CD Rips and iTunes Purchases

John R. Ellegard wrote:

Hello All-

Is there a relatively simple way to combine my CD Rips with music I have purchased from iTunes? I sent all my CDs off to be ripped in ALAC and FLAC and now have them back. It is well over 1,000 CDs. What I want to do is to have have the CD Rips be "Masters" and anything I have purchased from iTunes be subservient to the CD Rips.

By that I mean, if I have an album that was ripped Lossless and the same album that was purchased on iTunes I want to CD Rip to replace the purchase. Is there a simple way to do this or is it going to be a long, tedious arduous process of manually doing it? I am running Yosemite with all the latest updates and I am on a BTO 5k iMac with everything upgraded to the max.

All help is greatly appreciated!

Hi John,

FLAC format is not usable in iTunes. But you can use the ALACs.

iTunes does not have any concept of "master" and "subservient," although it will allow you to have two versions of the same album if you want. Probably the quickest thing to do is just add the ALACs to your library.

In cases where you end up with two versions of the same album, you can decide on a case by case basis to either delete the lossy (purchased) version, or to keep it but let it be distinguished by renaming the Album field in a recognizable way, e.g. append a keyword such as "old."