Songs in different, multiple albums without duplicate files
I am looking for a way to have a song in the original album list and in other albums such as greatest hits or compilations without having multiples of the exact same file in iTunes and on my computer.
For example...the song "Tom Sawyer" by Rush, appears on the original album release "Moving Pictures" and subsequent album releases of "Chronicles", "Gold" and "The Spirit of Radio: Greatest Hits 1974-1987".
How can I have the song in all the albums without having 4 files of the same mp3 import into iTunes?
This scheme won't work if the files in question have tags. While it is possible to get two or more entires in the iTunes database to point to the same physical file, when the association is made iTunes will read the tag from the file, then update its copy of that data so you just end up with say two copies of track 1 from album A instead of track 1 from album A and track 5 from album B as intended. There are also likely to be issues if iTunes is set to "Keep the iTunes Media folder organised".
It might work if you disable iTunes options to keep tracks organised and used media files without tags, e.g. wav format. I know you can strip the tag from an mp3 in iTunes (convert id3 > None) but it may still get reinstated next time you try to amend any data.
Finally, when you put data onto an Apple device each track needs a unique source file. I'm not certain of the details, but I have found in the past that if you have two entries connected to the same physical file then, when you sync, only one entry makes it into the device's library. This can create the situation where a number of files are always copied over during each sync even though no updates have been made to the library.
Yes, it would be feasible for Apple to re-engineer iTunes so that it could hold some kind of virtual entry consisting of the tag information and a link to the data from another file. This could all be done within the library alone, or "someone" could develop an open standard that iTunes could later adopt. However I see no incentive for anyone to do so, and it certainly isn't coming real soon. So yes, if space is an becoming an issue, start saving for a bigger drive.
tt2
Weird, I started composing my reply before Polydorus had posted his response above and independently picked the same example track descriptions. Perhaps one of us is a redundant copy of the other?
Message was edited by: turingtest2
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