What exactly is iTunes doing when it's “processing a file”?

Question

After I download a song from the iTunes Store it will "process" the song, and the processing portion of the ordeal typically takes a lot longer than actually downloading it.

A typical situation will consist of the song downloading in 3 or 4 seconds, and the processing taking about a minute.

I know if you tell iTunes to keep your folder organized (which I do) then any time you download or import a song it has to create a new folder for that artist if one didn't already exist, and the same thing with the album.

Does doing those kinds of things take all that time, or are there other things going on behind the scenes?

Answer 1

A thread on the Apple discussion forums suggests that this issue occurs with iTunes Plus songs. It is possible that this is the result of post-download processing that iTunes is doing on the song (reading IDv3 tags, inserting your iTunes ID, etc.).

If this started randomly, I would reset my iTunes preferences, uninstall it (and QuickTime if I was using Windows), restart, and then reinstall to see if the issue was fixed.