iTunes issue

Macers

(Mac OSX Snow Leopard - 10.6.8)

Having an issue with iTunes this morning I can't get get my head around.

I gave all my albums in the Music folder. When I drag the folder to iTunes to create as a playlist it all loads..fair enough. Some songs have the wrong artist (have the song number rather than the artist) and have no album art.

I amend all manually however the changes aren't saved (they normally are).

ie I make the changes - remove the playlist but when I add it again its reverted to old without the changes I've made...

Any thoughts?

Sad Professor

Why are you dragging files from your music folder? Are the songs not already in your iTunes library?

It sounds to me like you have two copies of the files. One in the iTunes library and another in a music folder that you are manually managing without realising that they have been copied to iTunes.

Macers

When creating a new playlist (which is always just an album) I drag it from my Music folder to my sidebar of iTunes?

I have always done this with no issue?

Sad Professor

Are there multiple copies of the songs in the iTunes library?

Macers

Each song in this particular album appears to be saving as a separate folder in the iTunes (saving in a folder of the song number). Even when I delete them they reappear the next time the album is added to iTunes

mathepac

Could I suggest that you check your preferences - iTunes Media folder location = /Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music

If it is and you drop Music on the side-bar it will duplicate music held in the iTunes folder.

Other preferences may effect what's added too.

Macers

Thanks that managed to fix it! Dunno why iTunes would want to automatically do that?

I changed my preference for that and deleted my iTunes folder. It recreated itself without adding the songs now - thanks!

mathepac

No problem, glad you got it fixed. I find that most of "iTunes strange behaviours" can be explained by unexpected settings of its preferences or preference conflicts with other applications that use the iTunes or Music folders

Sad Professor

The idea is that iTunes manages all your music files for you so you don't have to worry about filenames, tags, folders, etc. It makes sense if (as Apple assume) you get all your music from the iTunes Store or from ripping CDs. But obviously if most your music is from other sources you will have a load of mp3 files and the idea of letting iTunes manage them for you will seem strange.

Personally I think the iTunes way of doing things is much easier. I used to hate messing around with mp3 files and having to sort them. With the iTunes way you just need to get into a habit of deleting files after you import them. Then you can forget about the files and deal with all your music from within iTunes.

mathepac

I forgot to mention a little question that's been nagging at me for a while. In the "old days" wasn't there an option in preferences to ask iTunes to manage all "music files" on your computer or some such wording? Maybe I'm just having a senior moment ....

Sad Professor

Yeah, it's still there. It's in Preferences > Advanced > Keep iTunes media library organised.

muggyog

Strangeness with iTunes library is basically due to the fact it is a database and databases are pretty anal about the way data is stored. iTunes needs to keep track of everything and that's why things go pear shaped when you manually intervene.

These are the relevant files and this is where they are. Oh yeh, and different versions of iTunes do different things.

In a nutshell and in case of lazyness ( lots of goodies here).

mathepac

Sad Professor wrote: »

... It's in Preferences > Advanced > Keep iTunes media library organised.

Thanks, but I think it's the check-box immediately below that "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library". This is what messes up OP's library, it puts a second physical copy of the file in the Media folder rather than moving the original file to there.

Sad Professor

Yeah, but the only way to move songs into the library (besides doing it manually) is to consolidate. Turning off the "copy files to iTunes library" option won't do it. It'll just leave the songs where they are, leaving you to manage the files manually.

The "copy" option doesn't mess up your library at all. It actually protects your library by making sure that your songs stay in it and that you don't accidentally delete or move them. It's only a problem if you aren't aware of it, in which case you'll just end up with a load of duplicates outside your library. But this is easily solved by simply deleting the original files, which is what you should do after importing them. The problem is people are usually advised to disable the "copy" option, which is what actually tends to screw up their libraries.

But in the OP's case, they simply made mistake of returning to the files to create a playlist when they should have been doing that from within iTunes.

eoinsie74

Hope im in the right forum for this question and excuse me if i sound ignorant. I just got a 320gb external hard drive and I plugged it into a family members home pc and transferred about 7gb of music which he had in a music folder on his desktop.
When i got home i plugged the external hard drive into my own laptop and transferred all of this new music into my itunes library on top of about 9gb of music which i already had. I then went to synch my new extended itunes library with my iphone but it wouldnt allow me, telling me my that my computer wasnt authorised.
Can anyone let me know if there is a a way around this?
Thanks

mathepac

If your friend purchased the music through iTunes or some other system that has digital rights management enabled (via mp4 / mp4a files for example), then it regards your computer accessing these files as theft, which of course it is, as you didn't pay the copyright holder a licence fee.

If your friend trusts you s/he can give you his/her username & password for their on-line account and you can authorise your computer to access the account which legally bypasses this restriction. These on-line accounts have an upper limit (5 or 6 usually) to the number of devices which can be authorised for an account.