WMP Music Folder Structure Issue

Steve Kelly

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As part of my music collection on my Win 7 PC, I have lots of folders (at the top level, under My Music) that each contained a bunch of music by multiple artists.
Windows Media Player has, at some point in time unknown to me, decided to move each of the individual music files and create a new top level folder for the artist, and put the file in there. (I'll give an example in a sec, to make it clear what I mean). So now I have dozens and dozens of unwanted folders with artists that have just one song, where originally these files would just be located in the original folder that I created.

Here's what I mean... an embarrassing example, but hey ho, it's the first example
I come across alphabetically in my My Music folder!:

I had a folder called 'Best of Christmas', sitting directly under My Music. This folder was, as you might guess, a compilation of festive tunes with all different artists, about 40 in this particular one.
So what it's done, is now created a new (extra) folder for each of the artists, put in each of these a sub-folder called 'Best of Christmas', and then the single track of that artist in this folder... with it no longer being in the 'Best of Christmas' folder that I originally created.
So there is/was a song by Abba in this compilation, so at some point, it's created a new extra folder called 'Abba', under My Music, with a sub-folder called 'Best of Christmas', and the Abba Christmas tune sitting in there!

I have quite a number of these 'multiple artist' albums, and WMP (I assume) has performed this wretched act on tons of them, so now I have dozens and dozens of unwanted folders (in Windows Explorer view) with artists containing 1 poxy track, instead of them being neatly in their original single folders that I created.

Does anyone know:
- why this happened?
- what setting it is in WMP that I need to change to stop it ever happening again?
- is there a way of restoring the original folder/file structure as per I created/intended without:
a. doing it manually (will take forever)
b. doing a whole system restore (as I mentioned, I don't know exactly when this happened, it was a while ago though, so a sys restore not an option)

Only now am I trying to housekeep my music files, delete unwanted stuff, etc, and because of this abomination, means it will take a very long time to do.

Some of the files I'm sure would be on my 'to delete' list, upon review, but there are plenty of these now-split-out albums/music that I want to keep, so just going through and deleting the lot is not an option.

Thanks in advance.

PS tried many different google terms to try find details on the issue/solution, but I'll be boogered if I can find the right search term!!
 
Is all the tagging on the music files correct? For my music from compilation CD's I have the following structure: Various Artists->CD Title->Track number with name.
Music from single artist CD's is Artist name->CD title->track number with name.

This is all powered by having the metadata correct in the files. There is an option in WMP to reorder the file structure of the files themselves from the metadata if it changes.
 
Yeah I'm sure it's something to do with the metadata, but I can't figure out quite what.
The metadata is correct, so each track in the compilation album has the artist's name against the track.

And I guess that's the cause of the issue, as WMP has taken that 'album artist' info, and added folders for the artists in my file structure. (when I never wanted it to!).

Where is this option to reorder the file structure?
The only option I can find that looks like it might be related is 'Rearrange music in rip folder, using rip music settings', but:
1. I have this unchecked
2. This doesn't exactly relate to/describe what's happened in my case

Are you talking about a different option?

Cheers
 
Where is this option to reorder the file structure?
The only option I can find that looks like it might be related is 'Rearrange music in rip folder, using rip music settings', but:
1. I have this unchecked
2. This doesn't exactly relate to/describe what's happened in my case

Are you talking about a different option?

Cheers
That's the option. For a compilation album the album artist tag should be 'Various Artists' and the artist name for each track goes in the contributing artists field. That's what I have with my music and I don't get what you see.
 

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