iTunes Music Library.xml and case-sensitive file paths

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Level 1

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iTunes Music Library.xml and case-sensitive file paths

Hi,

I've been trying to move my iTunes music library from a case-insensitive system (iTunes 12.3.1.23 in Windows 8.1) to a case-sensitive system (Linux Mint 17), and I'm encountering problems with the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file. In Windows, it doesn't matter that the specified path in the .xml document doesn't exactly match the name of the corresponding file. For instance, the .xml document lists the path of The Beatles' "A Taste of Honey" as /.../04%20A%20Taste%20of%20Honey.m4a but the filename is "04 A Taste Of Honey.m4a". The only difference is that "of" is capitalized in the filename, but not in the path specified in the .xml file. This causes the track's metadata not to be imported in Linux because it's looking for "04 A Taste of Honey" with the lowercase "of". Is there a way to rewrite the iTunes Music Library.xml file so that it matches the filenames to the paths in a case-sensitive way?

Thanks!

Posted on Nov 1, 2015 12:26 PM

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Answer 1

msuper69

Level 6

8,689 points

Nov 1, 2015 12:39 PM in response to dbwestwood

You should ask on a Linux support forum.

iTunes isn't designed to work on any OS except Windows and Mac OS X.

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Nov 18, 2015 6:22 AM in response to dbwestwood

Possibly a bit late to help, but try my script ConsolidateByMoving. It should be able to ensure that the XML agrees with the true path. There is still scope for errors however if your library contains inconsistent case versions of Artist or Album names. It appears that iTunes doesn't always adjust the physical files to reflect case only metadata changes, but updates its internal record, and then the XML as if the change had taken place.

An alternative approach would be to iterate through all of the objects in the library and make a case-sensitive comparison of iTunes' current record of each items' location, and the file system object's record of the path to same file, correcting iTunes if it has it wrong.

tt2

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Answer 3

dbwestwood Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 29, 2015 12:34 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks! It performed exactly as advertised. Except for the cases when the album's or artist's name had differing cases, every other path was corrected in the .xml file.

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

272,743 points

Nov 29, 2015 1:54 AM in response to dbwestwood

Great. There is another script called TitleCase which you could use to enforce some consistency in the album and artist names.

tt2

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