Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

ph0ust · Mar 19, 2003, 03:47 PM

hello. i am curious... i have just tranfered all my mp3 files from my pc to my mac (done with the pc for good now). with all my files on my imac now, i opened itunes for the first time and it asked if i wanted it to find all my music files to build the library. i chose yes, and it proceeded to begin building the library.

the thing is that it now creates the "itunes" folder in the "music" folder of my account and says that it is "copying" all the files.

someone please tell me that it is not creating duplicates of all the files that are ALREADY in the music folder!!! this would seem pretty lame.

since i am pretty sure that is what it is doing, what do i do to prevent this? i obviously do not want duplicates of all my music. and i want to keep them in my music folder.

thanks for any help.

Angus_D · Mar 19, 2003, 04:10 PM

iTunes by default tries to keep your music library organized and puts them all in nice subfolders in ~/Music/iTunes or similar. You can turn it off in Preferences.

ph0ust · Mar 19, 2003, 04:24 PM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
iTunes by default tries to keep your music library organized and puts them all in nice subfolders in ~/Music/iTunes or similar. You can turn it off in Preferences.

thanks. i noticed while fiddling around that you can specify your own folder and turn off copying to the itunes music folder. i take it that if i just want to use my music folder and not have itunes organize it my library will simly consist of what is already there in that folder?

as i add music to my folder, will it automatically update the library?

sushiism · Mar 19, 2003, 04:34 PM

your much better off just letting itunes handle your organising it does a wonderful job of it, then when you want to add more music just drag it into itunes and th eoriginal files to trash

Anomalous · Mar 19, 2003, 04:54 PM

Originally posted by ph0ust:

as i add music to my folder, will it automatically update the library?

No, you have to open the file in iTunes first.

Fallout · Mar 19, 2003, 09:30 PM

Originally posted by sushiism:
your much better off just letting itunes handle your organising it does a wonderful job of it, then when you want to add more music just drag it into itunes and th eoriginal files to trash

agreed

ph0ust · Mar 19, 2003, 10:28 PM

Originally posted by Fallout:
agreed

the problem is that i have lots of albums by various artists. each of these songs gets seperated from the rest of the album because it has a different artist. if i view by album it is perfect, but then i am browsing by an alphabetical listing of my albums.

i want to view by artist/album.

any suggestions?

lavar78 · Mar 22, 2003, 10:09 AM

the problem is that i have lots of albums by various artists. each of these songs gets seperated from the rest of the album because it has a different artist. if i view by album it is perfect, but then i am browsing by an alphabetical listing of my albums.

i want to view by artist/album.

You can designate an album as a compliation. Still, I'm a little confused -- it seems like you want it both ways. If you want to browse by artist/album, you could make the artist "Various" and the album will stay together. However, if you want to use the actual name of the artist for each track, there is no way (IIRC) that you can browse a soundtrack by artist/album (because the artist isn't the same for each track).

ph0ust · Mar 24, 2003, 06:34 PM

Originally posted by lavar78:
You can designate an album as a compliation. Still, I'm a little confused -- it seems like you want it both ways. If you want to browse by artist/album, you could make the artist "Various" and the album will stay together. However, if you want to use the actual name of the artist for each track, there is no way (IIRC) that you can browse a soundtrack by artist/album (because the artist isn't the same for each track).

yea, that seems to be the problem- i want to sort by artist then album, but for albums with various artists each track gets sorted into a unique location.

the only solution i could come up with easily was to edit the artist info en masse to be "various artists" for those albums. now they are all in a single part of my itunes library and sorted by album. not the best solution but it works.

GeeYouEye · Mar 25, 2003, 03:21 AM

Just put the album, track number, and artist in the artist field, in that order. eg

The Concert for New York - 1, Mike Moran
The Concert for New York - 2, Adam Sandler
The Concert for New York - 3, Adam Sandler
...

a bit kludgy, and definitely inelegant, but it works.

Visnaut · Mar 25, 2003, 10:52 AM

Why bother? If it displays correctly in iTunes, what does it matter if the files on the disk are not 'correctly' organized?

I can't remember the last time i actually looked at the contents of my Music folder. Actually, i can, and it was before iTunes came out. Before, with Audion and others, it was a chore to keep all my music organized correctly into neat little folders. And I can imagine that's the sort of mentality that you've been conditioned into by mp3 apps on Windows, ph0ust. I don't blame you, it took me a while to get used to it, but seriously, there's just no point anymore.

