Original files in iTunes Match

Hi,
Currently I have the original files of my iTunes Library in my MacBook Pro and then I use the Match for my iPhone 4S.
My question is,
Can I storage all the original files in an external drive so I just download what I want to hear from the Cloud to my MacBook Pro and save space for it or it has to be necessarily in the HD of my MacBook Pro?
I hope I made myself clear. Thanks

Once you have a secure backup of your Song files, you can remove the local copies by deleting Songs in iTunes. It will ask if you also wish to delete the iCloud version - by not selecting the iCloud version you will be left with your Song listed as available for download.
Provided you have good communications, you can listen to your music in this way where Songs will download as they are played.

Similar Messages

How do you find multiple original files in itunes? Many threads no answer

I tried looking through a lot of topics that had similar problems but haven't run across an answer yet. I am trying to locate original files for itunes. The library is directed to an external HD. The files are in the HD and I can 'find' them one at a time. As with others on this forum, I don't want to do it individually. Any one know an easy way to point to the music folder for all the titles?.
I actually have the whole library on a travel drive as well and it seems to find them there. If the travel drive is unplugged, then it cannot find the original. I'm guessing that there is a path that needs to be followed and yet in the advanced prefs it is pointing correctly.

*Don't move any media* until your library is working reliably.
My experience is that you can move the "library" files (outside the red box) anywhere and provided the "content" (inside the red box) stays put iTunes will find the files. You can also move the library as a whole, "library" & "content", when nested as shown. Typically when people run out of room they follow a guide which explains how to relocate the content only using iTunes to manage the shift. This has two drawbacks, first iTunes can sometimes fail to complete the operation leading to an unstable library and second it complicates things when unxpected system changes occur.
You might find your existing library and content will reconnect if you edit the location of the iTunes Media folder in preferences to the current location, close iTunes and reopen.
iTunes 9 will work perfectly well with files in the older layout. If you "upgrade" to *iTunes Media Organisation* it should reorgainse the files, but similar caveats obtain. If iTunes crashes while moving the files about (as has heppened to others posting here) then repairing things is complicated. The automated process also fails to rename *iTunes Music* to *iTunes Media*
Again, from my own tests and when properly nested, iTunes will accept the renaming of the *iTunes Music* folder as *iTunes Media* and update the iTunes Media folder preference automatically. If that works and you then close & reopen iTunes and everything still works normally, you can try pushing an Artist folder into iTunes\Media\Music. I think it works, but I manage the structures inside iTunes Media manually & I don't have time to test it just now. If iTunes doesn't llike any step you take just put things back where the were. You can always let iTunes manage the iTunes Media Organsiation upgrade if you have a decent backup and can restore.
tt2

HT1660 using lossless files with itunes match

Creating lossless files in itunes dupicates the file,I use itunes match, how can I just use the lossless files for playback, I stream music to a squeezbox touch.

Hi,
Tracks will be matched as 256kbps AAC. Non matched 320 AAC will be uploaded as 320 AAC and appleloss transcribed to 256 AAC.
The tracks on your hard drive will not change unless you decide to delete original and download matched version or 256 AAC in the case appleloss less files. Uploade 320 AAC files will be same file.
Jim

Replacing lower quality files with better files on iTunes Match

I have an iTunes library that is years old so some of the music files are of a lower quality than the files that are now on Match. Rather than ripping these CDs again to iTunes, is there a way of replaceing the old files with the Match files on iCloud?
Thanks,
Larry

Hi,
If the tracks are match, you can delete the original and download the upgraded version. If the track is uploaded, you will need to rerip your CDs to get better quality.
Jim

Is there a way to easily locate original files in iTunes after moving everything to an external harddrive?

I recently moved my itunes folder (everything including library and music folders) from my computer harddrive to an external harddrive. I was able to find the library and it opens, but the music (all 7000+ songs) gives me this error. "The song “Beautiful People” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" I know I cannot go and hand pick each artist folder and song, but this would take me forever! I have also changed the location via the preferences. I know all my music is in my folder on the external drive, so is there a way to easily fix this?
My path looks like External drive--Music folder--iTunes folder...Inside this folder are hundreds of folders (every different musician has its own folder and if there are two or more cds by same artist they are within the artist's folder) and my itunes library files and my automatically added to itunes folder and several itbd folders etc.
Please help!

