ITunes Library Audit

My iTunes files are located in a specific partition of my HD (i.e. not organized by iTunes). I've been consciously paring down my library from time to time over the last year or so and I just came to the realization that when you delete files and get the message asking to move the files to the system Trash, it is apparently not always happening (or maybe I am messing with it in my method of deleting). So now I have many man files on my HD that have been removed from my iTunes - how do I go about painlessly finding these files on my HD so I can delete them and come to a result of having only the files in iTunes as the files I actually have on my HD and all unwanted files are gone from my HD and not just gone from iTunes? Thanks.

I don't know if this is the best way but you could try consolidating/organizing your library to a new location on the drive, if you have space. iTunes will copy any files which are referenced as tracks in its library database. Once you have done that you can get rid of the entire original media folder since anything in your library will (ummm..., should) have been copied to the other media folder.

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One Itunes library for Ipod and touch

I have a 5th generation Ipod and plan on upgrading to the Ipod touch. Can I keep my one itunes library for both devices or does each device have to have its own itunes account/library?

You can't do that.
And before you decide to store any music that you own on a computer at work, talk to your IT department. Many organizations do not permit it for legal reasons. Standard policies are that anything stored on company owned computers is the property of the company. It could not be legally stored on their machines unless you transfer the licenses and all copies, physical and digital, to the company, meaning you no longer own the music. If they were to be audited and could not prove that they own the music, they would be subject to copyright violation penalties. Just use your iPod when you're at the office if you want to listen to music.

Hello! I have one iTunes library on my iPod and one iTunes library on my computer. When I connect my iPod touch to my PC, however, I cannot find any files in my iPod except for pictures. How can I find the music files so I can add them to my iTunes?

Hello! I have one iTunes library on my iPod and one iTunes library on my computer. When I connect my iPod touch to my PC, however, I cannot find any files in my iPod except for pictures. How can I find the music files so I can add them to my iTunes?

You can't do that.
And before you decide to store any music that you own on a computer at work, talk to your IT department. Many organizations do not permit it for legal reasons. Standard policies are that anything stored on company owned computers is the property of the company. It could not be legally stored on their machines unless you transfer the licenses and all copies, physical and digital, to the company, meaning you no longer own the music. If they were to be audited and could not prove that they own the music, they would be subject to copyright violation penalties. Just use your iPod when you're at the office if you want to listen to music.

Bug Report - Some items in your iTunes Library ... because the file could not be found.

10.6 and this is still this is a problem?!?!?!?!
Not like this is an obscure issue only affecting a few noobs. Google returns 11,200 results on this issue!t'
Can we PLEASE at least allow the list of broken files to be dumped as a text file so I can find them manually! guess not,
I'll just have to get out a pencil and write down 100 songs to spend my saturday looking up and fixing. Or I could let my wife purchase 100 songs she already has whenever this comes up...
What's really infurating is that non-technical wife thinks this means she must go to the iTunes store and buy them again. Is it just coincidence that this only happens to songs that we ripped from the CD with iTunes? Hmmmm?....
what follows is for the programmers, please make sure this get's to the development group.
iTunes is the only music library manager, Media player was not even activated.
iTunes is configured to "Keep folder organized", "Copy files to folder when adding"
this has been a recurring issue since iTunes 9.x for us
The issue is persisted accross system and library rebuilds.
some of the same songs recurr but most of the time the list differs.
Library survived transfer to new computer and back for a system rebuild (new hdd) w/o this issue.
I'm guessing 100 songs is an arbitrary limit for error reporting.
Songs seem to get lost for the following reasons.
Track number added to filename
Spelling of some tags like Album, Artist, Title differ in iTunes library and the file path !!!!
Only seems to happen to mp3 files.
My suspicion is that iTunes is downloading meta data from the store and updating the mp3 tags and iTunes Music Library.xml then predicting the new file location without actually moving the file to that new location. I've enabled insert/update auditing on the NTFS folder to see if that provided any new info. I'm also capturing iTunes Music Library.xml so I can compare it to the new one WHEN this happens again and see if there is a pattern there.
Would love a bug number and feedback chanel on this.

