Cleaning and Updating Music Library's

I created a large music library from many CD’s and organized them into several sub-folders by artist name within a master “My Music Folder”. I then imported the “My Music Folder” into iTunes. The process worked great but when I reviewed the details in iTunes and on my iPod, I found duplicates, some misspellings, and duplicate artist names (i.e. “Beatles” and “The Beatles; “Clash” and “The Clash” I would like to clean up the library and organize the music to reduce the duplicates, simplify the artist list by a common name, and correct wrong information and in some cases add info to the artists.
My question is where is the best place to make these changes so that I can have one integrated and master music library incorporating the changes? Should the edits be done in the original folders or should the edits be done in iTunes and then saved as a new exported library? Or is there a better or recommended way?
Thank you,

Use the (free) software Mp3tag. It can do 'Actions' to update, e.g. all "The Beatles" by "Beatles" etc. I just cleaned my ~4,000 songs library using that. iTunes is doable, but nowhere near as flexible. You may want to clean everything first and then reimport everything into iTunes for cleanest results.

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The error message I get on my PC is "The ITunes library file cannot be saved" An unknown error occurred (-50)and my music library has disappeared. I recently tried to copy a CD to my library - it appeared to copy ok but then did not appear in my music li

The error message I get on my PC is "The ITunes library file cannot be saved" An unknown error occurred (-50)and my music library has disappeared. I recently tried to copy a CD to my library - it appeared to copy ok but then did not appear in my music library. The library does not show up even when my iPad is connected to my PC. My entire library is now held on my iPad and I wish to have it in iTunes so I can sync my iPhone to it as well. Help?

Don't know what changed today but it downloaded and installed on the shuffle. So far so good.

Changing default directory for iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.

I need to change the default directory for the files iTunes Library.itl and iTunes Music Library.xml permanently.
It must be relocated from the My Documents directory due to VPN reasons.
Has anybody an idea if this is possible? I could not find a corresponding registry entry.
Notebook Windows XP Pro

Using TweakUI to Move or Create Your Library/My Music Location
Use TweakUI (See: ’Disk is locked’ or ‘iTunes folder cannot be found’ when installing or opening iTunes ) to create a 'My Music' folder in a spot where you desire. iTunes should then find this location and deposit its Library files there, and the 'iTunes' folder and sub-folders as well (if you direct it to).
First, see this Article for some background information: What are the iTunes Library files?
If you cannot see the ‘My Music’ folder within the TweakUI drop-down selection, proceed on to the following:
1 On the start menu go to ‘Run’
2 Type in RegEdit
3 Navigate in RegEdit to HKEYCURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
4 Delete any entry for ‘My Music’
5 Navigate up the tree to HKEYCURRENTUSER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
6 Make sure there is an entry for ‘My Music’ and is pointing to C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\My Documents\My Music (you can edit the value by double clicking it)
7 Close RegEdit
8 Reboot
iTunes &/or TweakUI should now be able to find the folder.

Nokia N96 - Problem Updating Music library

Hi, I have transferred some music to my N96 and I am now trying to Update my library to show the new tracks. I have done this lots of times without a problem but today I had it refreshing for 2 hours and it didnt change off the refreshing screen. I have tried stopping it and taking my battery out and still no joy.

Since posting this problem I have been able to use the Music Player quite normally.
The problem and solution, I believe, lie in the way that Nokia's proprietary software (in the case of Macs this is Nokia Multimedia transfer) organises music files.
Nokia Multimedia Transfer organises music into folders named A-Z (and 0-9 if applicable) by artist on the phone. It also truncates folder and file names - folder names seem to be truncated to 13 characters and file names to 9 - fortunately, ID3 tags are not affected.
Any attempt to subvert this hierarchy will result in an incomplete scan of the music library. As Nokia and other methods result in completely different file structures it is necessary to remove all previously synched music from the phone and making a clean sync using Nokia's software.
Additionally, I discovered that as I was trying to synchronise multiple media (music, photos, videos, bookmarks) the whole process would become kind of stuck - that's why I tried alternative methods of synchronising my music. I have completely given up on all other media synchronisation for the sake of getting the music sorted out.
This isn't ideal but at least it works and it saved me from jumping up and down on my phone in shear cartoon frustration!

