Importing music from external hard drive- getting Itunes to recognize

Perhaps too simple, but try adding the music, then right clicking the selected tunes and select "Get Track Names"

You will probably have to enter at least the CD title and artist name to make it work, if you do not insert the original CD.

Also you may want to ctrl-click or right-click and use "Get Album Artwork".

You should not need to enter any information. From the Gracenote website: "With the ability to dive deep into the “audio fingerprint” of a song, Gracenote Scan and Match can discern subtle differences between radio edits and special remixes. This lets people unlock the correct albums and tracks in popular music services and sync their collections across their devices, without requiring time-draining uploads."

You should not need to enter any information.

That is why I wrote "probably". Usually it works well, but quite a few of CDs had not been recognized, unless I entered the CD name.

Have you tried the contextual menu? That is were it should be now - select a track or all tracks of the imported CD, and ctrl-click or right-click - like I have shown in my screenshot above. What does that pop-up menu show for you?

cg-uk wrote:

For var reasons I deleted all my itunes music.

I have been copying my own cd's onto an external hardrive.

When I insert the cd into mac, itunes recognizes the Lp's etc and then names the files for me.

What format are you importing these CDs?

If they are WAV (which does not have tags), the only things saved is the track name (which is the filename).

If they are WAV, iTunes stores the info in the iTunes library database file.

cg-uk wrote:

This is what I get....

iTunes cannot get CD track names for songs that were not imported using iTunes.

To allow iTunes to look for CD track names for this song, import the song again using iTunes.

looks like Im stumped then !

Shame as you could do this before via the gracenote option.

Pity its gone now.

Your first post was confusing on exactly what you did...

You imported the CD using iTunes, then saved the files eslewhere and deleted them from iTunes?

So, you obviously imported the music with another application. Two options:

1. http://thelittleappfactory.com/tagalicious/

2. http://www.tuneupmedia.com

Going forward:

- If you want your iTunes Media folder to be in a different place, go to Preferences in iTunes and then Advanced and change the location to be on your external hard drive.

- If you want your iTunes Media folder to be on an internal hard drive, but keep some music on your external, make sure that when you re-import the music aftrer you've tagged it, you do not have the option checked to copy to iTunes Media folder.

ehanks wrote:

So, you obviously imported the music with another application. Two options:

1. http://thelittleappfactory.com/tagalicious/

2. http://www.tuneupmedia.com

If they are WAV files, these will not work.

What format are these songs?

WAV files will not have any info except the song title (which iTunes gets from the filename).