Applications :: ITunes And Remote Music Library - Reselect File Location
Mar 13, 2009
I've got to a point where the HD on my MacBook is just too small to hold my music library, so for a while now, I've been housing it on an external drive hooked up to an Airport Express. My setup certainly isn't without its fair share of problems.
Setup: I keep my own folder structure, with folders for specific categories and playlists. iTunes's music folder structure has never been organized enough for me, so I don't use it. Another reason is I have music in my library that isn't in iTunes (since I don't frequently use it). My music library resides on an AirDisk, while my iTunes database along with some local music folders resides on my Mac.
Problems: Whenever I move songs/albums/playlists from the local storage on my Mac to my remote library, I have to go through and reselect the file location on the AirDisk for every file. I've also noticed that files on my AirDisk typically appear with an exclamation next to them, won't sync to my iPhone, and won't play in things like iTunes DJ unless I manually mount the AirDisk. Even then, iTunes only sees the specific song I clicked. iTunes still thinks other songs on the AirDisk are unavailable (even though the AirDisk is mounted), and thus skips them when playing unless I specifically click a song. Finally, whenever I move my music library around (like putting it on a NAS), I have to go through and manually change the location of each and every song!
All of these problems makes me think there has to be a better way! I've read about using iTunes to relocate the iTunes music library or database to a different disk, using the "Consolidate Library" feature and other built-in features, but it doesn't seem like any of these would work with a custom folder structure. I also know there are various 3rd-party "helper" apps available, but I haven't looked into them. Perhaps a 3rd-party app could simplify the process?
Why do they both exist? My best guess is just that they switched to iTunes Library but maintain an identical iTunes Music Library file for now for compatibility (since the XML files exist so 3rd party apps can access the iTunes library).
I want to move the location of my iTunes library music files. At present they are all on my time machine . I want to move them all to my imac. Can I do that and keep all my playlists and play counts?
its 1000s of songs . Originally I used the time machine as a networked drive but it can cause the songs to pause so I'm thinking it would be better to have the songs on the internal imac drive
how can I move the songs so I can re-open iTunes and the playlists (with plays in the 100s) find the song in the new place?
When I used to delete a song from my iTunes library it would ask me if I wanted to also remove it completely from my computer. Now it no longer does and I cannot find a option to get that back. Can someone tell me where I can get iTunes to do this again?
I'm using iTunes 10.6 and Lion. i have a two problems. i recently moved my iTunes library to my portable hard drive. i have changed the new location under Preference/Advanced to "/portable drive/MUSIC". I have checked 'Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and unchecked 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library. 1) After moving my music and and consolidating, some of my music are in the right folder, which is in "/portable drive/MUSIC" folder, but a majority of the music are created into a NEW SUBFOLDER music folder. e.g.: /portable drive/MUSIC/music/ ?? Why is that happen and how can I move tell iTunes to just put it in the main and 1st MUSIC folder. Do you know why it creates a subfolder name music? 2) When importing new music, it doesn't automatically go into the designated folder but instead retains in the original folder that was imported from? e.g.: i import music from mac hard drive into iTunes and when I click on Get Info on the track, the location is still at /my mac hard drive/duran duran instead of /portable drive/MUSIC/. How do I get it to organized the music into /portable drive/MUSIC/
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I have a strange problem at least to me. Recently I moved my iTunes library to an external drive and all went fine. I used the consolidation tool to achieve the task and all went just fine. Since doing this every time I open iTunes the location of the library has changed back to my local drive.
For example...
I set it to: volumesmediaiTunes Media
and it is automatically changed to: usersmemusiciTunesiTunes Media
in my itunes file in Windows directory, there is a compilations file. this file has albums in it that should not be there, but with other albums by the same bands. i have tried relocating the albums, but then itunes cannot play them, and when i locate the file it is automatically placed in a new compilations folder.
in short i am asking how i can change the location of a file in the itunes library. Any ideas?
a friend of mine has some problems with his iTunes library. The situation is as follows: he has a large collection of music, the library is stored on an external drive which is always connected to the 12 inch Powerbook when starting up iTunes.
