MediaMonkey can manage your files and with Collections you can filter your Library to only show what you want. So for most you wouldn't organize your files first.

Rather than delete those non-preferred artists, you might consider confining them to a location that you don't have MM scan. Someday, one or more might become preferred. For the others, the more ordered your files are, the better, but MM itself has very good tools for cleaning up, tagging and ordering and finding duplicates, which you will find under the appropriately named Tools menu. Auto-organize files will keep your files in a standard format and the various tagging tools will help with key data. There are also a number of extension that can be added that provide additional functions.

[quote="Pretzel lover"]Maybe this was listed somewhere, but didn't see it....

Any tips for cleaning up files before importing music into MM for the first time?

For example-
Delete artists you somehow ended up having and don't prefer?
Move albums that are buried in sub folders to artist root folder?
Rename some that have or need 'The' added or removed?
Get rid of obvious duplicates?

Oh, how about backing up any particular files or playlists from iTunes?

Thx for any input on what is easiest before vs after beginning the process![/quote]

Maybe this was listed somewhere, but didn't see it....

Any tips for cleaning up files before importing music into MM for the first time?

For example-
Delete artists you somehow ended up having and don't prefer?
Move albums that are buried in sub folders to artist root folder?
Rename some that have or need 'The' added or removed?
Get rid of obvious duplicates?

Oh, how about backing up any particular files or playlists from iTunes?

Thx for any input on what is easiest before vs after beginning the process!