# of Files in iTunes Music Folders Don't Agree with # of Songs

I regularly monitor the properties of my iTunes folders to ensure that my two computers and backup drives all agree. Recently, for the first time ever the number of files in iTunes Music / artist & album folders did not agree with the number of songs in them.
I tracked it down just artist folders starting with 'A'. The additional files were invisible even with 'show hidden files' selected. There were typically two per album folder and they took up storage space. A security scan did not show a problem. I got rid of them by transferring the music files to new artist & album folders and deleting the ones with the mystery files.
Does anyone know what could have caused this? I am running Windows 7 64b and have had to use the Task Manager to close iTunes a couple of times when it froze. Thanks.

+"And i have done a "Consolidate library". Has anyone else done the same check and noticed similar discrepancies? Are there possibly some files in the iTunes folder that do not end up in the iTunes program?"+
Consolidate will not help; it only looks at songs that are already in the library. Run File > Add Folder to Library on your iTunes folder. That will try to pick up any songs that are in the folder but not in the library. It will however skip any file that is not compatible with iTunes.

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Can I have two identical iTunes Music Folders for my Laptop and my desktop

I have an iMac Flower Power, 20GB of HD running OSX 10.2.8 as my desktop, 2 users, with an 80GB External HD (Firewire). I also have my new MacBook. Right now all my music and pictures are in my MacBook and I have BUps of everything in my external HD. My problem is that when I'm away, my wife can't listen to our music with the iMac 'cause I have all the files (iTunes is using the Library located at my Laptop). My questions are... Can I have 2 identical iTunes Music Folders, one in the XHD and one in my MacBook? How can I do to have both Folders sycronized so when I add music being away with my Laptop, then when I get back home the "home" Folder gets updated with the new music or viceversa? I have an iPod but I want to have the ability to also change the playlists in my iPod when I'm away. I hope this is not too hard to do.

This is what I did: First, I backed up my iTunes Music Folders. Then, I disconnected my xternal HD from my iMac and connected it to my MacBook where I had my iTunes Music Folder. Then, I copied the whole iTunes Music Folder to my xternal HD. Then I ejected the xHD from my MacBook, and connected back it to my iMac and restart. When the iMac was up I sent to the trash all the content of the iTunes Folders in my iMac, there is one in the root directory /Documents/iTunes and another in /Users/Home/Music/iTunes. Be aware that you need to "clean" the iTunes Folder which includes the iTunes Music Folder. Then I went to the xHD and copied the iTunes Library file (the data file) to /Users/Home/Music/iTunes Folder in my iMac, then open iTunes. After doing that you should be able to open your iTunes program in your desktop without having your laptop conected to your network. The only thing is that, in order to keep both libraries identical, you have to update podcasts in both computers every day, and import CD's in both computers every time you add one to your library, if you want to have the same thing in both computers. There might be another way to keep them both syncronized but I'm still searching for it. Make sure after you have your iTunes running, to go to Preferences/Advance, and set up you iTunes Music Folder Location exactly where you want it. I hope this help you guys. Let me know if you need clarification in any of this.
MacBook Black Mac OS X (10.4.7) 2GHz Intel Core Duo, 1GB RAM

Need help merging & consolidating 2 iTunes Music Folders on the same drive

I have2 iTunes Music Folders on the hard drive of my iMac. Each folder is 80+ gigs and there are many duplicates in each folder. Currently iTunes is pulling songs from each folder. I would like to combine the contents of each folder in to one. What is the best way to do this, with out making a complete mess of my iTunes library.

Natalie Beresford, "Multiple iPods/iTunes Installations", 04:04am Nov 26, 2004 CDT

HT201272 my songs wouldnt play on my ipod so i deleted the songs on the ipod and went to the purchased section in itunes to recover like i did with another song and my purchase history i blank, how can i get them back?

my songs wouldnt play on my ipod so i deleted the songs on the ipod and went to the purchased section in itunes to recover like i did with another song and my purchase history i blank, how can i get them back?

Maybe you have multiple accounts that's why your purchase history is empty. You can try checking for possible Apple IDs that's existing for you or you can ask for assistance from support.
http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/

Everytime I start itunes he ask me to agree with the terms of license

Why everytime I start itunes he ask me to agree with the terms of license?
Also, why itunes lost the synchronization configuration I defined for each of my product?

McAfee AntiVirus by any chance? See the thread Why does iTunes delete my itunesprefs.xml?
tt2

HT204382 I don't agree with this

I don't agree with this. Any Vid's that ran on my PPC PB now won't run on this Intel iMac. That's a problem.