Lately, songs that are imported from CD's are listed correctly in the library but they won't play. When checking the info it says the location of the song is in a folder under applications on the internal harddrive, for example iWeb:Contents:Resources:no.Iproj:Templates :White Blog.webtemplate and it links to a strange file like a .png or something like that.
When searching for the song in spotlight it turns out that the song is stored in the correct folder in the iTunes media folder on the external drive.
Is this strange or what! I hope somebody has an idea what could be the problem.
I have my iTunes music on an external drive. I set the location of the iTunes Music Folder to the location on the external drive in Preferences. But next time I open iTunes, it's reset back to the location on the built-in HD where iTunes places the folder by default. External HD is sometimes disconnected (though not when I'm resetting it). Maybe if iTunes can't find the drive it reverts back? Powerbook G4, OSX 10.4.11, iTunes 7.7.1.
iTunes 8.1 just keeps bugging out on me. I set my iTunes Music Folder Location to a folder on my Time Capsule, but when i exit out and relaunch iTunes, the folder location is reset back to the default iTunes Music folder on my system drive! Why does this keep happening? Anyone else having this problem? I don't want to have to point my location back to the Time Capsule each time I load up iTunes.
A thing to note is however, is that my library file (and other misc itunes files) still remains in the iTunes folder on the system drive. Would that have anything to do with this?
I've got it all on one drive right now. I want to replace my main drive with a velociraptor drive and keep my apps/system stuff on there and move everything else including my music library to another drive. But i cant figure it out.
When I go to open my itunes software I get a pop-up window that says the following, "The itunes Music Library File cannot be read because it does not appear to be a vaild library file."
I deleted the itunes file (the file that had the logo) and downloaded another copy from Apple but the problem still persists.
I have several thousand songs organized with a certain Artist/Album/Song structure. I also have uncategorized folders in my music folder with a bunch of random songs inside. Is there a way to sort the music list in iTunes by location, so I can choose all the songs in that folder to add to a playlist, or can I make a smart playlist that takes all the songs in the folder (and scans for new ones whenever)? If not, is there something else I can do to accomplish this?
So I recently just got my MacBook Pro in mail yesterday. The first thing I wanted to do was to transfer my itunes music/library from my PC to my new Mac so that I kept all my playlists and count numbers and etc. I watch the video on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyy993m1nPo) of david kadavy showing how to do it but however he does it from one mac to another.
I have a PC and I did everything he did correctly. When I tried to import my library.xml file it said "not all files were able to be transferred because they may not exist". So can anybody help me transfer my library from my PC to my Mac? BTW both of my iTunes on my PC and Mac were up to date.
I wanted to know how do i back up my mp3's from itunes library, I currently have 12.83 GB worth of songs. Do I use a external hd or is a flash drive good enough? Just in case when the world ends in 2012 and all the computers fail ill still have my music with me
Got my iTunes Library reading from an external USB drive. Nothing has changed in months. Though just recently, for 90% of my songs - iTunes can't locate them. I checked the directory where they've always been and they're still there. External drive is alive and kicking, connected to my Macbook. This sucks because I've got a gajillion playlists. And my iPhone and iPad will no longer sync these playlists. I'd really hate to manually have to re-do all of my playlists again.
Is there a way I can make a playlist of songs that are only in the playlist and cant be found in the music library? In other words an independent playlist with songs not from the library.
iTunes is automatically putting my music videos inside of the movies library and I would prefer to have it in my music library. I've tried a few things with no luck. Does anyone know how to do this?
My problem is this: A few weeks ago, the (not over-worked at all) HD of my two and a half year old MBP crashed completely. Fortunately, I have Applecare, so the HD was replaced without any difficulty and free of charge, and returned reasonably rapidly. However, all of my data, and perhaps equally upsetting, my entire iTunes collection (not far off 6,000 songs) has also vanished into the ether of cyberspace. (Did I have anything backed up? Um, no. Second moral of the story: Back-ups are Good).
