ITunes Library Maintenance

I have mulitple copies of songs in my library following a move to a different drive, how do I remove the unreachable files in the library without having to do them all individually?

There are a few versions of a script to remove them for you; here's mine:
http://www.pobox.com/~teridon/itunesscripts/itunesremovenotfound.vbs
Right-click and "save as" to your Desktop, then double-click on the script to run it. It will remove all of the "unreachable" files.

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Music Library Maintenance on iTunes

Hi folks,
may be this was discussed before, if so please help me by providing links
I would like to maintain my music,podcasts(only the audio files and not the videos in iTunes library) in two different locations. I would like to use my external disk to maintain the entire library and keep some music that i am currently interested on my macbook pro.
Can someone tell me the best way to do this. My main criteria, here is that if i add new tracks in my laptop or make changes to any of the existing tracks(things like adding my own cover art, rating, lyrics, etc) i want it to be reflected in the library being maintained in the external disk.
One possible thing that comes to my mind is to maintain two seperate libraries on in the external disk and on on the notebook, but each time i edit a track in the notebook, it wouldnt reflect in the backup copy
Please guide me, thanks in advance.....

I keep my media collection on two separate drives. You just have to uncheck "keep my music organized" in preferences (or whatever it is called on the much newer version of iTunes than my version 7).
Drawbacks:
Your second drive has to be connected whenever you open itunes or else you'll get a lot of "!" because it cannot find the files. However, I have some archived files on a third drive I almost never plug in. I get the exclamation marks but I don't care because iTunes at least displays basic information and I know what I have in my archive collection too.
You lose some automatic functionality such as iTunes deleting files when you delete tracks, and iTunes neatly ordering things in folders, etc.
Advantages:
You can use multiple drives.
Your music gets ordered by how you do it (or not). I have my music ordered in some major folders by genre which is not how iTunes would do it if I let it.
On consolidation, the issue is if you start moving things around too much, especially between drives, then iTunes will lose track of it. Sometimes it is just easier to delete the lost tracks and then add them again from the new location. This isn't so good if you have lots of playlists (I have few) or use features such as "last played" or ratings. Consolidation helps you move tracks while maintaining their data integrity inside of iTunes. I've not used it because I have never let iTunes organize my music.

I am unable to synch music from selected playlists in my iTunes library onto my new iPod Classic, despite meticulously following the User Guide.

I just purchased an iPod Classic, and after making sure I had the latest ver. of iTunes on my Intel MacMini, printed out the User Guide and carefully began learning how to operate the iPod. My first step was to ensure I had manual control (vs. auto synch) because I want only selected songs and playlists on the iPod, not my whole iTunes Library.
On pg. 24 of the Guide is the topic "Synching music from selected playlists onto iPod Classic." Just what I wanted. OK, I selected iPod "in the source list" (aside: Shouldn't it be "in the device list?" I dispair of imprecision). This brought up the iPod Summary page, showing I had selected Open iTunes when connected and Manually manage music and videos. Next I clicked on the Music tab.
This presented me with Synch Music next to an empty check box. Below it, and entirely grayed out was:
Entire music library (showing a checked box)
Selected Playlists, artists, albums and genres (next to an unchecked box).
There's also a third grayed out item: Include music videos that is checked.
When I selected Synch Music, I got the message: "Are you sure you want to removed existing mlusic, movies and TV shows from the iPod and synch with this iTunes LIbrary? I selected Cancel because:
1. The grayed option Entire Music Library is checked, not mly preferred option of Selected playlists, artists, albums and genres. .
2. I can't find anywhere in the User Guide how to "Select the Playlists" I want to synch to my iPod. At present all I have in iTunes is my list of playlists in the left hand side bar.
OK, my first thought was the checked box in the iPod's Summary window: Manually manage music and videos. So I went there and unchecked it, which immediately brought up an alert to the effect "Are you sure you want to automatically synch your entire iTunes library, etc. etc...? I quickly cancelled. Thus, I seem to be in a Catch-22 situation.
So the questions are:
How do I resolve the Synch Music issue so I am assured only selected playlists will be sent to my iPod?
How do I create a list of playlists in my iTunes library to be transferred to my iPod?
How do I manually move a playlist in my iTunes library to my iPod's lists of playlists?
Any help much appreciated. Thanks to all.
John in the Pacific Northwest

For the immediately problem, you can shut down the computer and disconnect the iPod.
There may be a process (program) running on your computer in the background that continuously monitors mounted volumes for things like maintenance, data corruption, and malware. The iPod's storage is a mounted volume. If you know of any such program, such as an "anti-virus" utility, and it has settings that allow you to exclude certain volumes, you can set it to ignore the iPod "disk" when connected.
Also, if you are using automatic syncing (not the manual method) to load the iPod, and you have Enable disk use turned ON, turn it OFF. With Enable disk use turned OFF, iTunes only mounts the iPods disk when syncing, then immediately unmounts the disk. Thus, other processes you have running on your PC (not iTunes) will have less of a chance to make the disk "in use" and cause this problem. You won't even have to eject the iPod before disconnecting.

