Moving my iTunes library

[fgalkin]

So, I'm moving all my music to a new machine. However, because I have an iPod, I have to use that vile program known as iTunes to manage it. However, when I move my library, I keep my playlists, but all the songs still point to the old file locations in the old machine. Is there any way to make iTunes find the new locations, or if I have to re-import everything, assign the songs to their correct playlist?

Or am I basically doomed to re-arranging everything by hand?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Stark]

Isn't this what the 'export library' option is for? In any case, so long as you backup/move the contents of your mydocs/itunes folder (which keeps all the xml business), you can drop it over your new library and it'll have all the old data like playlists and shit, just like any other piece of software. I've done it a bunch of times, but I think the 'export library' option is the more elegant method.

[Phantasee]

I'm not going to be moving my library anytime soon so I can't see if this is the case, but does 'export library' preserve stuff like play counts? How does iTunes record that stuff anyway, as metadata in each MP3 or (more likely) some other file it uses to keep track of things?

[Stark]

iTunes uses xml to track all the data that's external to the media files themselves (for instance I believe ratings are internal to mp3 tags), so the whole point of exporting the xml (or just copying it manually) is to preserve this data. It's what I do, because be fucked if I want to rebuild the checked/unchecked, ratings, play counts, playlists etc from six years of use.

Why is it people who hate iTunes always have no idea how it works? Wah why can't I drop files on my iPod at random (lol xml database) and why can't it fill in the database automatically BUT I HATE SYSTEM TRAY ICONS. Ahhh, 'power users'.

[Durandal]

If you keep the same username and the same drive letter on your new computer, you should be okay. Just be sure to preserve your directory hierarchy when moving your songs.

[Stark]

Heh. Thus my unhappiness when I thought they'd killed the 'consolidate' option.

[charlemagne]

Manually copying the XML - or to be sure, the whole "My Music" folder - should work fine, I did that recently on my girlfriend's notebook when reinstalling XP. The funny thing about iTunes is, there is no real "export this to reimport later" function, at least I didn't find it - all I found was a "backup" function that wouldn't let me change the destination drive to an external harddisc, NO, the silly program's only option was to burn it all to DVD (which was a bit much considering a 50+ GB music collection).

[Phantasee]

iTunes uses xml to track all the data that's external to the media files themselves (for instance I believe ratings are internal to mp3 tags), so the whole point of exporting the xml (or just copying it manually) is to preserve this data. It's what I do, because be fucked if I want to rebuild the checked/unchecked, ratings, play counts, playlists etc from six years of use.

Why is it people who hate iTunes always have no idea how it works? Wah why can't I drop files on my iPod at random (lol xml database) and why can't it fill in the database automatically BUT I HATE SYSTEM TRAY ICONS. Ahhh, 'power users'.

I don't hate iTunes, I'm just not very good at using it. For a long time I had a smart playlist that grabbed every file with "Update" in the comments, to update my sisters Mini. Don't ask why I thought that was a brilliant plan. Of course eventually I realized it's easier to make a regular playlist and just drop the songs she wants in it, and take out the ones she doesn't.

What do you use the checked/unchecked feature for?

[bozazz]

click the itunes shortcut. When it's opening hold down the shift key and it'll prompt you for the location of the itunes library. hope that helps

[bozazz]

Manually copying the XML - or to be sure, the whole "My Music" folder - should work fine, I did that recently on my girlfriend's notebook when reinstalling XP. The funny thing about iTunes is, there is no real "export this to reimport later" function, at least I didn't find it - all I found was a "backup" function that wouldn't let me change the destination drive to an external harddisc, NO, the silly program's only option was to burn it all to DVD (which was a bit much considering a 50+ GB music collection).

yup. If you want to change the drive to external you can use the same method that I posted earlier. Just copy all the files (so the entire itune folder to the external harddisk. then when opening itunes hold down shift. It'll prompt you for the location of the itunes library. Select the one in the external hard disk and there you go. I'm not exactly positive if this is what you're asking for. But the backup function on itunes is beyond useless. It only preserve the songs, but the ratings are all gone. I did that once when I was reformatting my computer. It turned out that I lost all the rating information

[bozazz]

So, I'm moving all my music to a new machine. However, because I have an iPod, I have to use that vile program known as iTunes to manage it. However, when I move my library, I keep my playlists, but all the songs still point to the old file locations in the old machine. Is there any way to make iTunes find the new locations, or if I have to re-import everything, assign the songs to their correct playlist?

Or am I basically doomed to re-arranging everything by hand?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

have you considered using songbird? It's open source, and a pretty decent software. The interface is similar to itunes and I believe they have plug-ins that will allow you to transfer songs to your iPod.

Edit:
Here's the software
Here'sthe addon that should allow you to copy your songs to your ipod

[Phantasee]

Sorry for the necro, but I thought of this thread and felt it was relevant:

Let's say I ripped a higher-quality version of an album, still in the same format I already had it in. How would I replace the files with the new higher quality files without losing stuff like play counts, playlists, and ratings? Would it be okay to just replace the files in the folder, and make sure the filenames and tags are identical?

[charlemagne]

Let's say I ripped a higher-quality version of an album, still in the same format I already had it in. How would I replace the files with the new higher quality files without losing stuff like play counts, playlists, and ratings? Would it be okay to just replace the files in the folder, and make sure the filenames and tags are identical?

This might not be very helpful but: I guess so. iTunes seems to only care for exact filenames, and I don't see why it shouldn't work to just replace files with higher quality.