Anyway, I have the entire music collection on two iPods, a classic (80GB) and a iTouch (64GB). My problem is how to restore this collection to iTunes, as syncing either of them at present may result in the further obliteration of the music collection. So, fellow denizens of MR, advise me please: What is the best way to attempt to restore - from an iPod to iTunes - a prized music collection? Senuti has been mentioned; is it recommended, and what does it entail? It was also suggested to me that I use the Classic for this attempted restoration, rather than the Touch.
I have a very particular issue that I am trying to find the best way to manage through. I have two computers. An iMac connected wirelessly and a Hackintosh connected wired. The Hackintosh is my hometheater PC connected to my TV. My iMac is in the bedroom and is home to all my pictures and music and other stuff we share as a family. After getting my AppleTV2, I converted all my movies and tvshows to Mv4, which are all stored on a separate media server in the closet. The iTunes on the hackintosh "houses" all the video media where I have imported all the video media on the media server but the links are all pointing to the media server - iTunes is not set to copy the media when imported. It allows me to access all of the video media on the appleTV2.
In the ATV2, to access the music and photos, the family has to switch from using the Hackintosh and choose the iMac computer. This is not ideal. The preferable option would be to have one iTunes library to manage all the media so you do not have to back out of one computer into the other. However, I have not found a good way to share just the music portion of my iTunes library from the iMac to the Hackintosh. I do not want the bedroom imac to manage all the media since its not always on and its wireless which creates hiccups on the high def video files. I first tried mounting the iMac iTunes music folder on the network, importing the music into the Hackintosh (creating links back to imac iTunes music folder).
This works but the problem is keeping it up to date after the initial import. I use Hazel and creating a script to basically watch the music folder for newly added or modified files and import those into iTunes. The problem is if I imoprt an updated file that already exists in the Library it creates a duplicate. Same problem if the music is stored on a NAS. I have tried the trick of moving everything to the server and sharing the iTunes ITL files but this does not allow you to have both iTunes libraries open at the same time. I haven't seen anyone who has this particular issue where they want to keep a "portion" of their iTunes libraries in sync.
I recently brought a MacBook Pro laptop and I already have a IPhone. My IPhone is already synced up to my windows computer but I would like to now use my laptop with the IPhone. How do I transfer my my music from my itunes library on my windows which my IPhone is synced to onto my new MacBook. I have tried to plug my IPhone in my MacBook but I am worried it will wipe it clean. How to transfer library from windows to mac?
I had to move around my files recently so needed to change the location iTunes looked for them. I ran across a hack whereby you edit the iTunes Music Library.xml file and then intentionally corrupt the iTunes Library.itl file so that it reimports the next time you restart iTunes (I'm sure many of you may already be familiar with this hack).
It almost works. Problem is that it doesn't import all my files. I have over 10000 files but it only imports 6445 of them. I noticed that the original xml filesize is 16MB. After importing, it gets chopped down to 10MB. What the heck is happening here?
Moved my MP3s from my PC to my Mac, I have all my MP3s in an MP3s folder, under that folder is each band in their own folder. I am trying to add them to my itunes music library, pointing the preferences to the main MP3s folder but it shows nothing. How do I get it to add my music?
Just a quick question, I have a friend who recently the HDD go out in her laptop. She has all her music in her iPhone, but if I replace the HDD in her laptop for her, is there a way to transfer the music from her iPhone to her computer? I think this is a pretty common questions but I just Googled it and found some random "sketchy tutorials" with self-promotions for random tools like "tansee iPhone -> PC" and the like...
Just wondering if there's a handy/favorite program you guys out there use? Windows or Mac software is fine.
Every time I search for a song in iTunes, then close the search by hitting the "x" in the search bar, iTunes returns me to the top of my iTunes library (the A's), instead of staying on the song I've searched for and selected. It's incredibly annoying, and has been happening to my iTunes for a few years (but didn't in early versions of the software). Does anyone else have this problem? Is it a bug, or just a bad design? If so, is there a way to stop it?
