Importing from Media Player

Question

I'm terrible with computers...I have my entire music library on my windows media player and now want to switch everything to iTunes.  How do I go about this?  I did read somwhere that any files I import will only be copies - the original to remain wher it is.  Is this true?  Won't that mean that I then have 2 music libraries?  Won't that take up unnecessary space on my computer?  Seems there should be a way to use one app or the other, right? 
Thanks for any help

Answer 1

It is possible to end up with one set of tracks (i.e. files) shared between iTunes and Windows Media Player but you will need to do things a certain way to achieve this. First we need to go over some things to prepare the way.
While iTunes can import MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, and WMA, it cannot use WMA (it has to convert them) and even WAV and AIFF will have certain drawbacks in this scenario. You also need to indicate whether any of the music in your Windows Media Player library is protected by DRM. We will assume for the moment none of your tracks are protected by DRM.
So out of the list of formats above, we really can only consider either MP3, AAC, or Apple Lossless. You then need to decide whether you want the best possible audio quality or you are happy to accept a lower quality but to make life a bit simpler. If for example all your music is from original audio CDs and you want to keep the full quality of the original audio CD then you should choose to use Apple Lossless. Therefore suitable formats to use are Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, or WMA (lossless). Of these the only one that can be fully shared with no problems between iTunes and Windows Media Player is Apple Lossless. As I mentioned earlier AIFF and WAV have drawbacks in that WAV does not support using meta-tags, and WMP cannot read meta-tags in AIFF files. It is however possible to get WMP to read meta-tags in Apple Lossless files.
So, if your music is coming from CDs you should use ideally Apple Lossless. If your music is currently in WAV or WMA (lossless) format you will need to convert it to Apple Lossless, this is possible with various Mac or Windows utilitities, but you may find that it is going to be just as easy to reimport in to iTunes from the original audio CDs.
If however your music is currently in a lossey format like MP3, or AAC, or WMA (lossey) then for MP3 or AAC keep it in the same format as currently, and for WMA (lossey) iTunes when it imports the tracks will convert them to AAC and should also convert the meta-tags.
So you will eventually end up with all the music in iTunes in either Apple Lossless or MP3 or AAC format. Windows Media Player 12 (for Windows 7) can play MP3 or AAC as standard but needs a little help to play Apple Lossless. To add Apple Lossless support to WMP you need to first install a suitable DirectShow filter written by Milenko Mitrovic at my request and based on a solution I devised. Due to Windows 7 moving to a new style of codec, I find the easiest way to do this is to install the Shark codec pack for Windows 7 as available here http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html and then activate the support for Apple Lossless.
In theory that should be all that is needed as Apple Lossless uses the same file format as AAC, the same file extension as AAC, and the same meta-tag format as AAC, which WMP12 already supports. Unfortunately Microsoft willfully sabotaged things. We therefore need to also install a plugin for WMP12 which will trick WMP12 in to accepting Apple Lossless files as if they were AAC files. See http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=75123&view=findpost&p=75 9658 and download the beta version of WMP Tag Plus.
With both the Shark codec pack, and the WMP Tag Plus plugin installed, WMP12 will be both able to play Apple Lossless and to allow adding Apple Lossless to the WMP music library, and be able to read the meta-tags from Apple Lossless files, including embedded artwork.
So we have now (in theory) got all the music in iTunes in a format that will also be compatible with WMP (MP3 or AAC or Apple Lossless), we have if needed added Apple Lossless support for WMP. The final thing we need to do is to get WMP to use the same files as iTunes. Ideally you start off with WMP being empty, you then simply tell WMP to add the iTunes music library folder and it will add them to its library without having to copy, duplicate, or convert the tracks. It should even in theory automatically spot new tracks when added via iTunes and add them automatically as well.