How do I delete iTunes 12 and reinstall 11? 12 installed itself and updated a Library.

How do I delete iTunes 12?
I want to use iTunes 11 to access an older Library on its own Hard Disk Drive.
iTunes 12 installed itself, and the moment I opened it with one of my music Libraries, it updated the Library on that disks (and took forever—I have 27,000 tracks). (I thought I had automatic updates turned off. They are now! It has been listed at the App Store before this, but for some reason, this time it just installed at a Restart though I believe I never clicked on its Update button.)
I tried deleting 12, but it complains it is part of Mac OS! (I didn't really know this.)
I tried changing 12's permissions via Get Info, so I could Read & Write to the application. Nada. I also tried adding myself, and doing the same. Nothing.
And I tried to install iTunes 11.4 for OS X 10.6 after downloading it, but the install complained I had a newer version, and then quit.
It seems I am stuck with iTunes 12, and have no other options.
Sometimes Apple software *****. Whatever happened to Easy?
Help!
S.

If you have a Time Machine backup or a clone from before the time you updated, you may be able to restore from there. The iTunes 11.4 download works only for Snow Leopard.
---| I want to use iTunes 11 to access an older Library on its own Hard Disk Drive.
If that library is an .xml file you can move it to your desktop and in iTunes you can choose Import Playlist and select the Library.xml file. That will give you all the playlists on the old library.

Demlo - A dynamic and extensible music library organizer (in pure Lua)

Demlo organizes your music library automatically and dynamically. It runs a chain of user-defined scripts using variables such as tags and file properties. This way it yields virtually unlimited customization power to the user.
Use case
As an example, consider a music library that is a a perfect definition of chaos:
No folder structure.
Tags are not homogeneous, some entries are filled, other not, it varies from file to file.
Some files have bad audio quality.
Audio codecs are not always the same. Some file are CBR/VBR, lossless/lossy, ...
mp3's ID3 tags are a nightmare.
Covers are sometimes embedded in tags, others are of terrible quality.
Features
A few scripts are already provided and they give a good example of what you can do. You can choose to use them, to rewrite them, or to write a new script from scratch. You can preview changes, and once you are done you call the program over you music library, it will process everything in one single run!
Scripts can be chained: this feature makes Demlo extremely flexible and powerful!
Move all files according to a unique, yet dynamic folder hierarchy. For
instance, setting
output.filename = table.concat {library, '/', o.artist, '/',
not empty (o.album) and (empty (o.date) and o.album .. '/' or o.date .. ' - ' .. o.album .. '/') or '',
empty (track_padded) and '' or track_padded .. ' - ',
o.title}
will move "john doe - 1. intro.ogg" to
"/home/$USER/music/John Doe/2013 - Great Album/01 - Intro.ogg" if there is an album and a date,
"/home/$USER/music/John Doe/Great Album/01 - Intro.ogg" if there is an album and no date,
"/home/$USER/music/John Doe/01 - Intro.ogg" if there is no album.
Case checking: a powerful script that will turn everything to title case. It supports special cases such as Roman numerals, McDonald, etc. It also supports a list of exceptions (e.g. AC-DC, DJ, feat., etc.).
Encoding: you can conditionally re-encode you files, so you can choose to only re-encode files with some particular encoding settings. You can set the desired bitrate, etc.
Covers: automatically remove embedded covers, remove duplicates, remove files beyond/below a quality threshold, etc.
Different kinds of music: classical, OST, and band songs have usually different kinds of tags and folder structures. You can manage different audio libraries easily by setting the corresponding "library" variables.
Edit tags of a file set with your favorite text editor.
Support for cue sheets. (Both external and embedded.)
Demlo can be interfaced with any other program, both ways. (X calls Demlo or Demlo calls X.)
MusicBrainz support for online tagging and cover fetching.
Technical characteristics
This program is completely written in Lua. Its only major dependency is FFmpeg. A few Lua modules are required, which should not eat more than a few KiB on your drive. This leads to a lightweight codebase for a portable and extensible program.
Dependencies
ffmpeg
lua (>= 5.1)
lua-dkjson
lua-filesystem
lua-llthreads2
lua-penlight
lua-socket
slnunicode
chromaprint (optional)
History
This program is based on Musish by the same author.
The original program was written in POSIX shell but suffured from many limitations as well as performance issues. It was rewritten in Lua to circumvent all those issues while applying minor changes to the CLI options and to the variable names. The syntax of the script changed to Lua as well. Here follows a list of major changes:
Traversing folders recursively is no longer a security issue.
Overall performance got boosted by a factor of approx. 2.
Scripts and configuration files are sandboxed, which means they can no longer contain harmful code. However it is no longer possible to chain scripts.
All tags are processed dynamically, no more hard-coded tags.
Links
Official web page
Arch Wiki
AUR package
Issue tracker: Please file bug reports there thanks!
Last edited by Ambrevar (2015-02-20 09:22:22)

