iPod iTunes music library management

August 5, 2008 2:36 PM

Is there a way, (3rd party program, plug in, etc...) that will let me compare my iPod's music library against my iTunes library, (maybe on dual panes?) and visually mark which songs on my iTunes library are not in my iPod and viceversa?

Maybe there's a script out there that does this...? I've tried other media managers, (MediaMonkey, Songbird, Winamp, etc...), but none of them offer that feature either.

Any suggestions?

posted by Yorke and Vedder to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I've done this using J River Media center and a copy of XL. You just use the media center program to browse your tunes on your HDD, select all and copy the contents of the pane into XL and then do the same with the contents of your Ipod. Sort the two lists side by side alphabetically and Bob's your uncle.
posted by merocet at 3:55 PM on August 5, 2008

This is exactly my frustration with digital music. None of the music management software I've tried seems able to do this seemingly simple thing.

So I've taken to using my MP3 player in "hard drive" mode rather than "automatically connect to music software mode" and using Beyond Compare (Windows) to manage things quickly and easily. I no longer have constant issues with duplicated songs in redundant nested folders created by WMP, WinAmp, etc.
posted by Tubes at 7:56 AM on August 6, 2008

Senuti does this, at least halfway. There's a visual indicator (either a dot or lack of one, it's been a while since I've used it) indicating songs that are on your iPod but not in your iTunes library.
posted by 2or3whiskeysodas at 4:29 AM on August 7, 2008