How to compact iTunes music library files

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How to compact iTunes music library files

I've been using iTunes for several years, and my iTunes Music Library has grown substantially. Still, with just over 22,000 tracks, it seems that the two library files (iTunes Music Library.XML and iTunes Library.ITL) are inordinately large. Those two files are taking 53MB on my hard drive. Which means that each individual track is taking almost 2.5KB of data! I'm not sure, but that seems like an awful lot of information, just to "catalog" the music tracks.

Is it possible that the library files need to be "cleaned" and/or compacted? Is there a method to use, to compact these two files? Or does 53MB sound like a reasonable size for these two files?

Dell Inspiron 9200 Windows XP

Posted on Jun 13, 2006 9:25 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

vinnieg

Level 1

10 points

Jun 13, 2006 10:16 AM in response to Frank Nicodem

Hi Frank,

You can delete these files, and upon reopening of itunes, they will be recreated fresh and new. However, you will lose song ratings, playlists, playcounts and possibly other information you have diligently passed to iTunes over the years, and you will have to re-add your music...

It might be fun to save backup copies and then "refresh" the files to see how big they are...but I have around 2400 songs, and my files are close to 4MB. So 10x sounds about right.

--
v.g.

Dual 2.5 GHz G5, 1 GB SDRAM Mac OS X (10.4.6)

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