Organising iTunes Directories

Hi
I've recently ripped some old presentations that I had on CD into my iTunes folder.
I wanted to keep these talks out of my general music folders and so was hoping to keep the talks in a second, seperate folder similar to the music one.
Is this even possible? If so, how would I do it?

You can create multiple iTunes libraries and put these files in a new separate library, however you can only have one iTunes library active at a time. If I remember you do this by holding down the Control key when launching iTunes.
Alternatively, you can in iTunes preferences, turn off the option to organise your files automatically, and then iTunes will let you add files from any location but will not copy the files in to its own folders.

Similar Messages

Itunes directories in my music folder??

I’m wondering here, can anyone explain to me what the reason that there are multiple iTunes directories and config files in my music folder? This is a place where I keep my music and there is no facility i can see to have iTunes move its directories/files elsewhere or atleast in its own program directory, and these directories are regenerated if deleted once iTunes is started again.
It seems strange. This is a folder within my profile directories where one would keep their music files and my music folders (grouped my artist then subdirectories for albums). I in no way want to see program data mixed in with my music. This will cause me to back up that program data and have to deal with it again when I go to restore my music from my network storage device back to the local machine in the advent of a failure
Can anyone help me with this issue of poor programming on the part of Apple? I mean is there a setting that I’m not seeing in the preferences that would remove or move these files and folders out of my music directory WHERE I ACTUALLY KEEP MY MUSIC DATA?

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.
This is the standard layout of the iTunes library.
The top iTunes folder is normally placed inside your profiles "Music" folder on both Macs & PCs. iTunes has long since morphed into a media player rather than just a music player but until both the Mac & PC operating systems change thier default set of pre-defined user folders to include a media folder then Music is as obvious a place as any to put the library.
There are two main components to the library, your media files (all inside the red outline) & the database files (everything else). An advantage of keeping everything together is that you do in fact backup both the database & the media files when you make your backups. This model is much easier to archive & restore (either in part or as a whole) than the hidden databases, caches & licence files that Windows Media Player uses.
I would heartily recommend that you learn to live with the layout that iTunes want to use, but if you prefer you can create a new library anywhere you want. Just press & hold SHIFT immediately after clicking on the icon to launch iTunes for options. Once you've created a library elsewhere you can disable to options to *Keep iTunes Music/Media folder organised* and *Copy files to iTunes Music/Media folder when adding to library*. You can then maintain your Music folder as you wish and import into iTunes only those items that you want it to know about.
FWIW I have my library in D:\iTunes and redirect Windows Media Player to D:\iTunes\iTunes Media to look for content... I also manually manage the file & folder names because personally I don't like iTunes' habit for clipping these to about 40 characters.
tt2

Music and iTunes directories are greyed out on my ipod

My ipod worked fine until I tried to add more songs and I got a error message. Now iTunes does not recognize my ipod. My ipod will show up in My computer but the music and iTunes directories are greyed out. I have tried the 5 Rs and these have not helped. I can not do anything though iTunes because it does not show my ipod. Any suggestions or where I can download new directories for my ipod? Thanks for your help.
Windows Windows XP

My ipod does not show in iTunes. The only song on the playlist is on-the-go. Also, the ipods control directory on the ipod is greyed out. It is not automatically downloading songs.

Is it possible to organise iTunes without using iTunes?

This may seem like a silly question, but bear with me...
I have some spare time at work and with me I have the hard drive that contains my iTunes media. At home is my computer with iTunes installed. I have a lot of double up songs and mislabelled files, etc., that I'd really love to get organised... but I never have time to do it at home. I have the time to do it at work, but I don't know if I mess around with deleting and renaming files directly, whether the changes will be transferrable to my iTunes. I have playlists, etc. that sync with my iPhone and I'd rather not risk wiping those... but I can only assume that making changes within the iTunes media will require me to re-import the entire lot? Is that right? And then I might lose all those playlists, etc.?
I'm sorry if I haven't made this particularly clear... but if someone out there understands what I'm trying to do, Id love some help...
Thanks,
Jess

You could re-link but most people absolutely detest the idea of re-linking more than a file or two. If you rename files iTunes may not automatically recognize them so you may end up having to re-link hundreds of links one by one. It would take a day and quickly get very tedious. There wouldn't be any automated way of doing it. If you delete duplicates in Finder you will also end up with broken liinks but there are ways ot automatically delete broken links. Of course unless you are very, very careful you may end up deleting somethign that wasn't a duplicates and when you blindly go in and delete dead links one or two may be things you didn't want to delete.
In the normal course of things you should end up generating many duplicates, You may wish to review how you use iTunes so as to avoid this in future.

