I have my music folder on a timecapsule. Two computers have access 1 pc and one mac.
Is there a way I can have each computer use the same folder but have their own itunes playlists and ratings?
I'd really like to split my music (all from CD's) into separate libraries. One for my popular music, and one for my classical music.
View 4 Replies View RelatedHow to - Creating and maintaining Lossless and Lossy music libraries in iTunes 9
A forum member has asked for information on how to create a new library for his music collection and below is my attempt to help. Having done this myself and never finding a complete step-by-step guide, I?ve attempted to make one of my own. Many others have helped me along the way so this is my way of giving back. Unfortunately, I don?t have my MBP right now and won?t have a Mac around for about two months. Please feel free to add feedback, tell me where I?m wrong, what?s missing or offer other ways of accomplishing these tasks. Once I get MR member input, I will update this post to reflect the best current practices for creating and maintaining two separate libraries for your lossless and lossy music collection. At the bottom of the post I list a couple of known issues and have a couple of questions so please chime in.
I've created two music libraries on my MacBook but I don't know how to move between the two.
Info:
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I have ordered a new Retina MBP to replace my early 2008 MBP, and have been contemplating how to manage my music libraries between both computers. My music library is about 60GB, and I don't want to keep it all on my rMBP (to save space with only 256GB available). My 2008 MBP will serve as a repository for all of my music, and regular Time Machine backups will be carried out. I also have a small, portable external drive which will also have all of my music (copied iTunes folder). The goal here is to have the music libraries on my old MBP and this external drive to be identical, for backup reasons as well as to be able to transfer music to my new rMBP when necessary. To do this, I reasoned out the following method:Â
-Obtain new music on rMBP
-Transfer folder of respective album(s) to copied iTunes folder in external HD
-Connect external HD to old MBP
-Open music files from external HD (they'll copy into both the iTunes library and the iTunes media folder on the old MBP)
-Verify that the music files are in both placesÂ
I can also obrain new music on the old MBP and then transfer it to the external HD. This seems like somewhat of a cumbersome manner to go about this (first world problems, I know). Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to streamline, or perhaps even automate this process? I was trying to think of a way I could utilize the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder, but to no avail. Again, my primary goals are as follows:Â
-To have identical music libraries on my old MBP and the external HD
-To have only a small, can't-do-without-it music library on my rMBP; I could tranfer music over as necessary or play it using the library on the external HD.Â
Info:
MacBook Pro with Retina display, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7
Can 2 different iPhones use the same computer and iTunes and still have different libraries of music?
Info:
MacBook Pro
so here is my problem with iTunes.
I have music with correct IDE tags in a "Music Collection" folder, though they are all unorganized and in sub folders. These folders have names like "Other iTunes", "More Music", "New Music", etc. I would like to reorganize all this music into one iTunes folder. I have gone into preferences and tried checkmarking the boxes "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when to library". My iTunes Media folder is a fresh new folder in "My Music". When I check that exact location, I see none of my music has moved there. All I see is an empty "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder. All my files are still in the unorganized "Music Collection" folder.
What can I do to literally move all my unorganized music files from this folder to a completely fresh and new iTunes Media folder, all with very organized sub folders categorized by artist and/or album? My main goal is to make an organized and updated library, because I spent a good amount of time deleting duplicates that have not gone to the recycle bin (and it would take FOREVER to find all those duplicates and delete them permanently).
I have a friend who plans to put an HP Mediasmart server in his house to automatically backup his MacBook and PowerBook as well as centralize his pictures and songs. He currently has the two notebooks mentioned above, 2 iPhones, and 4 or 5 iPods.
Once all of the local libraries are emptied out onto the server I'm a little stuck for what to do. I know iTunes 9.0 will stream music to all of the devices in the house. But when he leaves the house with one of his devices he's got to take the music or pictures with him.
This presents me with a few concerns:
1. Is there a way to reset the license on each song downloaded from iTunes - kinda starting fresh - so that he can sync his music with any one of his devices without getting an error about the file not being licensed to use on a particular device?
2. Building off the question above - is there a way to legitimately remove the license restriction so he (and his family) can all have the same copy of a song on their personal device without having to fuss with the license restriction?
3. When they are going on vacation (for example) and they want to take music and pictures with them on one of the notebooks how do they do it?
4. On that same vacation when they take a bunch of pictures and download music while they're out how do they get the music or pictures off the notebook and onto the server where the master library is going to be?
