downloaded music not copying to music folder

As Limnos says, Remove Dead Tracks may do it. Otherwise there are other approaches, but it will be best to clean out the dead links before moving on.

tt2

Another way to sort out the dead links is with a set of Lost & Found playlists.

Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching All the rules Playlist is Music and Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist. You can delete them all with a Command-A to select them and Option-Delete to remove them.

You can then delete the Lost & Found playlists.

tt2

Elizabeth Ploog wrote:

Hi.

When I try to complete task #3 and right click the file, I do not get an option for consolidate. This is what I see:

Please reread the instructions. You should be in iTunes. not the Finder.

3 Use the option iTunes > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files. - wait until complete.

Locate (in iTunes) and select the two songs that are in the iTunes Media folder either together, or one at a time, right-click (or equivalent) and select Consolidate Files... from the context menu (in iTunes). This will bring copies of those files into the correct folder.

Chris's step will work as well, but would take longer.

tt2

Okay.

Look at the songs in those folders and see what they are.

Then locate these songs in iTunes, select them and right click > Consolidate.

Close iTunes. Tap the icon in your dock to start iTunes and immediately press and hold down the option key. You should get a dialog box asking you to choose or create a library. Click choose and browse to the renamed iTunes Library.itl file.

I think I stated in an earlier post clicking on an iTunes Library file doesn't necesarily make iTunes open that file.

If for some reason iTunes 9 on a Mac really doesn't want to open the file once it has been renamed as iTunes Library.itl (which I understand is what a new library created on iTunes 10 for Mac would be called) then rename it back to iTunes Library (there might be a smaller, empty library file there with that name that you need to delete first) and proceed with the next step.

tt2

Elizabeth Ploog wrote:

Everything seems to be in working order now- I have the library.itl folder and a library folder (I did not create it). iTunes opens when I select either one. Should I delete one?

Also, in my media folder there are music files as well as a folder labeled music which contains the 463 artists not found in media. How should I fix that?

thanks

The (empty) iTunes Library file will have been created when you started iTunes and got an empty library. You can delete this file.

By now you should have the following:

A folder called iTunes containing the files:

iTunes Library.itl

iTunes Library.xml

iTunes Library Extras.itdb

iTunes Library Genius.itdb

sentinel (hidden)

and the folders:

Album Artwork

iTunes Media

Previous iTunes Libraries

Inside iTunes/iTunes Media should be the file

.iTunes Preferences.plist (hidden)

and the folders::

Automatically Add to iTunes

Music

Inside iTunes/iTunes Media/Music should be:

Folders for each of your artists, containing folders for each album by that artist

If there are artist folders in iTunes Media rather than iTunes Media/Music then that might suggest one of the steps has been missed out.

Can you check first that the media in your library is at least playing?

If you get info. on a track what path is it stored on?

Are the files at iTunes Media/<Artist>/<Album> folders extra files not currently connected to the library? I believe you mentioned 499 artist folders earlier and now we have a count of 463?

tt2

If you didn't miss a step then it was probably me. 🙂

Just to make sure you don't throw anything away that you might actually want do the following:

1. Use the menu item File > Library > Add folder to library and add the folder iTunes Media. Any files not already in your library will be added, those already added will be ignored.
   
2. Hold down the option key and use the menu item File > Display Exact Duplicates. Sort the resulting list on the Date Added column, then delete all the files added today, sending the files to the trash.
   
3. Click Display All at the bottom of the screen when you are finished.
   
4. Your iTunes Media folder should be much tidier by now.
   
5. If you haven't already done so delete the file iTunes\iTunes Libray as it is redundant (and empty).

tt2