ITunes Library File Cannot be Saved. The Disk Cannot be Read From . . .

I use a MacBook Pro with a healthy battery. My iTunes songs are on a USB drive. The Database and XML files are on my MacBook. Power went out in my house and the USB drive shut off. The MacBook stayed up and running. Power came back, powered on the USB drive, open iTunes, and bang: This sorry error: iTunes Library File Cannot be Saved. The Disk Cannot be Read From or Written to.
The disks are healthy, did an fsck and ran disk verify/repair. No problems. Restart iTunes, same error. Obviously a corrupted Databse file. This wouldn't be a big deal if only the XML info would be useful and actually restore critical info such as play count and dates which is essential for the Not-So-Smart Playlist dependencies to work.
This is the third time I've been burned with corrupted iTunes "Database" files. I use "Database" in quotes because a true Database wouldn't crap out like this. It would be recoverable. It would understand a simple SQL "Where" statement. It would have a maintenance script and some means for recoverable backup beyond the lame process of copying the XML file. Or it would at least read in the info the XML file.
I am becoming disillusioned with iTunes and I'm beginning to yearn for my old Linux box running GTKPod which never failed me....

OK, here's an update - After doing the restore as mentioned having everything seemingly work, I erroniously downloaded the iTunes 7.4 & 7.4.1 updates. Now, about 80% of library is non-responsive, ie: shows up in iTunes, but clicking to play does nothing at all. the other 20% of my library plays, but it's not the song it is supposed to be playing. For example, clicking on a song from say, ABBA prodes a wonderful Gorillaz track :-/ (The same Gorillaz track which will not play if I select it...)
I reiterate: WE NEED A MEANS TO BACKUP OUR LIBRARIES RELIABLY!!!!!!!!!!

Need to move iTunes library from external hard drive to Mac desktop.

I moved my iTunes library from my Mac desktop to an external hard drive. I needed to do this so the Apple Store could do maintenance work on my computer and I didn't want to lose my files. How do I move the iTunes library back to my Mac desktop?

Quick answer if you use iTunes' default preferences settings: Copy the entire iTunes folder (and in doing so all its subfolders and files) intact to the other drive. Open iTunes and immediately hold down the option (alt) key (shift on Windows) so you get a prompt to select a library, then guide it to the 'iTunes Library.itl' file in the moved iTunes folder.
If you put the copied iTunes folder in the default location of Macintosh HD > Users > *User Name* > Music then you don't even need to start with the option key held down, iTunes will automatically look for it there. (Make sure there isn't anything already in the iTunes folder there that you want to keep since you will be replacing it with the one you are moving.)

"Ghost" copies of iTunes Library on hard drive?

I was just doing some routine file maintenance when I discovered that I have two directories of music on my hard drive. The first directory is exactly where my iTunes 9.1 preferences is set to store my media libary: Users/Home/Music.
The second directory that I just discovered, is located in Users/Home/Documents. It has a name which appears to be some kind of binary gibberish, about 48 characters long plus dashes. Inside, though, is a nearly complete copy of my iTunes directory. (My iTunes library is 115 GB; this directory is about 100 GB). The "Gibberish" directory has files inside of it that have been modified as of today, so it isn't a totally dead archive or something. The folders inside this document start, seemingly randomly, in the D's (with "Daryl Hall and John Oates"). A quick check shows that only one of the two Hall & Oates songs I purchased from the iTunes store are in this directory. (Both songs are in the other directory). There are probably other such anomalies but I haven't found them yet.
Anyone have any idea what's up here? I'm afraid to delete the gibberish directory and lose part or all of my library. It has an /iTunes sub-directory in it that includes files like iTunes Music Library, iTunes Library Extras, etc. These files have been modified today (minutes ago in fact). In the other "normal" directory, there is what appears to be an identical folder, and the files modified time exactly matches the files in the gibberish directory.
Thanks for any help...

