iTunes – quit hurting my music library

2Jan/0710

iTunes – quit hurting my music library

We have two laptops here at the house. My iBook and our Windows PC. Both of them have iTunes on them and are authorized. All of my music is on a large usb drive that I can connect to either laptop when I need to. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that they can’t share the same iTunes library. If I add a song to iTunes when I’m using my iBook. I have to then remember to go in and add the song to iTunes on my Windows laptop. But when I do that, since I have “copy the file to my iTunes music library” checked, it sometimes makes a copy. It will then append the file name with ” 1″ (unless there is already a ” 1″ file, in which case I get a ” 2″ filename and so on.). If I’m merging two physical libraries, the story gets worse.

Whee!

So right now, when I click on the “view duplicates” option in iTunes, it shows I have 4.75GB worth of duplicate files. Automator doesn’t provide any actions for comparing two file names and finding the physical file and then doing something to it. Like removing it from iTunes and moving the file to another directory. I still haven’t learned Applescript yet, so Python to the rescue.

All I ask is this: iTunes, if I’m copying a file and you find a file with that name already in my library. ASK me what to do. And give me the option to say “apply this decision to this question if it comes up again.” Or better yet, just scan the library for new files at startup or while the program is running. You are checking the files anyway. I know you are, I see the little “!” next to the files when I open you up and the usb drive isn’t connected. Just quit hurting my music library.

Filed under: Apple, MacOS Leave a comment

Thoams

How about copiing the iTunes-Library from the Master (your Mac) to your Windows? With my two Macs this works.
musicman

As soon as I read the part where you said you were using one library with two computers, I knew you were in trouble. You’re making it awfully hard on yourself by doing that. I’ve always chosen one comptuer to de the dedicated iTunes machine. There is no need to make it more complicated for yourself.

Just decide on one machine to be the dedicated one. If for some reasons you have to buy downloaded songs on your non-dedicated machine, just e-mail them to yourself on the dedicated machine and add them to the library. Then deauthorize them on the other machine.

If you really need to listen to your music on two machines, consider using wireless, which lets you play muaic from another machine wirelessly. I do it all the time. Or consider an AirPort Express device which can hook to your stereo and wirelessly stream music from a wireless-capable Mac.
Pecos Bill

It would seem Apple solved this for you AGES ago IF you can use the music sharing feature. There are some solutions that let you access shared music from over the internet. As they both are laptops, probably what you really need is a Music sync and to keep the music on each machine.
Brad

You could always just Share the library. Choose one computer to be the dedicated iTunes Music computer, and in the preferences choose share my library. Whenever both computers are on the same network, you’ll be able to see the music on both computers. Or, if you really want to, just set yourself up another computer to be the “file server” for your music, keep it hooked up to your network, and you can share the libraries from that machine. This can be some slow crappy system that just runs iTunes with either Mac OS X or XP. Then just attach the USB drive and off you go.
fred

Try holding down the “option” key as you launch iTunes. It will prompt you to choose another library or create one. That way, you can have both music libraries showing up in the iTunes source list.
Scott

all: Sharing my library would require that the machine doing the sharing be turned on. Which basically turns one of the laptops into a desktop machine if I want to be able to access the music at any given time. Plus, since my wife uses the laptop a lot I’d be sharing the library over WiFi (802.11g) which could cause some buffering problems.

Thoams: I tried that and it didn’t work when I tried it. I don’t remember if I was using 7.0 or not when I tried it, I may try it again. I know Syncotunes will synchronize two Mac iTunes libraries, but I’m not sure if it will work with Mac and Windows libraries.

My ideal solution would be for iTunes to scan my music directory, similar to another media management program I like. MediaMonkey. At the very least, prompt me before creating a duplicate file on my filesystem. I mean, why make things harder for the user? You can create a checksum and see if the files are identical at the bit level, why not do that and prompt the user for action?
Scott

Fred: Yeah, the shift/option key combo is one I’m using to keep a specific iPod library separate from my main iTunes library. Which is still kind of a hassle. I understand the “manually manage my iPod option” works well for some people, but it’s kind of clunky to me.

I do like it when I can drag-drop files burned to CD/DVD onto my iPod and not have to copy them to my library first.
http://www.ericalba.org alba

have you thought of using an external networkable drive to share between the two laptops?

http://dealmac.com/categories/Computer/Storage/Hard-Drives/External-Hard-Drives/Networkable-Hard-Drive-NAS-/458.html

that might work.

e
John

In real apps that support concurrent access to shared data (such as FileMaker Pro), there is always some sort of built-in ‘traffic cop’ that prevents more than one process from writing to the same collection of data simulataneously, and makes sure that the data always stays in a coherent state.

This is NOT the case with iTunes — each iTunes app thinks it has complete and total access to the iTunes Library, and this sort of problem is guaranteed to happen. You can band-aid it in various ways, but the basic problems will recur, recur, and recur again until you stop trying to use a program that *isn’t* a shared-access database as if it was. iTunes is not designed to be used in this way, and database corruption, duplicate files, etc. will simply keep happening.

Your best alternative here, if you really want the music accessible anywhere, would be to spring for a used Mac mini, connect the library disk to that system, and use iTunes sharing to share out the music. If you used Apple Remote Desktop, you wouldn’t even need to hook a monitor and keyboard to it to manage it.
Scott

John: Gotta disagree there. I think the best solution for me at this point is for iTunes to become a better program rather than me throwing more money at the solution.
I think Apple is good at listening when these issues come up. the abilty to transfer purchased music off of an iPod onto a different authorized computer gives me hope that, eventually, the music library will become much smarter.
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