The missing file thing happens when files are no longer where iTunes expects to find them. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the files, or that the drive they live on has had a change of drive letter. It is also possible that iTunes has changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place.
Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Ctrl-I to get info, then cancel when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the summary tab for the location that iTunes thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drive(s). Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, or a drive letter has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions.
Alternatively, as long as you can find a location holding the missing files in a relatively sensible structure, then you should be able to use my FindTracks script to reconnect them to iTunes .
Although you say you haven't used Media Player it can be raised as a background process by visiting enabled web sites. Possibly worth you reviewing this post: Getting iTunes & Windows Media Player to play nicely
jerunamuck wrote:
...My suspicion is that iTunes is downloading meta data from the store and updating the mp3 tags and iTunes Music Library.xml then predicting the new file location without actually moving the file to that new location. I've enabled insert/update auditing on the NTFS folder to see if that provided any new info. I'm also capturing iTunes Music Library.xml so I can compare it to the new one WHEN this happens again and see if there is a pattern there.
Unlike Windows Media player iTunes doesn't have a feature to automatically update tag data, although it will sometimes spot when a 3rd party program has (say during playback) and then update its own copy of the data. The iTunes (Music) Library xml file is provided for querying by third party software and is rewritten every time there is a change to the library, but is otherwise of no relevance to iTunes. The library is maintained in the iTunes Library.itl file. I suppose what could be happening is that iTunes issues a command to the file system to move a file based upon its tag, updates its knowledge of where the file is supposed to be, but the OS fails to move the file for some reason. Alternatively everything could go as planned, but iTunes could fail to get the updated copy of the library written out to disk so next time you start you get the previously stored locations.
I have ideas of my own about the best way to organise my media, but I'm quite familiar with the way iTunes does it. It might be interesting to see the details of one of the broken tracks, the path iTunes thinks it is at, and the actual path, in case there is anything that can be deduced.
Apple don't run an open bug tracking system so you won't be able to follow reports/progress based on a bug number. You can drop a line to iTunes Feedback or get a free Apple Developer account and submit a bug report report there.
tt2

How to synchronise window itune library and mac mini itune library

Hi,how can I synchronise Window 7 itune library and Mac mini itune library?
Meaning copy wholemedia library to the other itune(window itune/mac mini itune)
Thanks!

Thanks for your advice, but I did AB audition between Home sharing my other laptop itune and playing direct thru my mac mini (Direct playing thru mac mini SQ is better than playing Home sharing thru wifi) that's why I want to copy my full itune library from my other laptop into mac mini.
Blame it on my ears..

How can 2 family members who share an iTunes library both use iTunes match?

My wife and I both share an iTunes library on the same Macbook and both sync our phones to that computer. We each have our own Apple ID and we use a 3rd account for iCloud for Photostream. In ios5 we were able to both access the music library on our iPhones via iTunes match while signed in under our unique IDs. Now, it will only let one ID access the music on the phones. How can I get it to work like it used to, where we can both access the music while both continuing to be logged in under our own IDs on our own phones?

I am taking this slowly so I have not added my iTunes music to the new laptop yet until I figure out how to make it work. But I have just downloaded a digital copy of The Dark Knight and when I log on to my girlfriends user and open iTunes, the video is not there. When I log back into my user and connect her iPhone to iTunes, I am not allowed to drop in the movie. That is where I am at. I need to be able to add my stuff to her iPhone and her stuff to my iPhone without syncing and losing all info.

Ipod ITunes library help please!!!

Hi, i hope someone can help. I had to return my laptop to work and it contained my ITunes library (i have spent a fortune). I thought that i had stored all the purchased songs on a memory stick but when i put this into my new laptop it won't work. I have all the songs still on the Ipod and was hoping that i could somehow tranfer them from the Ipod to the laptop to create the same ITunes library again. I could kick myself now for not getting it done properly, can anyone give me a glimmer of hope?

You can use one of the many 3rd party programs that copy music from the iPod to the computer.
One of the most recommended is Yamipod. This is a free program that transfers music from iPod back to the computer. However, it does not transfer playcounts/ratings etc.
Another free program is Pod Player.
SharePod is also freeware.
If you want to recover just the structure of playlists from the iPod (and not the actual song files themselves), there's iRepo for Windows. which I understand has this feature along with all the standard features for these programs.
iPodRip also has the feature enabling you to reconstruct playlists.
There is also CopyTrans. This does preserve ratings/playcounts etc if those are important to you but this program is not free. It also supports video transfer.

How do you delete duplicate songs from your iPhone that do not show up in your iTunes library?

everytime i purchase songs on itunes and sync them to my iphone 4, the songs downloads twice. one as the actual song, and the second one doesnt do anything. when you click on it, it just skips to the next song and doesnt play anything. also this second song has this cirlce dot thing next to it when i am scrolling through my songs in my music...so how do i get rid of this second download? its really annoying to have and it wont let me delete it off my phone. alsoooo since it doesnt show up in my itunes library, i cant delte it off there either! HELP PLEASE

On the springboard, locate the app you want to delete. For this example, I’ll use WeatherBug.
Tap and hold down the icon of the application you want to delete. After a few seconds your screen will start to “wiggle” and an X will appear next to each of the apps you’ve installed via the App Store.
Tap the X next to the icon of the app you want to remove. When prompted, selectDelete.
And now it’s gone.
If the application is listed in your iTunes Applications as well, you’ll want to remove it from there – or else it will re-install the next time you sync. Alternately you can keep the app in your iTunes Applications, and set iTunes not to sync all applications, just the ones you want to keep. See the Applications tab of your device the next time it’s connected in iTunes for syncing options.
http://www.simplehelp.net/2008/07/12/how-to-delete-apps-from-your-ipod-touch-or- iphone/

Having a problem with eBooks in my iTunes library.

