Renaming Music Files - working with ITunes Data Files

RE: ITunes for Windows ver.7.6.0.29

On the Preferences/Advanced Tab there are two checkboxes:
1. "Keep ITunes Music Folder organized"
2. "Copy files to ITunes Music Folder when adding to Library."

I'm not sure how these checkboxes play into the picture here, (or
whether I need to have both checked or not)

I have lots of classical tracks that sometimes have extra information
and punctuation in the song title. When I am in ITunes I would like
to change the filename of some song files, maybe abbreviate a little
where I can to make reading some tracks a little simpler.

When I do this in ITunes, how are the preferences to be set so that
when I change the filename in ITunes, it will actually change the
filename of the actual file **out on the hard drive too* ?

I came over to ITunes after being a long time MusicMatch user. I had
a lifetime license with them and that became no good after Yahoo Music
snatched them up, so I converted to ITunes for Windows.
In my Musicmatch days, I could very easily re-structure my track
naming convention of my entire library to be:
Track#onDisc-SongTitle-Artist-Album.mp3 (each item separated by a
dash)
In Musicmatch the filename out on the hard drive was changed to this
format via the MusicMatch interface.
---> Is there a way to do this same type of thing in ITunes?

- - - - -
Finally, I also have a lot of unique information about each track I
want to add to ITunes.
When I add stuff specific to a track in like Comments, Year, Release
Date, Description, Composer, Category, Album Rating, etc...

Where does ITunes store this information?

I need to know so that I can back up this data. I have over 10,000
tracks in my Itunes library. Adding unique track data will be a multi-
year venture. I do not want to lose this data along the way at all
and want to be able to re-load and pick up where I left off in the
event I should ever have to once again re-load WinXP. Having a good
backup plan would be nice if I knew which files actually contain this
data.

Thank you.

[dcenters]

I have the exact same issue. In my experience, MusicMatch, which came loaded on every Dell computer for a number of years, was a superior music player, loaded with great features, including its play window. When it got sold, it literally became dysfunctional - it no longer ran on the computers on which it was installed. And there was no way to make it run again, no matter what you did. I have never seen such an awesome piece of software be ruined so quickly as when Yahoo supposedly "took over" MusicMatch. Criminal. If anyone knows whether ITunes has the functionality to rename the actual .mp3 filenames on the harddrive via the song names on ITunes, please let me know!

I tried this, and didn't see any leads that resolved the issue. The two topics which came up were, "Correcting song titles with odd characters," and "If song titles look scrambled after importing from another application," neither of which seem to have anything to do with renaming the file names from the song titles.

However, in the meantime I have found a program that accomplishes the task. This is called Mp3tag (v2.43), it is freeware (suggested donation), and it is a fantastic program that puts all my music into a database format that lets me sort, manipulate all the song information (including bulk renaming of song file names from song titles), and even play the songs. Wow! Feels like one of those rare finds that you wish you had discovered years before.

It can, look up Tags in the help file.

Personally I use this :

You can download it from a file sharing site.

I only use iTunes to transfer music to my iPod. Other than that it stinks
and is bloatware.