Organising itunes by genres and styles

Hi
My iTunes library became through the years a very large database with music.
I have now more than 3000 albums in my collection
And a lot of different genres and styles.
Till now I didn't care about the genre and style.
I had a complete different way of organising them.
I'm starting the realise that I should reorganise everything.
It's gonna be a huge work, I think
Something that looks pretty poor in iTunes, is the classification by genre and style.
Doesn't seem very obvious to me in iTunes.
Cause of the many genres that overlap each other, it looks difficult to organise.
I have many albums that are a mixture of Jazz, funk, afrobeat, afrofunk, world, ...
Also a lot of them, go to electronic, dub, reggae, ...
I had a closer look to discogs.com
Their way of classification looks pretty good to me.
I checked a lot of albums on their site, and it looked close to what I wanted.
But how giving multiple genres and subgenres (styles) to 1 album.
Except giving them in the same tag the different genres and subgenres
But then I will have a lot that starts with jazz
And the result will be a huge list with different genres like
- jazz / funk
- jazz / soul
- jazz / afrobeat
- jazz / afrofunk
- jazz / afrobeat / electro
- jazz / afrobeat / dub
Also it must be very well ordered, and not having
- jazz / afrobeat / funk
- jazz / funk / afrobeat
it's the same genres, but will be shown as different genres in iTunes
Anybody any idea.
Is there also any automatisation possible in this huge upcoming work

There is only one official genre field. However, just because a field is called something doesn't mean you have to put that information into that field. For example I don't use Beats Per Minute but I do have a 3 digit code I use for some tracks that I put into that field and just remember that's what I use BPM for. I put album label information into the Grouping field. You could put a second genre into that if you so wished. You still won't be able to list by genre and sub genre though. You're limited to what is offered. You can make suggestions to Apple to change iTunes to add more genre fields but this may go again some sort of tagging standard, and frankly I don't see a lot of people here complaining about it so I don't think it will be put high on their list.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html
Oh, I guess if you're a genius at Applescripting you could write a script ot parse the genres and subgenres out of the genre field and create a manually ordered playlist based upon that.

Organising iTunes

Ok, sorry if this annoys anyone but im a bit of a neat freak, anyway, i recently upgraded my iTunes to iTunes 7 on my iMac, and it reorganised my files to places i dont want them, for example artists beginning with a number as opposed to a letter, used to be at the start, they are now placed at the end, as are artists whos names begin with symbols, does anybody know how to make iTunes organise it so numbers and symbols come before letters?
Also does anybody know how to make your folders in your music iTunes folder organise so it ignores the "The" for example the Beatles are way down in the T section, but id kinda like it in the B section.
Sorry for being such a neat freak everyone, but if anyone can help me, i will love you forever.
cheers

I'd like to know the same thing. I would like the numbers to come first, the way it was before the update. I have tried finding a way to set it, but haven't found anything.
As far as the iTunes folder you will have to manually move them

HT1449 Organising Itunes Library

Is there anyway I can organise my itunes media folder so my movies are in one location (external hardrive) and my music is in another (my macbook hardrive)?
Thanks

I would like to do something similar, I have a lot of music on my computer in MP3 and AAC format, but would like a duplicate set in AIFF format (non compressed orignal CD) that I can play through my apple TV that is connected to my audio system. What is the best way to do this?
Thanks,
dk

Re-organising iTunes library.

hi.
ive been doing loads of deleting from my itunes library and i now notice i have 62GB. my iTunes folder in users>myname>music says 245GB.
is there a way to 're-save' or 're-organise' my library so i get rid of the extra 183GB that i dont need anymore?
thanks!

hi.
ive been doing loads of deleting from my itunes library and i now notice i have 62GB. my iTunes folder in users>myname>music says 245GB.
is there a way to 're-save' or 're-organise' my library so i get rid of the extra 183GB that i dont need anymore?
thanks!

