HT204668: Locate and organize your iTunes media files

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Q: My iTunes folder

I recently moved my iTunes stuff to a QNAP nas and thought I should tidy it up.  There are iTunes libraries going back to iTunes 4 in 2004!

 

My question is what should this look like?  I would like to keep my ratings and play count and even the artwork.  Much of my music is my own CDs that I have ripped over the years but latterly it has been iTunes purchases.  I would prefer not to lose the DRM free copies that I have (not sure why, but I would).  I am sure there is much here that can be got rid of. 

Multimedia Folder.jpg

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11), 4GB RAM

Posted on Mar 15, 2016 6:57 PM

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Q: My iTunes folder

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  • by turingtest2,

    turingtest2 turingtest2 Mar 15, 2016 7:07 PM in response to Allez Epic
    Level 10 (85,361 points)
    iPod
    Mar 15, 2016 7:07 PM in response to Allez Epic

    See Make a split library portable. In general moving things around by hand can break links though iTunes is a little more forgiving on OS X if things stay on the same HFS+ drive.

     

    tt2

  • by Limnos,

    Limnos Limnos Mar 15, 2016 7:33 PM in response to Allez Epic
    Level 9 (53,665 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 15, 2016 7:33 PM in response to Allez Epic

    Most of what you are showing looks normal but the "___'s Music" folder is not part of a normally structured library.  If it works then fine but there is a slight possibility you have duplicated media in there.

     

    The damaged library file can probably go.

     

    Previous iTunes libraries are backup copies of the .itl file made each time you update the iTunes application.  They are mostly handy should during the update process the main library file becomes corrupted, or should you wish to revert downgrade iTunes.  If they are months old then you likely would not want to revert to it and you can delete them.