Where is my itunes music stored on pc how to#
Where is my itunes music stored on pc mac#

Now choose File > Library > Import Playlist. If you know that you had music stored in several different locations, you will want to repeat this step for each. This will take a while to import everything back into your library. Select File > Add to Library., then choose the “iTunes Media” or “iTunes Music” folder that you saw earlier. Start up iTunes again, and don't be shocked that your library is completely empty. Now we're adding everything back into a fresh clean library. Note that you will not have all of these. Quit out of iTunes, then delete any of the following files you saw in the first step: “iTunes Library”, “iTunes l”, “iTunes Library.xml”, “iTunes Music Library.xml”, “iTunes Library db”. You now need to remove your existing database files so that new ones can be created from scratch. Give it a unique name and save it somewhere like your Desktop. In iTunes, choose File > Library > Export Library. Of what is in your library and playlists. Export your libraryĭon't worry, you don't need much disk space for this step as you're notĮxporting your actual entire library, you're only creating a simple database Note that you have either a “iTunes Media” or “iTunes Music” folder in here. When you get to it in Finder or File Explorer, you'll recognize it by the. Normally, this is in your (home) > Music > iTunes folder but if you're a bit more advanced you might have set it up to be elsewhere and therefore you likely already know where it is. You'll need to know where iTunes keeps all of its files. Thus I very strongly recommend that you back up your existing iTunes folder before going any further, even if it's a mess. The first thing to note is that this method is drastic, and depending on the types of problems you have with your library, it's possible that you can end up worse off than when you began. If you can live without that information, this method tries to preserve everything else about your iTunes music library. There's at least a few types of information that will be lost in the process, which may be considered valuable bits of metadata for some folks: star ratings, “Loves”, play counts, and date added. If reorganizing your library didn't fix all of the issues you have, you can take more extreme measures by completely rebuilding your music library.

Works on your entire library all at once.

There are a number of types of problems that this will not help with, but it's a good first step to take care of some minor issues. Turn on Consolidate files, and if your library is rather old you can also turn on Reorganize files in the folder “iTunes Media”. From the iTunes menu, select File > Library > Organize Library. This is a simple way to tell iTunes to have a look at every single song in your library, try and find it, and move it into a nice folder structure if it isn't already. Solution #1: Reorganize your iTunes library you don't have room for all of your music files to be stored on a single volume), you are an exception and should not turn on the “Copy files to iTunes Media.” feature. That said, if your library is huge and some of it is stored on an external drive (i.e. You don't need to do this, but it will make your life easier and will help prevent problems in the future. In File > Preferences > Advanced, you should allow iTunes to Keep iTunes Media folder organized and Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library. If you're unfamiliar with them, you probably should have them turned on, as they will help keep all of your music tidy going forward.

Where is my itunes music stored on pc mac#

Note that if you're on Windows and your iTunes isn't showing its menu (it doesn't by default), turn it on with Ctrl+B now.Īnother important note: There are a couple of features in iTunes that are on by default on Mac but are normally off on Windows. Below are a number of different suggestions, each with its own upsides and downsides. No matter how your library became a frustrating mess, there's almost always something you can do to get your library happy again. ITunes works really hard to try and fix these problems, but if you're reading this it means that you're running into problems that iTunes couldn't automatically work out on its own. Maybe you moved your library from one hard disk to another, you had to get your library back from an old backup, or maybe your disk was failing and this is what you got after running recovery software. The dreaded exclamation points in your iTunes library! Edited metadata that doesn't show up outside of iTunes! Most of us have had at least some of these issues, and if you're unlucky most or all of your library can end up like this.

Where is my itunes music stored on pc how to#

Posted by Curtis How to fix a damaged iTunes library