"including library and music folders) from my computer"
Did you move the entire iTunes folder the hold Option, select Choose library and select the iTunes folder you moved?

Is there a good way to add a large music file to itunes match without itunes crashing?

I have several large music files that are DJ sessions and anywhere from 1-3 hours long. I deleted them from itunes while matching because they were causing match to crash at step 3 every time. I would like to add these files into match now but every time I try, it crashes again. Anyone know of a work around for this?

The iTunes Match service is designed to exclude such Songs. Perhaps handling them as Podcasts would help you.

Suddenly unable to upload mp3 files using iTunes Match

I've got a USB turntable and have enjoyed digitizing a lot of LPs and copying them into iTunes. I digitized a 10-track album just yesterday, and can copy the resulting mp3 files into iTunes, where they play fine, but they won't upload to iCloud using iTunes Match. It gets to the point where it's supposed to upload tracks it cannot match and just sits there. I use Audacity to digitize from the USB turntable, and it exports as MP3 file. This has worked over many albums but now seems to be stuck. Any thoughts on what the problem might be?

So my issue appears to be with uploading mp3 files that probably won't match anything in iCloud.
iTunes match matches Audio files by comparing the audio and not by comparing the tags for the album. My iTunes Library contains more than 500 songs that have been ripped and matched from vinyl records or audio tapes.
The songs will not match, if there is not the exact same recording in the store, but if the audo quality is good and the tempo of the player was exact, the song will be matched.

Can't download files from itunes match

i have files in the genre audiobook. these are not present on my machine due to a drive failure. they say they are available in icloud. the entire row is greyed out in itunes, but has the cloud icon. clicking the cloud icon in itunes does nothing. hitting play does nothing. there are no messages, warnings, or other reasons being shown.

Generally speaking audiobooks are not supported by iTunes Match, so I'm not sure just what you're seeing. From your description it sounds like the tracks were incompletely processed and are not really in the cloud so you'll need to find the the "tracks" in the iTunes library and delete them from the cloud.

Buring CD affect Original File in iTunes?

I feel like when I make a mix cd in my itunes, when I go back and listen to the original file on my ipod or laptop the sound quality gets slightly lower. Does burning a cd in iTunes affect the original iTunes files? I don't mess around with settings or anything, so i'm not sure why the sound quality is different. For instance I'll burn "track 3" onto a cd,then when I listen to "track 3" with the rest of its parent album saved in my itunes, "track 3" has slightly slower sound quality than the rest of the album that was not burned on to the cd. Am i just imagining this, and my ears are fooling with me??
Any help would be greatly apprecited!!

Not that I've ever heard of. The burning process analyzes the file and prepares a writeable CD-formatted version to write to disk, but does not change the original.
What you might want to do as an experiment is find a file and write down some of its key audio information. E.g. right-click, Get Info, and get the volume level from the Info tab, and the EQ Preset from the Options tab. Look again after it's been burned once, and see if you detect anything different. Let us know if you discover anything.

How can I back up my uploaded files in iTunes Match?

I have started uploading files to my iTunes Match library but during the process, I got error 4002. Don't know what this means. I already checked my connection and everything is good. What I did is I cleared my hard drive and reinstalled my OS and then started over. I noticed that some of the songs are greyed out. I cannot play or download the files that are greyed out. Do you have any ideas on how I can get the greyed out files on my iTunes Match library? Thanks.

Hi,
Did you delete your music from your hard drive when you reinstalled your OS.
Match scans your iTunes library and from the brief info that you provide, it would appear that the match process had not completed. Therefore you have greyed out songs.
You will need to restore those tracks from your backup. I trust that you have a backup of all your music!
Jim

TA27400 iTunes: Multiple temp files after iTunes Match subscription

Since I subscribed the iTunes Match service I have a very annoying issue: a lot of temp files on my iTunes folder.
My library is pretty big (24989 songs) and my temp file iTunes Music Library.xml is 42mb.
Well, I never counted how many but I think that in one week I have to delete more than 100 temp files, all located in the iTunes folder and with the same size of the iTunes Music Library.xml (42mb).
That's really annoying and give me also another problem with Native Instrument Traktor, sometimes the program can't recognize the Itunes Library file.
That's really bad for a professional DJ.
Another problem, the HD was corrupted, two times in 2 weeks, never happened before.
It seems that iTunes Match service still have some problems or maybe is just my setup?
I'm confused and worried.