Patrick Forbes wrote:
What's wrong with that new Quicktime that it won't work?
Apple either dropped support for your older media formats in Quicktime or your PPC machine has codecs installed or a automatic installer (like Perian) that made it appear Quicktime can play just about anything.
https://support.apple.com/kb/ht3775
Also a PPC machine only has 10.5, the newer Quicktime on'y supports Intel Mac's with 10.6 or later.
So it's possible that something changed in Quicktime and the codecs it's natively supports.
Perian is no longer being attended too, Quicktime might not be supporting older codecs, your only solution is to install VLC Player for the Mac, hope it works and live with it as there is nothing else anymore.
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
No pebkac's please.

ITunes Music Library and iTunes Music Folders Contain Different File

I recently lost all of the music off of my iPod because of a defective hard drive. I have now reloaded it all and bought an external hard drive to back-up my music (which music I either purchased from iTunes or copied from CDs I own). When I open iTunes Music Library all of my content is present and it is all on my iPod as well. When I look at iTunes Music Files on my C drive - not all of my content is present (for example, only 2 of 3 Billy Joel cds show up). Thus, when I attempt to back-up, I am not capturing everything that is in my iTunes Music Library. Is there a way to synch these, or is there a reason that they are not the same. Again, in the case of the Billy Joel example, all three discs were owned by me so presumably there is no source issue.
Thanks

Assuming that you're using the external drive strictly for back-up purposes and keeping "working" copies of your music on the C drive, you can use the Advanced menu > Consolidate Library option to make sure that the entire contents of your Music Library is placed in the iTunes Music folder - default location C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\My Documents\My Music\iTunes .

Compare two iTunes music folders and eliminate duplicates

Through various Mac upgrades (MBA to Mini-both with Yosemite), as well as HD storage changes, I've ended up with 3-4 music folders with 80-95% correlation among them. They are not exactly alike, however, and I fear losing some good toons if I don't pick a "master" and transfer missing files in other folders into the master, so I end up with all my tunes in one music folder.
Can anyone point me to an AppleScript or other alternative that will allow me to semi-automate my search process? I've been doing it manually, and I've got about 4-5 weekends of part time efforts into it with no end in sight - boring!
Thanks in advance to anyone with more advanced knowledge and experience than I.

What exactly is the scenario? Do you already have multiple media folders but only one iTunes library? If that is the case, consolidating should get iTunes to put all the files listed in that library in the main active media folder and the others can be deleted (or better yet, put on an archive drive, then delete and see if everything is as it should be).
I use an older iTunes so I can't give you a step-by-step in new iTunes. Here's some references. I guess "consolidate" is now called organize.
iTunes 11 for Mac: Change where your iTunes files are stored - http://support.apple.com/kb/PH12165 - Unfortunately this is misnamed. It should say "Change where your media files but not where your library files are stored" - more information at: https://discussions.apple.com/message/22026652 - and steps 5-8 in https://discussions.apple.com/message/24491967 -- you don't need to actually change it from default, just ensure everything end up in one folder.
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
Sept. 2010, Consolidate selected content - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589812 and April 2014, https://discussions.apple.com/message/25414357#25414357
turingtest2 post on consolidating old and new iTunes library structure into one - https://discussions.apple.com/message/18327128

Can't see mp3 files in iTunes Music folder.

The artist and album folders are there under the main iTunes Music folder. They contain the album name and album images, but not the actual mp3 music files.
iTunes plays all the music fine. I just can't find the mp3 files in their folders in iTunes Music Folder.

hexonxonx,
Thanks for responding to my question. I'm trying to troubleshoot an audiobook that won't download from the iTunes store. It's part one of a two part audiobook. The second part downloaded properly, along with three other audiobooks.
iTunes support has given me two sets of instructions, neither which I can carry out.
The first set is to empty the Downloads folder and then empty the trash, and the second set to to empty the cache folder. Unfortunately, I can't find either folder. I also cannot find a folder labeled with the name of the audiobook that is hung up. If you have any further advice, I'd appreciate it.
Caoim

Number of files in iTunes Music folder compared to songs in iTunes program

Being a perfectionist and wanting everything to be 100% accurate, I went to Windows explorer and right clicked on the iTunes Music folder to see if the number of files reported agreed to the number in my iTunes program and hence on my iPod. Windows told me that the iTunes Music folder contained 2769 files. In the iTunes program it says 2724 songs (which i know includes Music videos of which there are 35). I also have 20 movies and 35 TV shows.
So, that is 2724 + 20 + 15 = 2759.
My iTunes folder therfore says i have 10 more files than my iTunes program says i have.
And i have done a "Consolidate library".
Has anyone else done the same check and noticed similar discrepancies? Are there possibly some files in the iTunes folder that do not end up in the iTunes program?
Many thanks for any light that can be thrown on this !

