iTunes is not importing all songs from music directory

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iTunes is not importing all songs from music directory

I had a lot of duplicate songs with broken links in my iTunes library, so I recently decided to delete all the songs out of the library and re-import them by doing an "Add Folder to Library", then choosing "C:\users\xxx\Music".

That does not seem to have brought in all the songs in my library, however, and I can't quite figure out why.

I have noticed that my library is not uniformly organized - some of the content is in the root "Music" folder, some of it is filed under "Music\iTunes", some of it is (for some reason) filed under "Music\Music", etc.

I tried moving the music from the "Music\Music" folder into the root "Music" folder, but that created another minor disaster of broken links.

Does anyone have any suggestions for getting everything in sync, without having to do a lot of manual deleting and re-importing into iTunes? I don't have a huge problem with losing my play history, as long as I can get all the music into iTunes.

HP Laptop, Windows Vista

Posted on Jun 3, 2010 9:15 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

272,881 points

Jun 3, 2010 9:59 AM in response to blazingorbit

Hi, welcome to Apple Discussions.

The usual place for an iTunes Library to live on a Windows 7/Vista box is C:Users<User>MusiciTunes. Depending on whether you started out with iTunes 8 or iTunes 9 inside the iTunes folder will be a bunch of library files and a folder called *iTunes Music* or *iTunes Media*. If you want it to (and it's the default option) iTunes will keep everything inside this iTunes Media folder organised. Anything that you add to iTunes from outside that folder will either be added and left where it is or copied (making duplicates) into the iTunes Media folder depending on your choices in Preferences.

So... if you want to rebuild your library from scratch my suggestion is that you move everything inside the iTunes Media folder before adding it to iTunes. If you let iTunes *Keep the iTunes Media folder organised* then it will shuffle things around as it sees fit. Any real duplicates will end up with filenames ending in " 1.mp3" or " 1.m4a" etc. which you can search for using Windows file search.

The above is all well & good for music files that have tags, e.g. AAC & MP3 files. WAV files don't have tags so on import you can lose useful information and Podcasts may have volatile info. that is not stored in the tag. Ideally you'd leave the originals in place rather than removing and adding again. If you started out with iTunes 8 then I recommend you upgrade your library to iTunes Media Organisation (File > Library > Organise Library) before importing and also (with iTunes closed) rename *iTunes Music* as *iTunes Media*.

For tips on how to tag things in an iTunes/iPod friendly way see http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/grouping.asp and if Windows Media Player has had access to these files at some point you might also find http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/CleanDeadArt.asp useful.

tt2

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