I see one temp file (named Temp File.tmp) in my iTunes folder (where the iTunes Music Library.xml file is located). It is about one-third the size of the iTunes Music Library.xml file (pretty small). Never noticed it there before. Also, in my case at least, I don't think it has anything to do with iTunes Match, because it has a modified date of 12/30/2011.
> Another problem, the HD was corrupted, two times in 2 weeks, never happened before.
That's not because of iTunes Match... Back up data, reformat drive, restore data. If it happens again soon, the hard drive is probably starting to fail (bad sectors).

HT5085 Will apple loseless songs files be compatible and readable with iTunes match?

To keep best cd quality of my cd, I have uploaded all my songs in apple loseless on my computer
I would like to know if it would then be compatible and readable for those loseless songs files using iTunes matches on my iPad?
Thank you

Mhrl79 wrote:
To keep best cd quality of my cd, I have uploaded all my songs in apple loseless on my computer
I would like to know if it would then be compatible and readable for those loseless songs files using iTunes matches on my iPad?
Thank you
It will be compatible in that iTunes Match will look at your computers Apple Lossless versions, and will then send AAC 256Kbps versions to your iPad. It will not send Apple Lossless copies to your iPad (or even another computer). AAC 256Kbps versions are fine for an iPad and Apple Lossless versions would very rapidly completely fill an iPad.

How come I can't add a song to my playlists in itunes match? Is it me or itunes match? It keeps on coming up with a message " iCloud playlists can only contain songs from your iCloud music library. If you continue, the playlist will be removed from iCloud

How come I can't add a song to my playlists in itunes match? Is it me or itunes match? It keeps on coming up with a message " iCloud playlists can only contain songs from your iCloud music library. If you continue, the playlist will be removed from iCloud and will only be available on this computer"?
You must surely be able to add and subtract songs on specific playlist?

I fixed this issue (with help from tech support) and it involved several things.
After adding a song to iTunes, right-click on the song in iTunes and select "Update iTunes Match."
OR go to the iTunes menu-->Store-->Update iTunes Match.
Maybe that's the reason, it just hadn't updated to the cloud.
OR maybe it's not a high-enough bitrate file. This happens to me because most of my tunes are home-recorded.
Sometimes converting to .mp3 or Create AAC version might work. (You do this with a right-click in iTunes, and then you will want to remove the original file from iTunes.)
There is an iTunes Preferences setting, under General Preferences called Import Settings. Try setting it to AAC Encoder and iTunes Plus. That (I think) causes imports to be slightly better quality.
Good luck! The tech support person at Apple is requesting that a knowlege-base article be written about this.

ITunes Match no longer working

Wow. I don't even know where to start with this. But here's the problems I am having- I am hoping that someone can steer me in the right direction. I've been trying for a few weeks to get this straightened out and am still quite stuck.
I had iTunes match successfully running, with @35,000 tracks. But about a week ago I could no longer "see" anything that is in the cloud- my computer at work will only show the 12k songs on my hard drive.
Things to know:
1)I no longer have the cloud icon showing to the right of Music in the iTunes viewer window.
2) I've tried selecting Update iTunes Match. I've selected Turn Off iTunes Match, and then Turn On iTunes Match numerous times.
3) Checked to make sure iCloud Download and iCloud Status is enabled in the View Options.
4) iTunes Match shows up below iTunes Store, and it is stuck in that Start process. I can start it, it acts like it is going thru the process, then sends info to Apple, then goes back to the same view (iTunes Match, with the three steps and the Start button)
5) I've tried accessing my iTunes match songs from 3 different computers now, and I am getting the same results.
6) iTunes knows that I have more than 25k songs in the cloud because I get the nag screen New songs could not be uploaded because I've exceeded the 25k limit now. (In fact, that nag screen shows everytime I launch iTunes, even though I've toggled the box Do not show this message again)
7) On my computers, 99% of all of my songs now say Exceeded Limit in their iCloud Status collumn, even when they are songs bought thru the iTunes store.
8) I've tried reinstalling iTunes 10.5.2 a few times now.
9) Hide music not on this computer is not on. But for good measure, I've tried selecting it, and then reversing it just to see if that changes anything. It doesn't.
I'm totally at a loss here. Anyone been thru this before and figured out what I might need to do? I am highly frustrated that I currently can't find 2/3rd's of my music library.

