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User profile for user: Nightowl4933
Nightowl4933 Author
User level: Level 1
18 points

Music file structure on my Mac

This has probably been asked many times, but when searching I find answers going back to 2005, which are probably out of date, so here goes:


I've 'ported' my iTunes library over to a NAS drive, and within the iTunes folder (amongst others) there's an 'iTunes Media' folder and a 'Music' folder. Most of my music is in the 'Music' folder with sub-folder for each artist. All good so far.


In the 'iTunes Media' folder there is another 'Music' folder (as well as Downloads, Podcasts and Ringtones folders) with sub-folders in the 'Music' folder for the remaining artists, three 'Automatically Add to...' folders, three 'Download*' folders and a 'Podcast' folder.


I'm having some real issues with Sonos so would like to tidy up my music library before I get stuck into sorting that out, so would it be OK if I were to move all the artist folders together into one or the other folder and, if so, which one?


Thank you :-)

iMac Pro, macOS 11.2

Posted on May 9, 2021 8:29 AM

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,252 points

Posted on May 10, 2021 7:34 AM

What do you have selected for the Music Media folder location under Music > Preferences > Files? With iTunes this would traditionally have been .../iTunes/iTunes Media. With a new Music library it would be something like .../Music/Media but when your Music library was created from an iTunes library things are often more complex. Turning Keep organized off and back on again will rearrange any files within he media folder that aren't in quite the right place. Consolidating the library will copy in any files that are outside the designated media folder, leaving you to manually clean up the originals that were left behind. Moving/renaming content by hand will generally break links to the library, although there are some exceptions when dealing with HFS+/APFS drives.


tt2

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User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,252 points

May 10, 2021 7:34 AM in response to Nightowl4933

What do you have selected for the Music Media folder location under Music > Preferences > Files? With iTunes this would traditionally have been .../iTunes/iTunes Media. With a new Music library it would be something like .../Music/Media but when your Music library was created from an iTunes library things are often more complex. Turning Keep organized off and back on again will rearrange any files within he media folder that aren't in quite the right place. Consolidating the library will copy in any files that are outside the designated media folder, leaving you to manually clean up the originals that were left behind. Moving/renaming content by hand will generally break links to the library, although there are some exceptions when dealing with HFS+/APFS drives.


tt2

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User profile for user: Nightowl4933
Nightowl4933 Author
User level: Level 1
18 points

May 11, 2021 12:15 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank you, tt2.


Your description was really helpful.


What I found was that the 'other' folders were (mostly) visible and playable from Music, but to organise things a little better, all I did was 'import' the album folders into Music, which basically copied them to the correct folder - without any problems.


I deleted the duplicates and the remaining folders, and all seems good.


Thanks for your help.

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Music file structure on my Mac

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