How do I Manually Update iTunes Music Library?

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Level 1

8 points

How do I Manually Update iTunes Music Library?

I maintain my entire music library in a single folder. Whenever I purchase music from the iTunes store, or have an MP3 file from another source, I move it to this folder. Surprisingly, iTunes has no method to manually force it to update its knowledge of the contents of the music library. Therefore, until recently, I used a program called ITLU to manually force iTunes to see the music I added to this folder. ITLU no longer works and now crashes with a message stating "Connection to iTunes failed".

What else is available to force iTunes to update whenever I add new music to my music library?

Windows 7

Posted on Jul 24, 2010 5:15 PM

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Answer 1

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

Jul 24, 2010 5:19 PM in response to Barryng

iTunes has no method to manually force it to update its knowledge of the contents of the music library.

You mean when you add music to a folder, not the library. When you add songs to iTunes, you are adding them to the library.

I maintain my entire music library in a single folder.

Really? Everything in one single folder?
Any reason you don't use iTunes to manage your music?

What else is available to force iTunes to update whenever I add new music to my music library?

iTunes is updated when you add songs the the library.
You are simply adding songs to a folder and you want iTunes to update based on adding to this folder.
File -> Add folder to library and select the folder where your music is.

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

272,707 points

Jul 24, 2010 5:51 PM in response to Barryng

If iTLU isn't working for you try iTunes Folder Watch.

tt2

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Answer 3

Barryng Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 24, 2010 7:50 PM in response to Chris CA

I keep our entire music library in a single common folder on a networked RAID 0 drive. I immediately convert every purchase from iTunes to a standard MP3 file, erase the downloaded .m4a file as it no longer is needed, and then place the MP3 into the common folder along with all the music we rip from our fairly large CD collection. By doing it this way, my wife and I have access from each of our computers to the common library. My wife has an iPhone and Zune and I have an iPhone and iPod so we can easily populate these devices with common music libraries yet maintain our own playlists. It works out very well and is much easier to manage than dealing with the large multitude of folders iTunes places the purchased music in. Since my wife and I each run iTunes on our respective computers, our music library would be scattered helter-skelter across two computers if I did not do it this way. It is a minor pain to convert each purchase to a standard MP3 but this is necessary so we can burn custom mp3 CD's that will play in our cars.

iPhone does indeed manage the music for us but we decide where the music is stored to suit our convenience and needs. ITLU (BTW, I just got it to work again)is a great little free program that updates the iTune .xml file so it knows where we store the music. I just have to run it every time I add or delete a file from the common folder or iTunes will not have an accurate clue what is in this folder. It seems to me to be a no-brainer that a program such as iTunes should have its own refresh function. However, it doesn't so it is necessary to go to the inconvenience of using another application. It is things like this that would cause me to not purchase Apple products if they did not market such outstanding hardware. Chris CA, I hope this answers your questions.

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