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I always used to be baffled by how iTunes organises music. A few months ago, I actually spent several futile hours scouring the web for 3rd party apps and plug‑ins to bring a more Finder‑like organisation method to iTunes, before discovering that iTunes actually does let you create folders, although the ability is pretty much hidden, Bob knows why.

I now sort everything into folders named after the artist, with albums as playlists in sub‑folders named after the year of release. The band folders are nested inside genre categories.

Which sort of works, but I’d like to be able to assign folder icons or at least labels to the folders.

I ‘know’ metadata is supposed to be the way of the future, but I don’t think it makes the slightest bit of sense for sorting music, not if you prefer to listen to complete albums rather than just shuffling between random tracks.

:/

Why not simply press the "browse" (eye) button in the bottom right. iTunes automatically sorts by genre/artist/album.
Music is the one kind of data where metadata makes the most sense probably. Listening to whole albums is no problem at all in iTunes and sorting albums by year is already built into iTunes. You don't need to create folders and stuff.

Interesting. Pressing that button never occurred to me. Seems to work well enough, thanks.