I let iTunes simply take care of it, and it's one less headache. If I ever need to copy an mp3 elsewhere, i just drag it from any listing in iTunes. Easy.

Do consider doing this, ph0ust. I'm not one to change anyone's opinion usually, but you'll seriously be better off letting iTunes take the helm. You'll wonder how you ever did it before...

lavar78 · Mar 25, 2003, 01:30 PM

I think you're missing his point (at least how I understand it). He wants to browse (in iTunes) by artist/album but he also wants to see his compilations together in the same view. I still think the best solution is going with "Various Artists" -- and you could add the artist's name in the song title or notes section, which would be useful if you made a smart playlist based on an artist.

DrPhips · Jan 12, 2004, 02:27 PM

Just put the album, track number, and artist in the artist field, in that order. eg

The Concert for New York - 1, Mike Moran
The Concert for New York - 2, Adam Sandler
The Concert for New York - 3, Adam Sandler
...

a bit kludgy, and definitely inelegant, but it works.

That's a good solution, I use a similar fix to this problem, but instead of putting the info in the artist section, I lump the song title, and artist together in the 'name' category. iTunes has a column for track #, should you choose to view it. I host a radio show and I have found that this works better for me trying to search for songs and their artists which are found on compilation albums.

My Problem is that I am about to completely wipe my PowerBook, format the thing and start from scratch. Before I do, however, I want to burn all of my music onto DVD, so that I can import it once I get OSX reinstalled. I have over 4,000 songs that are anal-retentively labeled by title, artist, genre, track #, record label, etc. The problem is, is that in my iTunes folder there are tons of empty folders left behind from songs that I either deleted or renamed, causing iTunes to move that file to a new folder.

If I take all of the music files out of their folders and put them into one folder, burn that onto a DVD, reformat my drive, and then re-import the files... will the msuic files keep all their info??? In other words, does iTunes add some sort of tag to music files that keeps this info?

Toyin · Jan 12, 2004, 05:28 PM

Originally posted by DrPhips:
That's a good solution, I use a similar fix to this problem, but instead of putting the info in the artist section, I lump the song title, and artist together in the 'name' category. iTunes has a column for track #, should you choose to view it. I host a radio show and I have found that this works better for me trying to search for songs and their artists which are found on compilation albums.

My Problem is that I am about to completely wipe my PowerBook, format the thing and start from scratch. Before I do, however, I want to burn all of my music onto DVD, so that I can import it once I get OSX reinstalled. I have over 4,000 songs that are anal-retentively labeled by title, artist, genre, track #, record label, etc. The problem is, is that in my iTunes folder there are tons of empty folders left behind from songs that I either deleted or renamed, causing iTunes to move that file to a new folder.

If I take all of the music files out of their folders and put them into one folder, burn that onto a DVD, reformat my drive, and then re-import the files... will the msuic files keep all their info??? In other words, does iTunes add some sort of tag to music files that keeps this info?

The information you mentioned is saved in the ID3 tag (which is part of the mp3 or aac file). Make sure all your ID3 tags are up to date (ver 2.4). Information that is not saved in the ID3 tags is Playcounts, Ratings, Last Played. This is saved in your iTunes xml file.

Easiest way to test this is to make a copy of an mp3 and re-import it to iTunes. You should have 2 files with duplicate information except for the info saved in the xml file.

Spheric Harlot · Jan 13, 2004, 12:13 PM

Originally posted by ph0ust:
yea, that seems to be the problem- i want to sort by artist then album, but for albums with various artists each track gets sorted into a unique location.

the only solution i could come up with easily was to edit the artist info en masse to be "various artists" for those albums. now they are all in a single part of my itunes library and sorted by album. not the best solution but it works.

Simple solution:

Step 1:

Set the "Song is part of a Compilation" tag in the Information window to "yes" for all of them.

If you have all your compilations albums in a separate folder, you can just drag the folder to the playlist column of iTunes and it will automatically create a new playlist of them, where you can simply select all and edit the tag for all of them at once.

Step 2:

Create a smart playlist based on tracks being part of a compilation. This list will be automatically updated once you add a new compilation to your library. Sort this playlist by album.

-s*