Nobody?

I just bot a new ipodnano and synched my playlists from my itunes library. However, I am unable to disconnect as it says the the ipodnano contains files that are in use by "another application". What is it talking about and how do I disconnect?

How do I disconnect./eject my new ipodnano after I had synched my playlists (from itunes library on my computer).
Itunes message - CANNOT BE EJECTED BECAUSE IT CONTAINS FILES THAT ARE IN USE BY ANOTHER APPLICATION:.
This is after my synch was succesfull and it says I can disconnect now - but it won't let me.
Keith

For the immediately problem, you can shut down the computer and disconnect the iPod.
There may be a process (program) running on your computer in the background that continuously monitors mounted volumes for things like maintenance, data corruption, and malware. The iPod's storage is a mounted volume. If you know of any such program, such as an "anti-virus" utility, and it has settings that allow you to exclude certain volumes, you can set it to ignore the iPod "disk" when connected.
Also, if you are using automatic syncing (not the manual method) to load the iPod, and you have Enable disk use turned ON, turn it OFF. With Enable disk use turned OFF, iTunes only mounts the iPods disk when syncing, then immediately unmounts the disk. Thus, other processes you have running on your PC (not iTunes) will have less of a chance to make the disk "in use" and cause this problem. You won't even have to eject the iPod before disconnecting.

The iTunes Library cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50)

I updated iTunes from 7.2 to 7.3 using Software Update and all went well except for one thing, now when I launch iTunes it rebuilds the iTunes library each time I launch iTunes. The other thing is that once it rebuilds the library it displays a warning; "The iTunes Library cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-50).
I downloaded the standalone updater to no avail. I have also repaired permissions using disk utility - no luck.
Background info.
A week ago or so, while I still had iTunes 7.2 I cleaned all my user and system caches, ran all the maintenance scripts and repaired permissions. I used MainMenu, a third party app that lives in the menubar, to perform these functions and faithfully followed all the instructions to restart once or twice depending on the routine and closing all my apps accordingly while doing these maintenance routines etc.
I noticed one thing after this, my iTunes icon had turned into a generic app icon. Knowing iTunes 7.3 was a slated release this Friday I knew the icon issue would resolve itself after the update from 7.2.
What can I do to fix this? Please help.

I somehow got through the -50 error but a few days later podcasts when downloading, would crash iTunes 7.3 altogether.
There was a post here somewhere and I apologise to the poster in advance but I am unable to relocate it.
Here is the solution that was proposed and it seems to have worked for me.
Read the following in its entirety before proceeding:
1 The first thing I did was unsubscribe to all my podcasts by selecting them all and clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of the iTunes window.
2 Quit iTunes
3 Navigate to YourHomeFolder/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts and move the Podcasts folder to your desktop or some other convenient location.
4 Open iTunes and re-subscribe to all your podcasts.**
5 Once all the podcasts finish downloading navigate to the Podcasts folder sitting on your desktop and move its' contents back to the folder you originally moved them out of. If you had setup the iTunes preferences to keep all your podcasts after they download be careful not to overwrite items as you move them back from the desktop/Podcasts folder to the new Podcasts folder.*
**In my case, the list of podcasts in the iTunes window got kind of messy, I mean some podcasts displayed the GET button when even though they had already downloaded or I already had them on my system and other small things like that - this was the result of re-subscribing. You can select those that you don't want to GET and simply delete them.
*You may have to move one podcast folder's contents at a time, again be careful not to overwrite. If you return things carefully you will have no problems.
iTunes 7.3 has behaved perfectly ever since.
I hope this helps. If my instructions are confusing please chime back.
By the way, command (apple key) clicking any of the collapse triangles both in the finder and in iTunes will expand or collapse all items, this will come in handy as you define anything that might have gone funny after re-subscribing.

Missing itunes library

So I followed the directions on transfering my itunes library to an external device. In the blink of an eye my entire library disappeared and there was no back up on the hard drive. HELP!!!!

John hello,
To help we need more information ....
At minimum, include:
The operating system you're using and its version.
The names and versions of other relevant products. iPod model etc.
A complete description of computer and connected peripherals.
Tip: a good description of your computer includes how much RAM and how much free hard disk space you have.
Have you done any system maintenance either before or after updating iTunes ?
Is your iPod running the latest software update ?
Come back John and someone will look at it for you.... TP

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 ?

ITunes Library Maintenance

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