HT1420 How can I merge one iTunes account into my other one. I have a work laptop that I've had one library one (work email address) and I also have a home library iTunes account (gmail address) but I want it all under one accnt.

Question

I have two iTunes libraries (one under my gmail address and one under my work email address). My work laptop is usually how I access my account and in the past 3 months that laptop has had to be replaced twice, causing me to redo my entire library. Each time, the laptop was not deauthorized, of course and I had to go through all that rigamarole. I have all of my music backed up and am able to also retrieve anything purchased over the years from the cloud, but once i get it set up and authorize the laptop to both of the email address accounts, some of the items that are in the gmail library will not play. It says that it cannot locate. At one point, a friend spent a lot of time getting it to finally recognize everything (a lot of that music that said cannot locate was from burned CD's or mp3s downloaded, not purchased from iTunes). So there is that issue and I'm not sure how to fix that.
The other thing is that I would like to have ALL of my items under one iTunes account (my personal gmail) in the event that i no longer work for this company and have no access to that email address as it will be turned off. How can I remove one email and merge all purchases over to the gmail address account?
Thanks!

Answer 1

You cannot combine actual accounts (as in iTunes Store account).
You can combine the music into a single iTunes collection on a computer.  There's many ways to do this.   There are some utilities to assist with keeping maximum metadata (ratings, playcount, etc.) but I am not familiar with Windows platform ones to do this, though I am sure a web search of merge iTunes library would uncover some.