As the title says, I'm having some problems with the iTunes library not reflecting what's actually on the disk.
I add the ebook and it seems to add ok. The file gets consolidated into /mymusic/books under the author correctly, but the book is missing from the library. The book is in ePub format, and seems to have the right file extension and shows up as a file of "ePub" type in windows explorer.
Any ideas? Is there a way to re-build the library or a portion of it?

Hi tony paine,
Welcome to the Support Communities!
The article below may be able to help you with this.
Click on the link to see more details and screenshots.
iCloud: Keeping the Junk folder consistent between iCloud Mail and OS X Mail
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4911
Cheers,
- Judy

How can I get all music "tags" to transfer when transferring an iTunes library?

OK, here's my situation: I have accumulated about 250GB of music on iTunes on a laptop running Windows 7. The hard drive was running out of room, and I wanted to upgrade computers. So I bought a Mac Book with 1TB of hard drive space.
To transfer my library (which includes about equal parts iTunes purchases and imported CDs), I copied the entire iTunes folder onto an external hard drive, and then used the "add folder" function on iTunes to add the entire library to my new computer. I knew I would lose all data such as last played, most played, etc. And I knew from past experience that merely transferring the iTunes folder, including the iTunes library file, to the new computer hard drive (without using the "add folder to library" function) would not mean that the new computer would automatically behave as if the exact same library from the old computer was on the new computer. I hope I am explaining this right.
My problem/question is: many of the music files came over without some of the tags that were on the files in the old computer. This happened with respect to some, but not all, of the imported CD files. (I had used the MP3 format when I ripped these.) The song titles are still there, but many of the tracks say "unknown album" for that artist or, worse, just say "unknown album" AND "unknown artist." Because I have accumulated so much music over the years, it would take me quite a while to re-tag all he music files with all the missing info. Again, I'm lucky to have the files, and my iPods containing the music have not yet been synced to the new computer, so I could just manually check what I had on the old iPods and re-add/re-tag the files that were problems. I know having such a large folder could itself be the problem. But adding folders to the computer one at a time does not seem to help, as the "unknown" issue keeps happening even then.
So my conclusions are that one of the following has happened: either there is another way to import a large library that I should try (Apple migration assistant, maybe?), or I somehow made the transfer from the old computer onto the external hard drive in the wrong way and I'm stuck with things as they are (which would not be terrible, just inconvenient) or there is some limitation in the software of music services that results in many "unknowns" showing up. These were not obscure records, and iTunes/Gracenote recognized 99% of them just fine when I imported them, but I remember from using Windows Media Player that it was pretty hit-or-miss at times in terms of the right tags being assigned to songs.
Yes, I probably have spent way too much time over the years on my music. But if there is something I can learn from this, I'd be happy to hear about it, either to fix things easily now or the next time I transfer music. (Again, all the files had all the correct tags on my old computer, before I copied them.) I thank anyone who replies very much, in advance!

Just to update: the solution above works. I had tried to "import" all my files into the new computer rather than just copying and pasting the old iTunes folder into the new computer. This second, easier, solution is much, much better than re-importing all the songs. Seems like those little files included in an existing iTunes folder are very, very important! Without them, I would have had hundreds and hundreds of "unknown" files to re-tag. As it was, when I copied and pasted the existing iTunes folder into the new computer and opened iTunes, all the files were there, complete with all the date added/date played/number of plays/etc. information from my old computer. (For some reason, this didn't work when I transferred from PC to PC, but that was several years ago and not a transfer to a Mac.) I did seem to lose album artwork for a number of albums I had imported rather than purchased, and there was other cleanup to do on a small percentage of files. But that was a vry small amount of work compared to re-tagging from scratch. Thanks again for your help.

When i double click itunes it doesn't open it just comes up with an error saying " The itunes library.itl file cannot be found or created. The default location for this file is in the 'itunes' folder in the 'music' folder". How can i fix this?

