Relocting playlists in iTunes?

January 29, 2006 6:19 PM

Moving iTunes Playlists?

I just bought a new drive and have dragged music from anoter drive to it as I want all my music in one place and was out growing the other drive.

I know from experience that if I delete the original files and then try to play a playlist, the tunes won't be found.

How do I tell it to keep the playlists intact but find the files (identically named/foldered) on the other drive? Changing the location of my library in the preference doesn't do it. I'm on OS X.

Stuff used to be in A Drive => Music but is now copied to B Drive => Music

posted by Manhasset to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Put the music back where it was, change the location of the library, and then choose Consolidate Library from the Advanced menu.
posted by cillit bang at 6:41 PM on January 29, 2006

I didn't move the music. I copied it.

Should I just do the consolidate thing now? What does it do, exactly?
posted by Manhasset at 6:45 PM on January 29, 2006

Crap, looks like I shoulda used consolidate from the get go. Arrrgh.

Anyway to do this without recopying? It's 180 gigs. Rather not have to do it again.
posted by Manhasset at 6:50 PM on January 29, 2006

If your music was moved en masse with the same folder relationships, and if you can do a text search-and-replace, you can do this.

Look for the file iTunes Music Library.xml. (You may have already moved it to the new drive.) With iTunes closed, copy this file, open it with a text editor, and do a search-and-replace. Your music probably all has a Location key that looks like:

<key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/C:/Documents
%20and%20Settings/Dan/My%20Documents/My%20Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Animal%20L
ogic/Animal%20Logic/04%20I'm%20Through%20With%20Love.m4a</string>

If you S&R on the bit C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Dan/My%20Document/My%20Music
to (for example)
D:/My%20Music

You'll also have to tell iTunes where this music library is. I haven't done this yet, but I'm probably going to soon.
posted by dhartung at 7:48 PM on January 29, 2006

Keep in mind that if you use your own organization for folders of music, consolidating your library will thoroughly hose it.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 8:07 PM on January 29, 2006

I just did what dhartung just mentioned when I moved my mp3 collection from my PC to my Mac sucessfully with all the iTunes metadata and custom directories intact.

It didn't work at first. I had to take the additional step of rebuilding the binary iTunes music library file (iTunes Library.itl) by corrupting it (i blanked it out using a text editor). You can't just delete it or it will erase your xml file. Once it sees that it's blank it will rebuild it based on the xml file.
posted by sammich at 5:51 AM on January 30, 2006

iTunes brain surgery. Basically a tutorial to walk you through what dhartung and sammich explain.
posted by zpousman at 7:02 AM on January 30, 2006