How can I unite two different music collections (with some duplicates) for itunes?

October 22, 2004 6:13 AM

I have about 73GB worth of music in iTunes. The "my music" folder on my HDD has about 85GB of music in it. I want to identify the music that's NOT in iTunes so I can either delete it, or organize it and import it into iTunes. Advice? I'm using WinXP.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

If you just drag your music folder over to iTunes (this works on the Mac, I'm assuming it works this way on Windows as well- or, use your import method of choice), it ought to only import the stuff that's not already in there.
posted by mkultra at 6:46 AM on October 22, 2004

In the "Advanced" settings (not 100% sure, don't have iTunes at work) you can specify the location of the iTunes library. If you change it to where you want it to be, then copy your library to there, (.xml file and all) it should just work, yes?
posted by Capn at 7:47 AM on October 22, 2004

Response by poster: Capn, did you intend that to be an answer to this question?
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:56 AM on October 22, 2004

Maybe import it anyways, then use a Smart Playlist to pull up the recently added items?
posted by smackfu at 8:04 AM on October 22, 2004

Make sure that you have "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" checked under Preferences->Advanced. Then choose Advanced->Consolidate Library.

This will tell iTunes to move all the music it knows about to its folder. Then search for mp3s that aren't in this folder.

Caveats: I'm on a mac and I'm not certain that it will move the files instead of copying them. If I'm wrong, then all you'll have done is created another copy of every song that iTunes knows about. If that happens I suppose you could delete the new copies, add every mp3 on your hard disk to iTunes, verify that the number of mp3s on your hard disk has doubled, then delete every mp3 that isn't in iTunes.
posted by revgeorge at 8:31 AM on October 22, 2004

Capn, did you intend that to be an answer to this question?
erm... yes. Sorry. iTunes! iTunes! iTunes!
posted by Capn at 8:40 AM on October 22, 2004

I would just drag your my music folder into your iTunes window and then sort your library by "date added". Anything new will be at the top of the heap.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:36 AM on October 22, 2004

Response by poster: OK, I'll try that. Thanks all.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 10:13 AM on October 22, 2004