5. Should iTunes and iPhoto be "pointed" to a "Photos" or "Music" folder on the server, is that the best way to centralize all of the music and photos?
Is it possible to play music from multiple libraries over a single device, with control over the playlist possible from multiple devices/computers? Baiscally, in one of my smaller offices, everyone has a Mac or PC with iTunes, along with various iPads, iPhones etc etc. They randomly pick some tunes to play from each of their individual machines.
I would like to setup a system where there is a single device (Mac/PC/Airplay/Apple TV etc) with decent speakers, where anyone can submit a track(s) to play from their library, be it on their Mac, iPad iPhone etc. to stream through the central system.I would then imagine using the Remote app to control it.
They should all be able to submit tracks simultanously, rather that one device connecting with a Airplay at a time. This would also work in a party senario. Guest rock up, pair their device with the system, and they can all submit track(s) from their device and it goes into the playlist...
I'm trying to bring all my music files from my Windows computer so I copied all my music files from my Windows computer to my external hard drive, and then copied from the external hard drive to my iTunes music folder in my new iMac. When I compared the info between my iTunes music folder, and the music files on my external hard drive, the iTunes music folder had more files. By looking through the files it looks like two extra files were added to each album folder....a "folder.jpg" file and a "AlbumArtSmall.jpg" file was created. I know that these are only pic files, but I didn't have those files when all my music files were on my Windows machine, how come they show up now? Are those two files necessary? Can I just delete those?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have about 250GB of music in my iTunes Music folder, too much for any of my player devices with the exception of the computer itself. The "iTunes Music" folder is located on an external drive. I want to create multiple libraries to simplify syncing with individual devices, named something like "Nano silver 16", "classic 160", "iPhone", "iPad", etc. I know how to create the new libraries from info at: [URL] Questions:3) Is there a way to switch the "iTunes Music" folder to sort by album, (instead of by artist, then album, which lists each individual song of a compilation (Greatest Hits of...". "soundtrack", "duets..., etc. in separate folders with one song each). Royal pain! 2) How do I populate the individual libraries from my media folder once I have created them? I can't find any info to do this. Am I right that these just reference the real files, and don't duplicate them in a new location/folder? I don't want to increase the space taken up by new library files. 3) Where should all of the library files live to make it easy to find and switch from one to another? At present, I have to check/uncheck individual files to sync onto separate devices, and this becomes impossible with so much to begin with. --WWmac mini, OS 10.7.4, iTunes 10.6.1Â
Info:
Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.4)
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.
View 4 Replies View RelatediTunes 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 keep my iTunes Music Folder on an external 320gb HD. I'm about to move it to a 500gb HD. Rather than go through the steps of changing library location and then consolidating the library, can I just do this (all w/iTunes turned off):1. Copy entire iTunes folder, incl. Music folder and library.xml, etc. from old to new drive2. Disconnect old drive.3. Rename the new drive the same as the old drive.If the drive name, folder structure and file path are the same, will iTunes notice the difference between the two drives when I launch it? I'm on an MBP and, w/the simple OS X naming system, it seems like it shouldn't be a problem.
View 1 Replies View RelatedHow to make sense out of the clutter that has become of my iTunes Music Folder? Please see the screenshot below. I am quite certain that there is abunch of archival /legacy files within this folder, as well as a bunch of stuff that doesn't really need to be in this folder any longer, and I would like to know what is what so that I can begin cleaning things up a bit. Also when I make backups of my iTunes Library (minus the audio/video files) which files are the ones that need to be backed up? and the expanded view:
View 1 Replies View RelatedI was under the impression that you could just put new songs right into this folder and they would show up in iTunes. I added a bunch of music files (correct format of course) to this folder and they don't show up. I still have to use "Add to library" and browse to the actual folder and song for it to show up. What gives?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI 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?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI'm in the process of moving my iTunes folder to an external hard drive due to my computers hard drive being full. Now the external hard drive I'm using needs to be plugged in to a power source, now if I transfer all my music/movies to the external drive and also have my iTunes automatically download everything to the drive will I be able to copy my movie files back into my computers hard drive when I wan to be able to watch them on plane trips or would I be better off using a external hard drive that doesn't need a power source so I can just take it with me?
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a WD external hard drive that I got for the holiday's last year.Here lately I've been using it as my iTunes library. A great way to free up some space on my Powerbook g4. Question is, why does iTunes keep changing my library folder after I'd already changed it when I initially set up the hard drive as my iTunes library destination?
