OK so prior to using iTunes, I had about a 1000 songs on my computer. Not neatly organized, but I had run musicbrainz tagger on them. So I fire up iTunes, it searches the computer and pulls up all my tracks, but somehow duplicates a LOT of them, which makes it a royal pain when listening them on the iPod. Can't it search and eliminate duplicates?

12/2/2008 9:35:46 AM

File->Show Duplicates

12/2/2008 9:54:52 AM

Awesome, thanks. No reason for three copies of Mr. Roboto.

12/2/2008 11:27:59 AM

depending on what you've done with iTunes, it sometimes copies files into the iTunes directory, thus you have more than one copy of a song on your computer, so when you add a folder to iTunes, it adds the duplicated files.

I'd say it's worth while to go through your music folders and clean them up manually, getting riding of doubles, etc. 1,000 songs wouldn't take too long.

12/2/2008 12:18:08 PM

Why don't you just tell iTunes to consolidate your music? I resisted doing that for so long because I had my own system kinda like you but really it just makes things much much easier.

12/2/2008 12:49:31 PM

The proper way to do it would be to leave the music where it is and display it in the library via tags. Theres no reason for itunes to move any of it.

12/2/2008 12:54:49 PM

I detest this shit. Maybe your average iTunes user doesn't understand the concept of how stuff is stored on a disk, but I do. Is there not even an option to see where the songs loaded into the library are pointing to? I just reinstalled the OS and iTunes already has duplicated and I have no idea why. Wtf?

[Edited on February 19, 2009 at 9:03 AM. Reason : .]

2/19/2009 8:34:27 AM

if you right click -> get info it will show you the file path

[Edited on February 19, 2009 at 9:31 AM. Reason : you can view/parse the itunes library xml file too if you need to see file locations in bulk]

2/19/2009 9:16:57 AM

I have everything neatly organized in one main MyMusic Folder. Everything is properly labled and tagged through WMP.


I installed itunes for my iphone and copied about 1GB of music into a new folder to use on my iphone and test on itunes. I was not a fan of the itunes management. I am really not looking forward to integrating my complete library into itunes once my new laptop arrives.

2/19/2009 9:49:48 AM

Hmm, I see that now. The problem is, I have more than a handful of songs that aren't located. Is this the reason:

I synced the stuff to my nano from the before my most recent OS install. In between that time I've probably shuffled some stuff around in addition to the new install. Is it because the song was on the nano and was saving the location on my disk from before?

2/19/2009 9:59:58 AM

Quote :

"if you right click -> get info it will show you the file path"

Right click -> Show in Windows Explorer (or Show in Finder) is a bit easier

2/19/2009 10:17:08 AM

whenever i do a OS reinstall, i backup my playlists and just recreate the library from scratch by adding my Music folder. i dunno if your nano would re-add old library records into your new library but i wouldn't be surprised. i try to avoid situations like that cus i know how prone itunes is to screwing up stuff like that

2/19/2009 10:19:04 AM

Quote :

"Is there any reason you guys insist on having your own file structure set up? Do you regularly play around with the files for some reason?"

Back in the early mp3 days, I always found the id3 tags to be completely unreliable, if existing at all. When I built one of NCSUs first ever embedded car mp3 players using a Pentium 100 class processor, I needed an efficient structure that could be parsed easily and quickly with Visual Basic (I had 1 year of C++ at the time, not really a programming guru) and settled on a basic 'Artist\Album\Track Number - Song Title' format and have just stuck with that. I think the tools for analyzing songs and populating the id3 tags have gotten really good and I should probably just invest the time to do that and then let iTunes do its work. But I'm an old dog now and don't take too kindly to learning new tricks.