I hoped the structure I presented was clear enough. No, all/majority of tags would be a little too much, but genre, different release types, file types and some other basic distinctions, yes and tagsfs will probably help with that. There are special folders like [Compilation], [High Voltage SID Collection] and probably others in the future, maybe with help of tagsfs. Compilations and Artists are prepended by the leading letter of 'sorted artists/albums' level. Then albums/artists are sorted/presented in the manner visible in the Picard script:
$if($eq(%compilation%,1),
%COMPILATION%///%FIRSTLETTER%///$if2(%ALBUM%,%NONALBUMTRACKS%,[Other]) - $if(%DATE%,[%DATE%],),
%FIRSTLETTER%///$trim($if2(%ALBUMARTIST%,%ARTIST%),.)///$if(%DATE%,%DATE% - ,)$if2(%ALBUM%,%NONALBUMTRACKS%,[Other]) )
$if(%RELEASETYPE%,[%RELEASETYPE%],)%BARCODE%$if(%INCOMPLETE%,[%INCOMPLETE%],)[%EXT%]///
$if(%DISCNUMBER%,%DISCNUMBER%-,)%TRACKNUMBER%. %ARTIST% - %TITLE%
Picard has preview examples, so copying the whole script into file naming script under options should make this definitely clear.
Ambrevar wrote:Thinking about it, a similar feature is provided by most library managers where you can choose filters and tree structure and so on. It remains virtual though, it does not touch the filesystem. Is it really necessary to you to have that sort of view directly on your filesystem? The problem of the filesystem view seems very complex to me.
Not all devices provide that capability. It is more pleasant to work with that approach than previous structures I used, remember that I can restructure the whole library at any time and probably copy the local one elsewhere using the new structure, but I have not looked into that yet.
We probably have very different experiences, I see this as very comfortable and convenient. Before that I had been using folders for different file types in the main directory, but it ended up with so many entries for FLAC and MP3, that parsing that directories in a player or any maintenance using a file browser/terminal was too troublesome/slow. So I reduced the number of files, by using the alphabet and additional characters as sorting mechanism. And since that was one step away from separating compilations from albums/single releases, I did that also. Now I can access the whole library very quickly, even when one or two additional characters need to be typed.
Ambrevar wrote:Furthermore, would you consider this to be an automated task or a manual one? Using your example, how can a program know that Lauge & Baba Gnohm is both Lauge and Baba Gnohm if no tags says so?
Both, I want as always full control. MusicBrainz [database] relations.
Ambrevar wrote:Hard links do not work for folders.
Symlinks cause problems with most file browsers that do not follow them during copying.
I do not recall writing they should link folders, the directory structure would have to be [re]build and then files [hard/sym]linked, which might pose a maintenance issue, although deleting links and empty directories not really, but "leftovers" like covers could block cleaning. *The only file browser* I would recommend is Proto from a very friendly Polish programmer named Mieszko Lassota, but it is, or at least was last time I checked, Windows only and slowly further developed, although still kills every mc, mucommander and ranger on sight, that is how I remember it. SpaceFM is bearable, but I still only use rsync to copy files and see no point using anything else.
Ambrevar wrote:Can you elaborate on this? What are the limitations of Picard beyond symlinking? It could be interesting to know what feature you would like.
The recursive/linking aspect it the main point here. I hope this is not too big of a disappointment. Having too long names has also been a problem in few cases, classical music if I recall correctly, but those are limitations of the file system, however even that could be overcome with Picard, but the code would not be as easily readable as it is now. The question would be what should be abbreviated/priorities, what to do when after abbreviation the directory/file names are still too long and so on. I had to do it by hand these few times. Picard does not handle covers/images well in my experience, but I used something else for that, puddletag I think. I would have to continue to organize the library to remember.
Furthermore, not all media players/organizers do have the capability to get exactly this structure with formatting, leading letters and distinction between compilations and albums being two examples. Browsing this robust file structure with ncmpcpp is very efficient, I almost never use the library view. As long as a media player has the browsing capability, I have the same view/behavior. And other hardware also works without issues. Yes, it basically comes down to having the file system do, what media players should, however with a few exceptions I had only positive results for more than almost two years now. Do you now see benefits of having that file structure?
Again I will take a look at your tool, when I find some time and what progandy suggested also of course. How do you save your music on the file system?
Edit: Style. Clarification.
Last edited by emeres (2014-09-12 13:02:34)

