Media Center does not really care about your file structure on the disk, so moving them externally is not going to affect how they are organized in you library.
File organization is primarily handled via the file tags.
You
can create views which will display your albums based on the file structure, but other than for library maintenance it's not something I would really recommend.
When dealing with multiple artists, be sure that whatever view you are using is grouped by [Album Artist (auto)] rather than the [Artist] tag.
A track can contain multiple items in the [Artist] tag, but only a single [Album Artist] value.
The [Album Artist (auto)] field is special and will try to automatically calculate a value for [Album Artist] based on the [Artist] tags in the file.
If there is a primary artist for an album who is listed on all the tracks, and additional contributors listed in [Artist] it should automatically figure out where the album belongs.
For example, if you have an album like this:
- XXXXX
- XXXXX feat. YYYYY
- XXXXX feat. ZZZZZ
- XXXXX
- XXXXX
Media Center would recognize that XXXXX is the [Album Artist] and YYYYY/ZZZZZ are just contributors.
Note: the format you need to use for [Artist] is to separate individual values with semicolons.
So [Artist] for those tracks should be:
- XXXXX
- XXXXX; YYYYY
- XXXXX; ZZZZZ
- XXXXX
- XXXXX
If you have an album where [Artist] is different on
every track, [Album Artist (auto)] should list it under the (Multiple Artists) grouping.
If you don't want to use (Multiple Artists) for an album like that, but have those files under a specific name (e.g. "Ministry of Sound") you can manually enter that in the [Album Artist] field.
Generally, the [Album Artist] field should be empty for your tracks unless you need to override which artist they are listed under.
If your files are tagged individually in the [Album Artist] field, then Media Center will never consider them to be a part of the same album. It seems that some programs incorrectly tag files this way.
To fix this, you can right-click them and select:
Library Tools → Move / Copy Files…This will let you move [Album Artist] tags into the [Artist] field.
I would probably sort out your library tags first before moving the files, but it doesn't really make a difference, as Media Center doesn't really care about your file structure.
To move the files, you can simply use
Tools → Library Tools → Rename, Move, & Copy Files…In the upper left of the dialog box that opens, make sure that you are operating in the
Rename (moves files if directory changes) mode.
Now there are all sorts of things you can do here, as every field supports
Media Center's Expression Language, but if you simply want to move from say
C:\Music\ to
D:\Music\ the simplest way to do this would be to
only select the Find & Replace field, and enter your source/destination.
That way it will completely preserve your file structure as is, rather than making any changes to it.
But once you have your tags sorted out, you can use this tool to completely reorganize your directory structure very quickly.
