Trying to get my iTunes library copied in a specific way
November 13, 2022 1:18 PM Subscribe
I have a large collection of music files saved on an external hard drive. Some, but intentionally not all, of that collection has been already added to my iTunes music library. The hard drive itself has already been backed up, but what I’d like to do is export ONLY the files that are in the iTunes Library, and I’d like them to be exported in a specific way that might require scripting. Can anyone help?
This is all on a 2021 macMini, running the current software. The solution needs to do this:
—Read the iTunes Music Library
—Export all the music in that library to a different network hard drive
—Export it into a folder structure, where the top folder is the [Sort Album Artist] field (because that’s a separate field from “Artist” and “Album Artist” in iTunes and I have painstakingly gone through and checked the info)
—The sub folders would be [Year] - [Album Name]
—For Various Artists/Compilation albums (which I have also been meticulous about tagging) copy them all in one “Various Artists” folder with the subfolders as [Year] - [Album Name]
—Do all of the above reliably for a 1.8 TB library, either in stages or all in one go.
Would be great if it also did this:
—If there is album artwork (which most of the tracks have) it is also copied into the subfolders as “folder.jpg” or similar
—If the folder that the track originates from on the original HD has files that aren’t one of a few blacklisted extensions, copy those to the new folder as well
Bonus Level task:
If the originating folder itself has subfolders (usually more album artwork or text files with track info) copy files from those as well and place in the new album folders.
All of the above steps seems doable, but to do it manually would take many many hours so I’m hoping for an automated solution. I had hoped M3Unify would be a partial solution, but when I did it on a test batch it failed several times to correctly read “artist” and “year” info, and failed to recognize artwork sometimes as well.
Can anyone recommend a different program, or a variety of scripts, or something? Thanks.
This is all on a 2021 macMini, running the current software. The solution needs to do this:
—Read the iTunes Music Library
—Export all the music in that library to a different network hard drive
—Export it into a folder structure, where the top folder is the [Sort Album Artist] field (because that’s a separate field from “Artist” and “Album Artist” in iTunes and I have painstakingly gone through and checked the info)
—The sub folders would be [Year] - [Album Name]
—For Various Artists/Compilation albums (which I have also been meticulous about tagging) copy them all in one “Various Artists” folder with the subfolders as [Year] - [Album Name]
—Do all of the above reliably for a 1.8 TB library, either in stages or all in one go.
Would be great if it also did this:
—If there is album artwork (which most of the tracks have) it is also copied into the subfolders as “folder.jpg” or similar
—If the folder that the track originates from on the original HD has files that aren’t one of a few blacklisted extensions, copy those to the new folder as well
Bonus Level task:
If the originating folder itself has subfolders (usually more album artwork or text files with track info) copy files from those as well and place in the new album folders.
All of the above steps seems doable, but to do it manually would take many many hours so I’m hoping for an automated solution. I had hoped M3Unify would be a partial solution, but when I did it on a test batch it failed several times to correctly read “artist” and “year” info, and failed to recognize artwork sometimes as well.
Can anyone recommend a different program, or a variety of scripts, or something? Thanks.
Response by poster: Bulk Rename is a Windows-only program, as far as I can tell. Also, I don't see that it can actually export copies of listed filed, only perform jobs on the files themselves.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:09 PM on November 13, 2022
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:09 PM on November 13, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
To be clear, you have checked [Sort Album Artist]? Can you overwrite the other two fields with the value in this field with something like Mp3Tag or is that not an option?
I think you would shorten your workload if you check out Bulk Rename Utility. It has good search and copy functions but a bit of a learning curve. It would be best to do the different types of files in different steps.
OR, you might just copy the entire folder structure, minus the extensions that you don't want and then work on moving the files around according to your preferred field.
posted by soelo at 3:53 PM on November 13, 2022