N97 software update=music library gone??????

i updated my n97,the songs are all still in the mass memory,but all gone from music library,is there an easy way to get them back,or do i have to delete them all from mass memory,and put them all back on again??? iv had it with this rubbish phone,
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Try connecting phone in mass storage mode and select show all files, look in 'private on E and delete the files listed, has worked for me in the past !
Storage Drives: (Mass storage E, Memory Card F)
\private\101ffca9\harvesterdbvx_x.dat
\private\10281e17\[string]mpxvx_x.db
\private\10281e17\[string]pcvx_x.db
TIP: Connect the device in USB mass storage mode (File Transfer), to locate the private folder from the PC.
TIP: STRING and x_x will change depending on your phone.
After you've done this, then you should be able to re-scan and re-create the Music Library.
Good Luck
If I have helped at all, a click on the White Star is always appreciated :
you can also help others by marking 'accept as solution'

Description column and iTunes Music Library.xml??

I see that there is a column in Itunes called description. I'd like to use it to store information but Itunes doesn't give me access to it. Why is it there then? I tried to open iTunes Music Library.xml file and add a description tag but that doesn't work. Does anybody ever tried to edit the xml file?
Thanks
JL
PC Windows XP

I found an update from sony (entertainment platform update)

Nokia 5530xm-- V 30... cant update music library

I have updated firmware from v 20 to v 30... All the functions are working properly... except the music player... i cant add songs in it... even i select the option of refresh music library.... it keep on scanning but havent added any song...
As i have songs in my memo card. and softwares installed in memo are working finee...
Plz help

/t5/Nseries-and-S60-Smartphones/Nokia-5800-XM-Media-Library-Refresh-Problem/m-p/413359#M122970
jje

Musish - a dynamic and extensible music library organizer (in CLI!)

Note: this program is deprecated and has been superseeded by Demlo.
Musish organizes your music library automatically and dynamically. It runs a user-defined script using variable such as tags and file properties. This way it yields virtually unlimited customization power to the user.
Example: your music library is a a perfect definition of "chaos".
No folder structure.
Tags are not homogeneous, some entries are filled, other not, it varies from file to file.
Some files have bad audio quality.
Audio codecs are not always the same. Some file are CBR/VBR, lossless/lossy, ...
mp3's ID3 tags is a nightmare.
Covers are sometimes embedded in tags, you have a lot of bad quality covers.
A few scripts are already provided and they give a good example of what you can do. You can choose to use them, to rewrite them, or to write a new script from scratch. You can preview the changes, and once you are done you call the program over you music library, it will process everything in one single run!
Move all files according to a unique, yet dynamic folder hierarchy. For instance, setting
filename="$library/$artist/${album:+${date:+$date - }$album/}${track:+$track - }$title.$ext"
will move the "john doe - 1. intro.mp3" to "/home/$USER/musics/John Doe/2013 - Great Album/01 - Intro.ogg".
Case checking: a powerful gawk script that will turn everything to title case. It supports special cases such as Roman numerals, McDonald, etc. It also supports a list of exceptions (e.g. AC-DC).
Encoding: you can conditionally re-encode you files. For instance, if the input is lossless, you can encode to FLAC, if it is lossy, you can encode to OGG. You can choose to only re-encode files with some particular encoding settings. You can set the desired bitrate, etc.
Covers: automatically remove embedded covers, remove duplicates, remove files beyond/below a quality threshold, etc.
Different kinds of music: classic, OST, and band musics have usually different kings of tags and folder structure. You can manage different audio libraries easily by setting the corresponding "library" variables.
This program is completely written in POSIX Shell + gawk. This leads to a lightweight codebase (less than 1000 lines), and near universal portability.
Dependencies:
ffmpeg
POSIX awk
POSIX shell
Optional:
cuetools
jshon
AUR package: git version
Official web page: https://bitbucket.org/ambrevar/musish
Please file bug reports on the issue tracker, not on this forum, thanks!
Warning: this program has been tested for a while, but some bugs might still be floating around. Make sure to backup your data before proceeding.
Last edited by Ambrevar (2014-09-11 09:32:49)