2/19/2009 10:42:45 AM

i was the same way up until about 2006. go ahead and make the jump to using id3 tags. there's programs that will populate empty tags with the filestructure/filename you already have. and if you're going to use itunes as your primary music manager anyways, go ahead and let it manage your file structure. it uses the artist\album\track# songtitle.mp3 format anyways so it won't be too big a jump for you. and it makes it easier to sync stuff if you let itunes handle it (despite itunes' stubborn quirks)

2/19/2009 10:49:24 AM

I'm not so sure I understand how itunes will handle my file structure. If you guys can bear with me, I am going to give an example of how my music is organized.


Right now I have: E:/My Music/Artist/Album Name/01 - Song Name.mp3


That's how much of my complete albums are filed and sorted. For single mp3s i've collected over the years they are just:: E:/My Music/Artist - Song Name.mp3


I use WMP for song info, album info/artwork etc etc.


How will iTunes manage, rename, reorganize my files if i give it sole responsibility?



Thanks for the help, i've barely used itunes at all

2/19/2009 10:59:35 AM

Embedded in each of those mp3s is metadata in the form of Artist, Album, Song, year, genre, and a host of other fields. You could shove every single mp3 you have in one single directory always and then just let iTunes manage grouping things for you in whatever way you want (the primary benefit of metadata). Probably just need to bite the bullet and get some tools to populate all the id3 tags correctly and then stop worrying about how it is actually stored on the disk.

2/19/2009 11:20:54 AM

i resisted, but a couple years ago i gave up and let itunes consolidate and manage everything. life has been good ever since.

2/19/2009 2:01:33 PM

I used to be a stickler about my own hierarchy system, but then I thought to myself, "what do I care where the actual files are? As long as I can listen to the song, then I don't give a shit where they're located. If I can see the song name inside my iTunes window, and it will play when I click on it, then that's all I really need, right?" So I let iTunes manage it for me and haven't given a shit about it since.

Quote :

"Right now I have: E:/My Music/Artist/Album Name/01 - Song Name.mp3 That's how much of my complete albums are filed and sorted. For single mp3s i've collected over the years they are just:: E:/My Music/Artist - Song Name.mp3 I use WMP for song info, album info/artwork etc etc. How will iTunes manage, rename, reorganize my files if i give it sole responsibility?"

iTunes will organize every song (not just complete albums) to: E:/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Artist/Album/01 - songname.mp3
If there is no album listed in the metadata, it will go under "Unknown Album"
If there is no artist listed in the metadata, it will go under "Unknown Artist"
If the song is marked as a "Compilation" (such as soundtracks - you can always uncheck "compilation" if you want), it will go to: E:/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Compilations/Album/01 - songname.mp3
If the song is a podcast, it will go to: E:/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts/podcastname/songname.mp3

You can also change the initial "E:/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/" to whatever folder you want. That's just what it defaults to.

[Edited on February 19, 2009 at 2:17 PM. Reason : ]

2/19/2009 2:15:44 PM

Thanks for the help. I've had some downtime at work so i've been playing with iTunes on my computer and the 4 to 5 albums i had on a thumbdrive. letting itunes consolidate them and seeing how it all turns out. Not so bad actually.

Speaking of compilations/soundtracks, i didn't have one but how would this be handled.

Say you have the Big Chill Soundtrack and let itunes manage it, it will go under E:/My Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Compilations/Big Chill Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/01 - songname.mp3


How would this album be handled if you have "compilations" unchecked?

Just curious.

2/19/2009 2:25:13 PM

Quote :

"How would this album be handled if you have "compilations" unchecked? "

There would be a an album folder created under each artist on the compilation

/Artist1/Big Chill Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/01 - songname.mp3
/Artist2/Big Chill Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/02 - songname.mp3
/Artist3/Big Chill Original Motion Picture Soundtrack/03 - songname.mp3

etc.

2/19/2009 3:02:20 PM

I have a few thousand songs and have been filling in all the ID3 info for ones that are missing lately. I also finally gave in and let iTunes consolidate the library and things have been good so far

2/19/2009 3:58:59 PM