Is it possible to organise iTunes without using iTunes?

Question

Is it possible to organise iTunes without using iTunes?

This may seem like a silly question, but bear with me...

I have some spare time at work and with me I have the hard drive that contains my iTunes media. At home is my computer with iTunes installed. I have a lot of double up songs and mislabelled files, etc., that I'd really love to get organised... but I never have time to do it at home. I have the time to do it at work, but I don't know if I mess around with deleting and renaming files directly, whether the changes will be transferrable to my iTunes. I have playlists, etc. that sync with my iPhone and I'd rather not risk wiping those... but I can only assume that making changes within the iTunes media will require me to re-import the entire lot? Is that right? And then I might lose all those playlists, etc.?

I'm sorry if I haven't made this particularly clear... but if someone out there understands what I'm trying to do, Id love some help...

Thanks,

Jess

iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Mar 24, 2014 7:13 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

C F McBlob

Level 4

2,885 points

Mar 24, 2014 7:53 PM in response to jess_chapter28

Your Library and playlists use an XML file which "points to" the respective files in their locations on the HD, so if you delete the wrong duplicate(s) you'll end up with hundreds or thousands of "!" marks on your songs.

Trying to "organize" outside of the iTunes interface is always a bad idea unless you really, really, really want to make a lot more work for yourself than necessary.

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 24, 2014 8:03 PM in response to C F McBlob

Thanks very much for your response! It definitely has me re-thinking just how much organising I might do!

Hypothetically, though, if I decided I was crazy enough to make that unnecessary work for myself... for any tracks that end up with a "!"... is it just a matter of "relinking" or would I have to delete and re-import?

Thanks again 🙂

Reply

Answer 3

Limnos

Level 10

411,193 points

Mar 24, 2014 9:15 PM in response to jess_chapter28

You could re-link but most people absolutely detest the idea of re-linking more than a file or two. If you rename files iTunes may not automatically recognize them so you may end up having to re-link hundreds of links one by one. It would take a day and quickly get very tedious. There wouldn't be any automated way of doing it. If you delete duplicates in Finder you will also end up with broken liinks but there are ways ot automatically delete broken links. Of course unless you are very, very careful you may end up deleting somethign that wasn't a duplicates and when you blindly go in and delete dead links one or two may be things you didn't want to delete.

In the normal course of things you should end up generating many duplicates, You may wish to review how you use iTunes so as to avoid this in future.

Reply

Answer 4

Mar 24, 2014 9:27 PM in response to Limnos

Thanks... you both make it sound very undesireable! That's all I really need when I have these ideas, a couple of people to tell me how tedious it will be 😉

Appreciate all your help!

Reply

Answer 5

Limnos

Level 10

411,193 points

Mar 24, 2014 9:49 PM in response to Limnos

In the normal course of things you should end up generating many duplicates, You may wish to review how you use iTunes so as to avoid this in future.

Sloppy typing at this time of night. You should not end up generating many duplicates.

Reply