What I would like to do is have all of the folders for particular band that are named in this fashion Artist - Album name (Year) Format go into a single folder under Artist name. I may want to go further and then put all artists starting with the letter A in a folder labeled A and so forth.
I agree with Spike that having a lot of folders probably isn't a problem. Though this thread says that NTFS starts to get unhappy with "several thousand" files or folders in a single folder:
https://serverfault.com/questions/98235/how-many-files-in-a-directory-is-too-many-downloading-data-from-netIn either case, you can definitely use RM&C to do what you want. For the moment, don't think about the existing folder names that your files are using. Instead, think about the folder structure that you want. It sounds to me like you have folders like this:
C:\Music\Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)\
...and what you want instead is:
C:\Music\Pink Floyd\The Dark Side Of The Moon\
To do this in the RM&C tool, you would check the Directory box and then:
Base Path: C:\Music\
Rule: [Artist]\[Album]
You probably want to check the "move all files in directory" box at the top so it gets everything, including extra files like log files, jpegs, etc.
You can make your rules more elaborate to include the Year in the directory name, etc.
Do some experiments with a few files at a time. Use the PREVIEW box in RM&C to see what it's going to do before it does it. This will really help you to not make mistakes.
Feel free to ask more questions.
Good luck.
Brian.