When i double click itunes it doesn't open it just comes up with an error saying " The itunes library.itl file cannot be found or created. The default location for this file is in the 'itunes' folder in the 'music' folder. How can i fix this problem?

Anyone can help to advice how to solve this issue ?

How can I copy mp3 files from my Itunes library to an SD card for use in a non-apple phone?

How can I copy mp3 files from my Itunes library to an SD card for use in a non-apple phone? I can physically copy the tunes as mp3's but the phone does not seem to be able to play all of them. Do I need to copy an entire album or can I just pick & choose individual songs? The phone is question is an LG running who knows what for an operating system.

AAC is Advanced Audio Coding. Basically it's a format that sounds better than MP3 but doesn't take up as much space as a lossless format (like you'd have on a CD). More than likely you've had that encoding turned on when you ripped your music into itunes (it's the default encoder). Therefore your LG phone won't play them.
You need to turn off the AAC format by going to the iTunes menu, Preferences, General (at the top), then clicking the "Import Preferences" button. Change the AAC Encoder to MP3 Encoder. After that you'll have to make MP3 copies of your songs by right clicking them and selecting "Create MP3 Version." You'll get a copy of the song that should transfer to your SD card and have MP3 encoding. Hopefully your phone will play that.

How do I transfer my ITunes Library from one computer account to another on the same computer?

I use an outdated Mac OS X version 10.5.8 and since it is outdated, my web browsers like Safari and Google Chrome will no longer use Java or any other software that allows you to go on sites like youtube or any other sites (which is mostly everything) that use Java/Javascript. Anyway, i made another account on the SAME computer and Safari seems to be working fine on that computer account. My question is if I can transfer my WHOLE ENTIRE ITunes Library to my other computer account so I can use my ITunes on that account comfortably, like transfer music and what not. PLEASE ANSWER!!!!!!!!!!!! i have been dealing with this for years and have never seen anyone else with my same problem

Move it to the /Users/Shared/ folder and then into the new account's home folder.
(87509)

Making an iTunes library protected against ripping onto CD, listen only

Hi there
we have a security issue with itunes. We are a secure college within an HMP&YOI and we use 16 imacs in two rooms. We have installed the same master music library (currently 8500 tunes)on each machine and all students have access to it under their own account.
Our problem is this. 1 (How) is it possible to make a library read only, i.e. so it is not burnable onto a CD, for copyright protection. We want the lads to be able to hear the music without being able to 'rip' it to CD.
2. Is it possible to split the library into two libraries, making the content of one burnable and the content of the second not burnable. This way we can offer them instrumentals and original titles for burning and commercial copyright protected titles for listening only.
NB None of the content has been downloaded from the itunes store.
Your help on this matter would be very much appreciated.
Mark Anderson
Music dept
HMP & YOI Ashfield

Hi Patrick
Your solution to the problem seemed to be the answer but I now have another problem: not all the macs in the music room can 'see' i.e. share the new intel mac.
They are all connected via a Belkin switch using ethernet and sharing is enabled in all machines. Some of the iSite white iMacs can be seen by the new intel mac but they cannot 'see' the new intel mac. How can an ethernet connection work only one way ? We are using standard ethernet two way cable. All machines are running 10.5.3 apart from the new mac which is happy running 10.4.11.
If I could get all the macs in the room to 'see' the new intel machine, then we could run the intel machine as the Master iTunes Library and share it as you suggest 'read-only' to the other machines.
Has anyone any suggestions as to why this is happening ? Is there something other than turning sharing on in system prefs that one has to do to enable two communication between all machines ?
Thanks
Marco

Sharing an iTunes Library across multiple user account and a network.