FFmpeg is always run, at least for the metadata editing part (i.e. tags). It does not necessarily means that the audio track will be changed.
If no script is provided, the file is not reencoded. Actually it is not modified at all. This is the 'raw default' behaviour with -s "".
However the default configuration file sets a "default" script that is run by default. This script does always transcode. This is a debatable choice: maybe I should remove the default script and let the user choose his/her own default script. What do you think?
Regarding the lossy trancoding, the rules are as follows: if the output format is the same as the input and bitrate is still the same, we do not transcode. But for some reasons you may want to lower the bitrate (e.g. smaller file size), in which case we do transcode.
Another major reason for lossy transcoding: switching from mp3 to a decent format (ogg, aac...). An mp3 music library is a nightmare to maintain (different ID3 version, CBR/VBR, etc.).
The man page definitely needs some clarifications. Feel free to comment!
Last edited by Ambrevar (2013-12-09 14:49:52)

Airplay and iTunes Music Library

I tried to stream Christmas music from my MacBook Pro computer's iTunes music library through my ATV2 to a TV while playing pictures and the music would play one or two songs and then the music would stop. Not sure if its the ATV, my computer or what. The computer drive is NOT going to sleep although the screen is blank. Any ideas?

Be sure all the songs in your iTunes library are checked...... unchecked songs won't play in playlists or shuffle, et.c.

ITunes and entire music library lost in compute crash... help needed please

Evening everyone.
I lost my iTunes and complete library in computer crash, but music is still on my 4G iPod touch.
Can I use this to copy my music library back to my PC?
Thanks
Anna Marie

Syncing to a "New" Computer or replacing a "crashed" Hard Drive: Apple Support Communities

How to Update Musica Library in iTunes

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Itunes wont automatically update music library from audio cd

PLEASE help if you can...
I insert an audio cd. Itunes asks me if I would like to import it, I click yes. Import appears to occur. However, the songs do not appear in my music library. According to the apple support pages it should.
I then click import CD (bottom right) to try again, importing appears to occur again, but still no tunes in my library. I have tried everything I can think of. That is why Im now here!!
What am I doing wrong?
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Is my Mac pro being cleaned and updated when the little wheel turns?

Is the little wheel a good thing when it's moving? It seems to be cleaning or updating.Or is someone trying to hack me? Whoever wants to answer I'll appreciate it:)

If you have a 5770 gpu there is no DVD to boot from (one reason to have Lion).
If you clone your system, you have a safety net, and CCC can do a file integrity checksum on copies.
If you reinstall, don't install on the same drive, keep it for backup.
Later you may need or want to do a 3-way write (writing zeroes is not guarantee it will map out bad sectors which can be one reason it never seemed to repair itself) and reinstalling on same drive may only hide and be a temporary fix.
To so backup clone so you can have another drive to boot from and run system maintenance (and you could do a clean install too, only needs 20GB to setup an emergency system). Or you have 10.7.5 or later and then you have Recovery Mode.
TimeMachine 101
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
http://www.apple.com/support/timemachine
Recovery Mode
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718
How to clone your system:http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120711_2-MacPro-internal-clone-ba ckup.html
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy

Cleaning and Updating Music Library's

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