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Music Library organization confusion. . . Help.

My music folder "looks" to have everything in it but what I THINK I should have-- the most updated version of iTunes library. Plus, I do not KNOW what that most recent version should be or how old the existing stuff that is being kept "is"?

Here are some discrete questions that will help me:

-- I do NOT see a CURRENT iTunes library. Is this because the current one is simply displayed in the HFS manager as the group of 7 folders in the iTunes Music folder OR should I expect to see a discrete file like the old libraries: iTunes library 4.0 or 8.0 or something?

-- What is the iTunes Music Library.xml doing in there? Is it necessary? Do I "need" it?

-- Do you see that I am "missing" something critical?

Thanks!

Brian

Posted on May 12, 2019 7:08 AM

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,970 points

Posted on May 12, 2019 8:39 AM

The library database is the file iTunes Library.itl. The two .itdb files and Album Artwork folders are supporting components. You can discard both the xml files. If you don't need the XML for supporting third party apps then check under Edit > Preferences > Advanced and turn off the option to share the XML. Your media folder is using the outdated name iTunes Music for the media folder which would now be called iTunes Match. With iTunes closed you can rename the folder manually and iTunes should update itself automatically when it starts. The Previous iTunes Libraries folder will contain older versions of the .itl file. You can discard all but say the most recent three or so. They can potentially be used, for example, to recover a playlist you've deleted in error if you're not able to recover a suitable version of the .itl file from Time Machine.

tt2

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Music Library organization confusion. . . Help.

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