Sharing an iTunes Music Library across multiple user accounts.
Hello Everybody!
Firstly, this was designed to be run in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. It will not work with earlier versions of Mac OS X! Sorry.
Here's a handy tip for keeping your hard drive neat and tidy, it also saves space, what in effect will be done is an iTunes music library will be shared amongst multiple users on the same machine. There are advantages and disadvantages to using this method.
• Firstly I think it might be worthwhile to state the advantages and disadvantages to using this approach.
The advantages include:
- Space will be saved, as no duplicate files will occur.
- The administrator will be able to have complete control over the content of the iTunes library, this may be useful for restricting the content of the Library; particularly for example if computer is being used at and education institution, business or any other sort of institution where things such as explicit content would be less favorable.
- The machine will not be slowed by the fact that every user has lots of files.
The disadvantages to this system include.
- The fact that the account storing the music will have to be logged in, and iTunes will have to be active in that account.
- If the account housing the music is not active then nobody can use the iTunes library.
- There is a certain degree of risk present when an administrator account must be continually active.
- Fast User Switching must be enabled.
Overview:
A central account controls all music on the machine/network, this is achieved by storing iTunes files in a public location as opposed to in the user's directory. In effect the system will give all users across the machine/network access to the same music/files without the possibility of files 'doubling up' because two different users like the same types of music. This approach saves valuable disk space in this regard and may therefore prove to be useful in some situations.
This is a hearty process to undertake, so only follow this tutorial if you're willing to go all the way to the end of it.
Process:
Step 1:
Firstly, we need to organize the host library, I tidied mine up, removing excess playlists, random files, things like that. this will make thing a bit easier in the later stages of this process.
Once the library is tidied up, move the entire "iTunes" folder from your Home directory to the "//localhost" directory (The Macintosh HD) and ensure that files are on the same level as the "Applications", "Users", "Library" and "System" directories; this will ensure that the files in the library are available to all users on the machine (this also works for networks)
Optionally you can set the ownership of the folder to the 'administrator' account (the user who will be hosting the library.), you may also like to set the permissions of 'you can' to "Read & Write" (assuming that you are doing this through the user who will host the library); secondly you should set the "Owner" to the administrator who will be hosting the library and set their "access" to "Read & Write" (this will ensure that the administrator has full access to the folder). The final part of this step involves setting access for the "Others" tab to "Read Only" this will ensure that the other users can view but not modify the contents on the folder.
Overview:
So far we have done the following steps:
1. Organized the host library.
2. Placed the iTunes directory into a 'public' directory so that other users may use it. (this step is essential if you plan on sharing the library across multiple accounts on the same machine. NOTE: this step is only necessary if you are wanting to share you library across multiple accounts on the same machine, if you simply want to share the music across a network, use the iTunes sharing facility.
3. set ownership and permissions for the iTunes music folder.
Step 2:
Currently the administrator is the only user who can use this library, however we will address this soon. In this step we will enable iTunes music sharing in the administrator's account, this will enable other users to access the files in the library.
If you are not logged in as the administrator, do so; secondly, open iTunes and select "Preferences" from the "iTunes" menu, now click the "Sharing" tab, if "share my library on my local network" is not checked, the radio buttons below this will now become active, you may choose to share the entire libraries contents, or share only selected content.
Sharing only selected content may be useful if their is explicit content in the library and minors use the network or machine that the library is connected to.
If you have selected "share entire library" go to Step 3, if you have selected share "share selected playlists" read on.
After clicking "share selected playlists" you must then select the playlists that you intend to share across your accounts and network. Once you have finished selecting the playlists, click "OK" to save the settings.
Overview:
In this step we:
1. Enabled iTunes sharing in the administrator's account, now, users on the local network may access the iTunes library, however, users on the same machine may not.
Step 3:
Now we will enable users on the same machine to access the library on the machine. This is achieved by logging in as each user, opening iTunes, opening iTunes preferences, and clicking "look for shared music". now all users on the machine may also access the library that the administrator controls.
This in effect will mean that the user will not need to use their user library, it will be provided to them via a pseudo network connection.
As a secondary measure, I have chosen to write a generic login script that will move any content from the user's "Music/iTunes/iTunes Music" directory to the trash and then empties the user's trash.
This is done through the use of an Automator Application: this application does the following actions.
1. Uses the "Finder" action "Get Specified Finder Items"
1a. The user's "~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music" folder
2. Uses the "Finder" action "Get Folder Contents"
3. Uses the "Finder" action "Move to Trash"
4. Uses the "Automator" action "Run AppleScript"
4a. with the following:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder"
empty trash
end tell
return input
end run
IMPORTANT: Once the script is adapted to the user account it must be set as a login item. in order to keep the script out of the way i have placed it in the user's "Library" directory, in "Application Support" under "iTunes".
Overview:
Here we:
1. Enabled iTunes sharing in the user accounts on the host machine, in effect allowing all users of the machine to view a single iTunes library.
2. (Optional) I have created a login application that will remove any content that has been added to user iTunes libraries, this in effect stops other users of the machine from adding music and files to iTunes.
Step 4:
If it is not already enabled, open system preferences and enable Fast User Switching in Accounts Options.
Summary:
We have shared a single iTunes library across multiple user account, while still allowing for network sharing. This method is designed to save space on machines, particularly those with smaller hard drives.
I hope that this hint proves to be helpful and I hope everybody will give me feedback on my process.
regards,
Pete.
iBook G4; 60GB Hard Drive, 512MB RAM, Airport Extreme Mac OS X (10.4.6) iWork & iLife '06, Adobe CS2, Final Cut Pro. Anything and Everything!!!

how to share music between different accounts on a single computer

ITunes Library Audit

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