How do I organise iTunes purchases/content after moving abroad? Please help...

Please can someone advise in simple terms, I am so confused!
I have recently moved with my young family from the UK to the USA. We are hoping this will be a permanent move, but this is yet to be confirmed. We will be visiting the uk hopefully every year and no doubt take the phones and iPads with us. Between us we have:
Ipad 2
Ipad minis x 2
Apple TV
iPhone 4s
iPhone 5c
All my iTunes content is stored on my hp laptop, including many CDs and DVDs that I converted to an apple format. Purchases in the uk include 10 albums, 10 movies, 1 tv show, 27 books, a gazillion apps (most of those free, apart from I know I purchased minecraft and the kids have spent hours creating worlds on there!). Most of all this is for the children. I don't tend to store any content on the devices themselves unless we are planning a long trip. We tend to rely on wifi and home sharing to access all content from my laptop.
I've just started to look at changing the iTunes Store location/credit card from the UK to the USA. I went to an apple shop to help me do this to make sure I was going about it the right way, I even purchased frozen movie from iTunes Store whilst I was in the apple store, to check it worked. It did, but on the device I updated - ipad 2 - I can no longer see the movies or music that were there before. I've refrained from changing any other devices as yet. The apps all seem to be there however. (I understand that some of these apps may not get updates if I don't change to the USA iTunes Store, since they were obtained in the uk).
I basically need to understand what options I have in terms of easily being able to access all content (whether converted or downloaded content) ideally via homesharing, as the kids are used to that.
1) in settings do I keep the uk iTunes Store and uk credit card linked to it, and continue to make purchases from there (is this even possible?) Would purchasing a uk VPN help with this?
2) in settings do I convert to the USA iTunes Store and USA credit card - on all devices - and if so, how can we access all our content? If this is an option I would greatly appreciate instructions on what to do.
I think one option would be to just change the country/credit card details in settings each time we wish to access something from the 'other' store - but this isn't really practical with all our devices and 2 young kids who just wouldn't understand why they can't see all their movies in the cloud! I don't have time to permanently be switching details on their devices all day!
Many thanks in advance for any guidance on this. I really want to get everything working smoothly.

You can redownload most iTunes purchases by:
Downloading past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store
That is sometimes refured of redownloading from iCloud.
If the media is not current available from iTunes/APp store yo can't rdownload it. In the USA, ringtones and audio books are not redownloadable.
For complete list see:
iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match Availability

Organising itunes folders

          I have discovered the iTunes Music folder (inside the iTunes folder in the Music folder) does not reflect the Library or playlists in iTunes: items are either missing from any particular folder; in other folders; or duplicated in other folders. I want to clarify them so they accurately reflect the Library and Playlists, in order to back them up onto my LaCie external hard drive.
          Can I move items from one folder to another within the iTunes Music folder?
Can I rename folders in the iTunes Music folder?
          If I delete duplicates of the same item if it appears in more than one folder, as well as redundant folders (again, within the iTunes Music folder) is there a risk I might delete the item altogether?
          Finally, can I just select the ITunes Music folder to back up on a LaCie external hard drive? (I have a Mac Power PC G4, OS 10.4.11 )

paul harland wrote:
       Many thanks for your response . . . 'keep iTunes media folder organized' was already checked, but the iTunes Media Folder just contains a couple of folders with a small selection inside each of random unconnected items from the iTunes Music Folder.
Paul, The "Keep..." feature only operates on files that are in the iTunes Media folder. So, any files you had outside that folder stayed where they were.
      I feel I want to be able to rationalise everything into one folder (iTunes Music Folder,if appropriate) so that I can just be able to backup that single folder, without having to backup all the other folders contained within the iTunes folder.
Yes, that is definitely the most hassle-free way to maintain your iTunes library. You can do a one-time run of the Consolidate Library command (read details in Help before you run it) to get it that way, and then keep it that way going forward.
Having all your stuff in the iTunes Media folder greatly simplifies both backup and moving.

