Comments on: Merge iTunes Libraries

By: johnno m

johnno m — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:16:57 +0000

Thanks for this — after moving a number of tracks to my other computer temporarily but keeping them referenced in the iTunes library, this tip saved me HOURS of manual reimporting songs where I had downloaded new music by the same artists!

By: gm

gm — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:09 +0000

hi,
i have a question about merging the libraries.
am i correct that actually this is only about the music files?
what will happen with the artwork for instance?
any suggestions appreciated, i’m trying to merge my notebooks lib and my works lib together on a nas disk, and have noticed that swapping libraries using the apple start option already seemed to create loss in the artwork i’ve collected so far.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:05:47 +0000

@Macslut

See also the command line utility ‘touch’ paired with ‘xargs’. In the iTunes directory, for instance, you could try something like:

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 touch

Which would find all the files in the entire iTunes directory hierarchy, print them out into a list, then pipe that to xargs which would run that list as one motherload of arguments in touch. find finds stuff, | is a pipe, xargs runs lists as arguments of any utility, and touch updates files’ modification times.

By: acertant

acertant — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 18:15:48 +0000

A new product has been released called TuneRanger that will synchronize and merge iTunes libraries on separate computers over a network. It does music, video and playlists and all changes appear in iTunes immediately. Versions for Mac and Windows are available making cross-platform iTunes library synchronizations possible.

More info at http://www.acertant.com or http://www.tuneranger.com

By: Charlies Smith

Charlies Smith — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:50:43 +0000

You advise is a life safer.

One question… How do I identify a directory on another hard drive (not the harddrive with my Mac OS X)?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, in advance.

By: Tod

Tod — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:00:17 +0000

How do I do this across external hard drives?

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:13:49 +0000

There’s one major issue with this plan – it would appear that doing an rsync and then reimporting all the files *loses all song ratings and playlists*. For some folks that isn’t a big deal, for me its a gigantic drawback. (Ratings more than playlists.) I’m going to see if I can come up with a method for pulling the ratings in from the previous libraries – if I can make one, I’ll post it here… Otherwise, this hint is a great idea with one big caveat.

By: Beck

Beck — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 15:25:09 +0000

You forgot to include the recursive call, if you leave that out Terminal will just skip the directory entirely. So instead, include a -r in your command:

rsync -r /Users/me/Music/iTunes2/ /Users/me/Music/iTunes

By: E. Noble

E. Noble — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 14:21:47 +0000

I have file son my iPod shuffle, but they were placed there with a different computer. I downloaded some sings from iTunes store and when I wanted to put them on my iPod, it said it would have to erase everything on it since I know had 2 music libraries.
My problem is similar to the above, except that instead of 2 computers, I have an ipod and one computer.
Thanks for any help.
E. Noble

By: » Merge iTunes Libraries

» Merge iTunes Libraries — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 15:00:44 +0000

[...] How to merge multiple iTunes libraries without ending up with duplicate songs. Simple command line instructions for OS X that can also be used with Windows.read more | digg story [...]