Peyton Todd

Q: How get all my music stored locally

I tried to burn an MP3 CD of a playlist and was told that some of the songs (20 of them!) could not be burned to it. The most frequent complaint was that they were on the cloud instead of my hard drive. But surely most of them ARE on my hard drive. Many were bought from iTunes and downloaded, and many others were copied from friends onto my hard drive.I drug some  or all of them into the iTunes directory, and I believe I drug some or all from there into the Playlist.

 

Could the problem be that I signed up for iTunes 'Match' service? I was told by a Tech at the time something to the effect that if a song exists on iTunes it will be taken from there when (what? when was it playing a playlist? I forgot what he said exactly).

 

Should I 'De-authorize' the computer that I build my playlists from?

 

What should I do?

 

Thanks.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 25, 2016 9:42 AM

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Q: How get all my music stored locally

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  • by ed2345,

    ed2345 ed2345 Sep 25, 2016 3:38 PM in response to Peyton Todd
    Level 7 (24,938 points)
    Sep 25, 2016 3:38 PM in response to Peyton Todd

    Peyton Todd wrote:

     

    I tried to burn an MP3 CD of a playlist and was told that some of the songs (20 of them!) could not be burned to it.

    .............Many were bought from iTunes and downloaded...

    If the were bought from iTunes, they are in AAC format.  iTunes can only burn an MP3 CD from songs that are already in MP3 format.

  • by Peyton Todd,

    Peyton Todd Peyton Todd Sep 26, 2016 12:46 PM in response to ed2345
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 26, 2016 12:46 PM in response to ed2345

    Thanks, that's a help to know. I have a product that converts MP4 (AAC) to MP3. But the harder part will be tracing down each song one by one when they're stored in various folders in iTunes's the directory structure, which as I said is based on Albums and Artists (and some of my songs are not in an iTunes folder at all but wherever I drug them into the playlist from). Is there no simple way to collect together into a common folder all the songs in a given playlist so that I could run my converstion MP4 to MP3 app on them all?

     

    I suppose for future reference one could copy all the songs to be used in a playlist into a particular folder in advance, but when building a playlist one often doesn't know in advance which songs one will include.

     

    Another guide after the fact might be to print the playlist to a text file and look at the location of each song, which is contained in the rightmost column of the resulting text file. But that's still a laborious process of tracing each one down one at a time...

     

    Furthermore, is there something wrong with the way I'm burning the playlist to an Audio CD? Is it to be expected that a rather typical CD player would not recognize such a CD?

  • by Peyton Todd,

    Peyton Todd Peyton Todd Sep 26, 2016 12:49 PM in response to ed2345
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 26, 2016 12:49 PM in response to ed2345

    Continuing the reply I just wrote: I just realized that all my worries about how to find all the songs are nothing compared to the even bigger problem of how to get them all onto my hard drive when many are stored in iCloud instead!

  • by ed2345,Helpful

    ed2345 ed2345 Sep 27, 2016 10:27 AM in response to Peyton Todd
    Level 7 (24,938 points)
    Sep 27, 2016 10:27 AM in response to Peyton Todd

    Peyton Todd wrote:

     

    Thanks, that's a help to know. I have a product that converts MP4 (AAC) to MP3.

    Peyton,

    Yes you do.  It is called iTunes!  With iTunes you can initiate the conversion, right from the library, without tracking down the location of the audio file.

     

     

    Furthermore, is there something wrong with the way I'm burning the playlist to an Audio CD? Is it to be expected that a rather typical CD player would not recognize such a CD?

    OK, your previous post implied that you were burning an MP3 CD rather than an audio CD.  For an audio CD, the songs do not have to be in MP3.  They do however have to be on your computer, not in the cloud.  If they are not already there, download fresh copies:  Download your past purchases - Apple Support

     

    Also, they must be regular audio files, not Apple Music.

