Let’s say you have set out to store all your MP3 and AAC songs in the Music folder. Yet, over time, some of those files have been saved to other locations. You can use HoudahSpot to find the misplaced files and move these where they belong.
Start by building a search to find music files. You will want HoudahSpot to list Audio files larger than 1 MB. This should exclude shorter audio clips and ringtones. Rather than restrict the search by file size, you could also search by song duration.
You can further restrict the search by requiring the file metadata to include the name of the Album, Composer or Lyricist. You can do so by using the “*” wildcard character as a value for these search criteria.
Set HoudahSpot to search your home folder, but exclude the ~/Music folder. HoudahSpot will thus only show files that are not yet where you want them to be.
Start the search and let HoudahSpot collect the results. Now all that is left to do is to move the files to their new home. Open the Music folder in Finder and drag the files from HoudahSpot to the Music window in Finder.
Get a head-start by downloading the ready-made search: Music Gone Astray.hssearch