Automatically sort music files into folders by album/artist names

I suggest using Mp3tag; it has a rich feature set and allows this quite simply. To do this with Mp3tag, simply:

1. Open it.
2. Select all the files you want to rename (Ctrl+D to change to a certain directory).
3. Select them all in the list (Ctrl+A).
4. Go to the Convert menu at the top and select the first option, Tag - Filename.
5. For the format string, use my (in)famous one: %artist%\%album%\%title%
6. Click OK and watch the magic happen! It's truly a great program.

I hope this guide helped you and anyone else who is puzzled when it comes to organizing their music themselves without the aid of mainstream software like iTunes. Sometimes, I've found, you have to take things into your own hands!

Additional Info

Sometimes Mp3tag can become confused when working across multiple drives. To avoid this, include a path before the aforementioned format string (e.g., D:\Users\Me\Desktop\%artist%\%album%\%title%).

You can use Picard. It can be configured to move files into a hierarchy based on their metadata. It can also use the MusicBrainz database to correct your metadata...if you want it to.

Of course, you could also do this with a single command on a unix system. I doubt that's what you want though.

I personally use MediaMonkey It allows you to specify a pattern based on the metadata you have, and use it for moving the files to the corresponding directories (creating each directory if needed). It can also use Amazon to find any missing metadata

Give iTunes a try.

iTunes sorts its media library in

artist
 album
   track 1
     .
     .
   track n