained in the script. Note that there are many other potentially useful scripts for iTunes and iPods that you might otherwise have missed included in this collection as well.
[robg adds: I haven't tested this script, but I know some folks are quite particular about organizing their music folders themselves (I am not such a person), so I thought this was worth sharing...]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050802123239701