Another question is how do I make sure that all my music files automatically go to the folder on the external hard drive when I download music. For example I may snag a free song from a website and will double click it after downloading and it plays in itunes. I want that file to be saved on my external hard drive as well (yes it's plugged up and plugged in).
I only have an 8g ipod so I have to constantly check and uncheck songs that I want to hear, so I want to be sure they are all in the same locale. And one way I know that certain files are on my internal and not external is when i unplug my external those files still play when they shouldn't unless it's plugged up.
I have an iMac and just bought a Seagate 1T expernal hard drive. Currently most of my music is encoded AAC so I can keep it in the imac hard drive and be able to loaded in my iPod 30 Gig.Currently I have about 24 Gig in the library.Since I use my iTunes as music server for my home Hi-Fi systems using a wireless network and Squeezebox devices connected to my steroe system I would like to create a second library with just Apple Lossless files. I would like to use this library for my home listening but keep the current library in the iMac haddrive with the AAC files to sync them to my iPod.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI'm using iTunes 9.2.1 and it states that my music library is 159.99gb with 25,994 songs, however the folder containing music files is 171.26gb with 30,309 files. This is a difference of 11.27gb and 4315 files. The folder only contains mp3 or m4a files with their respective album and band folders; no images, text files or anything else. The iTunes folder is located elsewhere. I added the folder to iTunes again to see if there were 11gb of songs I'd forgotten to add and there was no difference. I even deleted all iTunes settings and the current library and added the folder again and it is still missing 11.27gb.
I'm about 95% sure that none of my music collection is missing from iTunes so my first thought was that iTunes is just reading the file sizes and count inaccurately and it really is 171.26gb, but I'm not sure.
Can anyone think of a solution without going though my entire collection and comparing it to iTunes to see if anything is missing?
I dragged a folder from an external hard drive into iTunes containing the songs I want on my new MacBook.
But, for some reason the file size shown in iTunes is 47.66GB whereas Finder says my iTunes Music folder is 50.38GB
I have decided to manage two iTunes libraries on a single user account by using the old "option key on launch" trick; one on my Macbook's HD and another on an external HD. However, is it possible to view and access both of the libraries in parallel, or at least switch quickly between them without having to quit iTunes and launch it again?
View 5 Replies View Relatedwhen I try to import one cd for my lossless folder (after telling itunes were that folder is and import setting is set for apple lossless) itunes ask if I want to keep the media organized in the itunes folder. If I say yes, some files from my aac folder is showing up in the lossless folder and versa?
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have a Mac Pro desktop and a Macbook with (mostly) duplicate music on. But there is some music I only have on one or the other. Most uploaded from CDs and some bought from itunes, Amazon etc. Each has about 20GB each but as I said it's mostly the same. I want to do a complete clean re-install on the Macbook and then not take up its HD space with music, just use Home Sharing via the desktop/airtunes. Apart from literally going alphabetically through both, is there a neat way of comparing, to make sure that when I clean off the Macbook I don't miss something that isn't on the pro?
View 11 Replies View RelatedI just opened my ~/music/iTunes folder and in the iTunes folder there was a folder named 'previous iTunes Libraries' that folder existed of two iTunes Library Data files. My question now is can I just delete that folder or is it essential to have iTunes function properly?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI've been searching the forums and web looking for info on how to / best way to sync iTunes libraries (including playlists, ratings, and play counts). I've found several programs including TuneRanger, SuperSync, Syncopation and some others (links below). The general consensus seems to be that they all suck. (TuneRanger seems to do exactly what I want, but doesn't appear to have a free trial period.) [URL]
View 24 Replies View Relatedhow do backup all your itunes media? do you just use one drive and not back up? im just wondering, because i have a fear that if i only back up all my itunes media on a external drive, that one day, it will crash when i need it, and ill be screwed. so what the best way to back it up? i was thinking of burning it all to dvds but that would take forever.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI can't seem to make my itunes library available to other users on the same iMac.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have one iTunes library on my MBP and another on an iMac that are different. I want to combine them into one (on the iMac) but when I try the songs/videos moved over can't be found by the iMac (have the exclamation mark next to the title). I really don't want to backup to disc to move them over by restoring because the library I am moving is 70+ GB (that's a lot of discs) so I have copied the folder onto a separate harddrive. How do I combine these libraries? Please give me step by step instructions that a middle aged Mom who has not slept through the night in 14 years can understand.
View 1 Replies View Related