  • by Peyton Todd,

    Peyton Todd Peyton Todd Sep 27, 2016 11:00 AM in response to ed2345
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 27, 2016 11:00 AM in response to ed2345

    Actually, I tried to burn both an Audio CD and an mp3 CD - the latter choice being adopted only when the Audio CD I built could not be recognized by my CD player. Well, it now turns out that an Audio CD of the same playlist built by iTunes from another computer DOES get recognized by my CD player, so it looks like the problem is with the computer I burned the first one from.

     

    As to the iTunes directory structure built on Albums and Artists, is there really no way to get around it? The option to organize one's library does not seem to help. I just don't think in terms of Albums and Artists. But even when I choose the organization I find useful (either songs or genres) I'm still stuck with the same non-intuitive (at least for me) directory structure. Nonetheless, I am at least able to find where each song file resides by exporting the playlist to a text file, loading that to Excel, and looking in the rightmost column to see the URL to each file. That's apparently the only way I could find out, for each song, whether it's AAC or MP3. 

     

    Armed with that information, I tried to convert the songs in the playlist to MP3. Unfortunately, when I would select a song and click File > Convert, no MP3 option is presented, even for the m4a files. The only choices available are 'Convert for ipod, ipad, or iphone, fix ID3 tags, and Create AAC version - and those are the only choices available regardless of whether I'm positioned on an m4a file (which is already AAC, is it not?) or an MP3 file. 'Convert to MP3' appears nowhere.

     

    Peyton

  • by ed2345,Solvedanswer

    ed2345 ed2345 Sep 27, 2016 4:10 PM in response to Peyton Todd
    Level 7 (24,938 points)
    Sep 27, 2016 4:10 PM in response to Peyton Todd

     

    As to the iTunes directory structure built on Albums and Artists, is there really no way to get around it? The option to organize one's library does not seem to help. I just don't think in terms of Albums and Artists. But even when I choose the organization I find useful (either songs or genres) I'm still stuck with the same non-intuitive (at least for me) directory structure.

    The "organize" capability in iTunes works according to the iTunes standard of Artist/Album.  if you want some other structure, it will have to be done manually, which most users find not to be worth the trouble.

     

     

    I am at least able to find where each song file resides by exporting the playlist to a text file, loading that to Excel, and looking in the rightmost column to see the URL to each file.

     

    It can be done way more easily!  Right-click the track in iTunes and choose Show in Explorer (or on a Mac, show in Finder).  It will take you right to the file. 

     

     

    That's apparently the only way I could find out, for each song, whether it's AAC or MP3. 

     

    Just put your library in Songs view, and enable the column for Kind.  That will display the audio format (MP3, AAC, etc.)

     

    Unfortunately, when I would select a song and click File > Convert, no MP3 option is presented, even for the m4a files. The only choices available are 'Convert for ipod, ipad, or iphone, fix ID3 tags, and Create AAC version - and those are the only choices available regardless of whether I'm positioned on an m4a file (which is already AAC, is it not?) or an MP3 file. 'Convert to MP3' appears nowhere.

     

    Peyton

    Where you see "Create XYZ version" the XYZ is whatever you have in your Import Settings.  Just go there and change it to MP3.

  • by Peyton Todd,

    Peyton Todd Peyton Todd Sep 27, 2016 6:39 PM in response to ed2345
    Level 1 (8 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 27, 2016 6:39 PM in response to ed2345

    The 'Show in Explorer' solution worked beautifully, thanks!

     

    The 'Enable column for Kind' solution also worked beautifully, again thanks!

     

    Changing the Import Settings Button worked beautifully as well, yet again thanks!

     

    I have some other questions, but I'll start another discussion with them so I can mark the answer so far as correct.

  • by ed2345,

    ed2345 ed2345 Sep 28, 2016 4:21 AM in response to Peyton Todd
    Level 7 (24,938 points)
    Sep 28, 2016 4:21 AM in response to Peyton Todd

    Peyton Todd wrote:

     

    The 'Show in Explorer' solution worked beautifully, thanks!

     

    The 'Enable column for Kind' solution also worked beautifully, again thanks!

     

    Changing the Import Settings Button worked beautifully as well, yet again thanks!

     

    Peyton,

    You are welcome, 3x.

    Enjoy the music!

    Ed