How many songs can Itunes hold?

Question

How many songs can Itunes hold?

Hi, I currently have 5,600 songs in Itunes 9. I have 55,000 songs that I recently transfered to my mac. The songs were on an external hardrive for a good couple of years. I would like to add all the songs to Itunes but was concerned that it would slow it down too much and become unusable. For you guys with large libraries, how well does Itunes function? any slowdowns? How many songs is too much? Should I transfer the songs to Itunes or should I leave them in my music folder? Any info is greatly appreciated.

2.66Ghz Quad Core Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 24" Apple LED Cinema Display, Time Capsule

Posted on Sep 14, 2009 7:25 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

IdrisSeabright

Level 10

155,267 points

Sep 14, 2009 7:32 PM in response to Stuart Lawrence

My library is about 37,000 songs. I have no problems. The limiting factor seems to be how powerful your machine is. Yours looks like it could handle it, though.

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Answer 2

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Sep 14, 2009 7:35 PM in response to Stuart Lawrence

Some have claimed to have libraries of over 350,000 songs.
I've heard of quite a few over 100,000.

Should I transfer the songs to Itunes or should I leave them in my music folder?

That's not a this or that question.
You can leave then in the music folder and add them to iTunes.
You can set your iTunes music folder location to your current music folder or turn off copying the files to the iTunes music folder.
Either will work fine though I find it easier to turn on Copy files to the iTunes music folder when adding to library and have everything in the iTunes music folder.
Then delete it from wherever it was.

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Answer 3

Sep 15, 2009 1:16 AM in response to Stuart Lawrence

I find it easier if I let iTunes do the work with my iTunes prefs>Advanced and have the 'keep' and 'copy' options enabled. If you use these settings then by default iTunes will put your tunes into the Music>iTunes>iTunes Music folder sorted by Artist>Album.

Once the file is copied then you can delete the original.

My library on my internal is around 12,000 tunes and no issues with being slow except during an update of iTunes when iTunes wants to go through and update various files. When that happens I tend to not interfere and iTunes do its' work.

MJ

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Answer 4

Sep 16, 2009 9:14 PM in response to Stuart Lawrence

Thanks guys. I added my large library to itunes, it took a few hours. I noticed that every few minutes Itunes becomes un-responsive for a couple of seconds, it sort of pauses when browsing my music. Afterwards it's seems ok. I mostly notice this in Cover Flow but it occurs in Grid View as well. Could the massive library be causing this?

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Answer 5

Sep 17, 2009 1:55 AM in response to Stuart Lawrence

If you have a lot of Smart Playlist see if Live Updating is selected - if so - turn that option off and see if things improve.

MJ

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