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How to add music to Macbook Pro but not iTunes

Hello


Today I finally bought my first Mac - a Macbook Pro - after being a PC user since forever.


I have nearly 300GB of music (sourced from various places) on my PC which I manage in folders - I don't like iTunes. I need to move the music to my new Macbook but I don't want to add it to iTunes.


Can someone please help advise me where on my Macbook I should save it and how to stop it from automatically adding to iTunes.


Finally, when it comes to playing the music, again, I want to avoid iTunes, so can anyone recommend a something similar to WMP I can use.


Thanks


PS if you're asking why not iTunes, well it's purely preference. I like to select a random selection of albums to play in random. Plus iTunes has previously cocked up my tags and folder structure so want to avoid

Posted on Feb 25, 2013 1:36 AM

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8 replies

Apr 23, 2017 2:09 PM in response to fatboyslick

Hello

I just found this exchange I it was very useful for me. I also very recently changed from a lifetime on PC to MacBook Pro. But this is not very easy and I'm having my doubts. First of all, hotmail is not working the way it should. I'm finding solutions, but it takes time. I'm also worried about how to organise my music. I've got about half a TB and I need to have it very well organised. I don't like songs, I like records, discs. And on PC, I had my records/discs organised on hard disk within larger files that defined music styles. It seems hard to have that type of structure in Mac, especially in iTunes. I think that you have the same way of organising music.

Could you tell me where you finally imported your music and where do you import new music ? Do you use the Music file in Finder ? What do you use to play your music ?

And finally ... why did you decide to quit PC and enter Mac ?

Something else, I don't like the way you have to have all of your stuff in Mac. So I'm keeping my old Lumia 535 and it's not easy to find solutions to syncing between my phone and my mac. But I don't want to follow mac all of the way.

Thanks

Soren

Feb 25, 2013 2:36 AM in response to fatboyslick

Just create a folder called Music in the ROOT of the drive and Copy it from your PC to that folder. Then if you decide to use iTunes there is a setting in the iTunes Preferences to NOT Import the files into the iTunes folder structure and Leave it where it already is. That makes iTunes only make a Database of the files and not copy them.

Uncheck both the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and the "Copy files to itunes Media folder when adding to library".

You can also Change where iTunes keeps it media folder location, if you like.


User uploaded file


The problem is there aren't many other choices out there for Mac for media, Music & Movie, cataloging & player programs as most everyone that owns a Mac uses iTunes.


Like you I don't care for iTunes either and don't do any music storage on my Mac. I use my PCs for that with WinAmp.

Feb 25, 2013 3:02 AM in response to fatboyslick

The ROOT of any Drive is lowest folder on that drive and or the Drive itself.


On Windows drive partitions are defind by letters like C:\ and D:\ and so on. The ROOT of the drive on a PC is the C:\ part.

So When you create a folder on C:\ you are creating it in/on the ROOT. It would look like this C:\Music and then if you have SubFolder for artist names they would look like this C:\Music\ArtistName then the either the songs from that aritst or the Album names as another SubFolder under the artist name (C:\Music\ArtistName\AlbumName and then the song titles for the songs in that album.


On Mac they don't us letters to defind Drive partitions. OS X uses Names. So the ROOT of a Mac drive is the Macintosh HD. Everytime you create a Folder in the Macintosh HD partition that folder is Created in/on the ROOT of the drive as apposed to creating one in another folder. On Mac it uses the other Slash key, the / instead of the \.


So on OS X, Mac, a ROOT folder would look like /Music as the Forward Slash ( / ) Denotes the ROOT of the drive.


User uploaded file

See where it it Says "Where:" in the screen shot and it has a / (Forward Slash) that it telling you it is in the ROOT of the drive.

How to add music to Macbook Pro but not iTunes

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