An effective way to work with such a large library is to operate on the assumption that iTunes Match will fail to 'match' a significant proportion of the library.
Songs most likely to match are more recent Songs from iTunes or good quality CD rips (256 kbps).
From your symptoms it is worth starting afresh, hence:
1. Start by restoring your original library with iTunes Match off from a secure backup;
2. Create Smart Lists to segment your library into Songs recorded in c.5 year blocks;
3. Export from each Smart List to a discrete directory for each 5 year block;
4. Create a new library, import from the 1st 5 year block;
5. Turn on iTunes Match and allow the 3-step process to complete;
6. Create a Smart List for those Songs with an iCloud status of Matched;
7. Save the contents of the Smart List to a discrete Matched Songs Directory;
8. Delete the Matched Songs from the Library and the iCloud;
9. Import the next 5 year block and repeat process from Step 5 until all Songs have Uploaded.
The result will be a library with all your Songs uploaded using the iTunes Match service and a set of directories containing all the Songs the you know will match.
At this stage the next step depends on the size of your library. Given that you can only upload 25k Songs per library, with luck you should have a match rate that has allowed this.
Given that Matched songs do not add to this total you should now be able to import the Matched songs in 5 year blocks to the same library - allowing iTunes Match to complete for each set loaded until the full library is available.
If, however, you have hit the 25k Song limit - you should delete the last 5 year block to bring you back to a legal level. Create a new library and complete the steps above for the Songs over the 25k limit on the new library. This will give you two legal sized libraries with iTunes Match in successful operation.
Throughout, taking care to ensure secure backups are taken at each step is important to allow you to recover should iTunes Match at any stage have a problem - there are many potential pitfalls including file types that it may not like, interference from firewalls / antivirus software, corruption of files at source / in transmission.
The final result should be very good - though the 25k Song limit may frustrate you given the size of your current library.

Itunes Match upload keeps failing

Hey there,
I signed up for iTunes Match yesterday and it's matched up most of my library but it's just started running the Step 3 "Uploading Artwork And Remaning Songs" FOR THE THIRD TIME - it gets all the way through the process then I turn around ten minutes later and the **** thing has started the whole process again. Any ideas?
Cheers
Rob

Rob,
I posted on a similar topic, you are lucky if it takes 10 minutes to get to the point where it crashes, due to the size of my library mine takes around 2 hours, and I have had to restart it hundreds of time and been at it for 4 months now I think. Each time an update for itunes is available I hopefully install it, problem not fixed as yet, I live in hope. itunes 11 was in my opinion a downgrade, features removed, can't see where apple are going with this, downhill mostly.
Only solution I have found so far is sheer persistence, just keep on restarting it, until eventually you get all your songs uploaded. There are some songs at the top of the list which dont have an itunes match/cloud status but I will deal with those once uploads have finished.
From what I've read elsewhere the crashing *may* be related to the size of the files (seems iTunes match doesn't like large files). If you have lossless or WAV files, consider converting to AAC 256kb which I think is what iTunes match wants to put into the cloud, so might help. The conspiracy theorists would probably say the bug intentional and in order to get you to purchase apple hardware.
Last time I asked iTunes about a refund a very partronising lady replied and in essence told me that iTunes store policy is "All sales are final", in other words, no refunds. I guess if it happened on the internet then it didn't really happen, not same as the store where you can get no questions asked refund.
Hope you get it sort, good luck

Original files in iTunes Match

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