+"And i have done a "Consolidate library". Has anyone else done the same check and noticed similar discrepancies? Are there possibly some files in the iTunes folder that do not end up in the iTunes program?"+
Consolidate will not help; it only looks at songs that are already in the library. Run File > Add Folder to Library on your iTunes folder. That will try to pick up any songs that are in the folder but not in the library. It will however skip any file that is not compatible with iTunes.

How to move from 3 separated itunes music folders into one new hard discs??

So : i bought a new external 6TB thunderbolt hard disc (for extra speed for my huge library) and i copied from 3 other 2TB hard disc into there. I named the sub folder the same like an original. I thought it is enough to determine the new place of each in "media folder locations" and updated.... but its not working
What should i do? How will see the itunes these music folders like an originals??? I dont want to reimporting, because i dont want to loose all of my "date added, played etc" informations.
If I'm doing three partitions with folders, as were the old ones will work?
..or should i rewrite the iTunes Music Library.xml with text editor?
pls help me and thx for answering!!!!!
macbook pro/ osx 10.8.4 / itunes 11.0.4

Best to give the new iPad a different name. I assume you have purchased an iPad 2 or the next generation iPad which is just called "iPad"? If so, you can name the iPad 2 "Kens iPad 2" or "Kens iPad 3" since the new iPad just introduced is the 3rd generation.
The first time you connect your new iPad to iTunes on the computer used for syncing your existing iPad, you will be prompted to transfer the backup for your existing iPad to the new iPad, or set up the new iPad as a new iPad. Both must be followed by a sync with iTunes.
Each device has its own sync preferences with iTunes, which can be the same or different for each device synced with the same iTunes library and computer.

"Add a copy of this File to iTunes music folder when adding to library" ???

why on earth is this feature a feature???
now that i finally realized what i have been doing all this time... i see that i have 1000's of dupes eating up HD space.
obviously when i add a song to my library - i want it in the folder i have chosen to be my iTunes music folder -- d'uh!!!
that is precisely where i added the songs to!
so can someone help me understand why i did this?
what need did i have to click this preference?
i know i made this choice...
what i want to know is if there is a reason to click it that i am missing the boat on?
thanks

hi nysepete,
why on earth is this feature a feature???
this feature is for copying files into the iTunes music folder when you are dragging/openning files into your library.
let's say you have a song file on your desktop that you just downloaded from Internet. if you double click on it or simply drag it into the iTunes windows, iTunes will automatically copy this file into your music folder. then, you can delete the file on your desktop since a copy have been made and referenced by iTunes.
if however this option isn't activated, the iTunes library will instead referenced the files in it's current location, i.e. in this exemple on your desktop.
personally, I keep the option checked so when I need to add files to the library, I know the will be managed by iTunes and then simply send the original to the trash. unchecking this option is mostly for people that want to manage files themselves outside the iTunes Music folder.

Duplicate files in itunes music folder with title 1.mp3

Can anyone tell me why there might be duplicate files with this number in my music folder? I'm interested to know what might cause this to happen.

Any help here? This question has been bugging me for some time. It's hard to believe that this seemingly simple task / question is so difficult to find a solution for. Please - if you know a way, I'd love to clear some space from my itunes music folder.

New files in iTunes music folder

Hello...I made a change from a Windows computer to the iMac. I copied all my music files from my Windows computer to my external hard drive, and then copied from the external hard drive to my iTunes music folder. When I compared the info between my iTunes music folder, and the music files on my external hard drive, the iTunes music folder had more files. By looking through the files it looks like two extra files were added to each album folder....a folder.jpg file and a AlbumArtSmall.jpg file was created. I didn't have those files coming from my windows folder, how come they show up now? Are those two files necessary?

I have a few of these also - all from downloaded albums, which would either have been .zip or .rar files when they arrived on my desktop. This ring any mental bells with you? (I never questioned what they are, and I only imported the music files to iTunes).

Song files in iTunes Music folder but not iTunes itself

I have some song files in my Music folder that used to be in iTunes, but now they are gone from iTunes itself (they are still in the folder). When I drag the songs from the folder to iTunes, nothing happens and the songs are not added. Is there any way to fix this or do I have to re-install iTunes?

What format are they? Are they purchased content from the iTunes Store?
Some formats are not recognized by iTunes. Also, for obvious reasons, some are imported into the Video and Movie sections.
If you try to add purchased content before authorizing the computer, they may not show up.
Where did these files come from? Are they from a backup?

# of Files in iTunes Music Folders Don't Agree with # of Songs

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