Organising iTunes U collection?

Hi. I just downloaded the MIT Introduction to Algorithms on iTunes U but when I look in my iTunes U section of iTunes the videos are showing up as a separate collection to the notes. I have given them both th exact same metadata in the hope that this would 'merge' them as a single collection but no luck. Any suggestions?

There would seem to be a lot of overlap between the behaviour of podcasts and iTunes U. Podcasts subscriptions may split after a change in the feed URL. I assume the same thing has happended with your iTunes U collection.
You may find it easier to just delete the collection and download again.
Here are some of my previous thoughts on the topic...
Editing properties such as Album title and Artist is not enough to merge things back together however it can be done with a bit of effort. Windows users can download and install Mp3Tag. Hopefully there is a Mac tag editor that has similar features. Mp3Tag can be used to explore the Extended Tags of other episodes from the same series. As far as I can tell the PODCASTURL field is used to link different podcasts from the same subscription (as opposed to fields like Album & Album Artist etc.) and PODCASTID determines the order. Everything else seems to be optional. Backup your files, tweak a few a tags then highlight the changed files in turn in iTunes with the image pane set to Selected item.
Again, if I recall correctly, the order is determined by the ID, but if you need/want to modify the Release Date then in MP3Tag/Extended Tags it corresponds to RELEASETIME in the format yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ssZ, e.g. 2008-02-20T09:10:52Z
tt2

Organising iTunes library

Currently digitising my vinyl collection, very successfully so far but one album has been split into three in iTunes. Can I get the tracks together? Track numbers, album and artist name all correct. Any advice appreciated and many thanks in advance!

Thanks. I suppose I really ought to shell out for a security certificate and go to https. As for Norton it probably flags up anything with a link to .vbs files. Again I could wrap them up in .zip files but I can't see how that really helps. The scripts are plain text files. Anyone can inspect them for malicious intent before use, which is more than you get from a compiled exe file. I've other things to worry about at the moment but I'll see if I can find out how to get Norton to remove its suspect rating.
McAfee is happy, http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/samsoft.org.uk
Norton, not so... http://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=samsoft.org.uk
tt2

Organising iTunes on D: drive

Hi,
I moved iTunes to the D: partition on my computer last year using excellent edvice from this discussion. I'm currently "tidying up" my computer and have realised that while all of my music is now on D: and lots of other iTunes bits and pieces too, there are still some folders and files on C: These are:
Folder - Album Artwork
Folder - iPod games (duplicated in D:)
Folder - iTunes media
Folder - Mobile applications
iTunes database files - Library extras, Library genius, Library
XML document - Music library
As mentioed, the only one of these files that seems to be duplicated in D; are the games. I also got an iPhone last week which may have upset things a little. Although everything works fine, I would like to have everything music and iTunes related in D: Could anyone advise if this is feasible and if so, how I should do it. I am backing up my computer now, just in case anything goes horribly wrong!
Thanks!!!

I assume that your drive D: is external. One important thing you need to do is make sure that your drive D: is "ready" before you start iTunes. It must be ready to read. If it isn't, when iTunes looks for it and doesn't find it, it will then use the C: drive.

Merging iTunes Directories and Creating a new, Single, Database

I have about 600GB of media on my EHD and about 60GB on another. I've moved the 60GB into the EHD. How do I now rebuild the database so that iTunes sees all the media? I think I read on here a long time ago about a key combination you can do when starting iTunes that will rebuild the database or consolidate old with the new. Any help here would be greatly appreciated....
Message was edited by: Treble57

Keeping this on top! One of you guys is smart enough to answer this! PLEASE!

Organising itunes help needed!!

How do I get The Beach Boys to sit in with bands beginning with B instead of T?! Not sure why it's changed. Even before this when it sat with B bands, when I clicked on artist it always had a small t at the start of the instead of a capital!! But yet when you clicked on songs the artist bit had a capital T?! I've went in & checked the get info & everything seems to be spet with a capital T. Puzzled!!!!

Device not detected in iTunes for Windows

Organising iTunes Directories

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