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How to resolve duplicate Music folders?

Previously, all music files were placed in Artist sub-folders within a content folder called "iTunes Music"

Now, that folder still exists, but another sub-folder called "Music" has been added to the new "iTunes Media" folder.

Issues:

1. That is wasting a bunch of space on my hard drive. About 150GB for each instance of main music folders.

2. Apparently, iTunes is sourcing music from both folders. But it seems random - can't find the rhyme or reason why. Very recently added music seems to show up only in the "Music" folder within the "iTunes Media" folder. But there are important music files in the old "iTunes Music" folder that were not moved over to the new structure.

Is there a CLEAN way to consolidate all the music files into just one of those sub-folders and then just keep it that way going forward? I have tried the settings in Preferences and various other advice, but nothing seems to work. If you try copying over files from one folder to the other (or into the iTunes interface window), it creates duplicates of each MP3 file with "[space]1.mp3" at the end. (Or 2.mp3, etc.). That enables iTunes to keep track of things, but then again, same problem — it's wasting a bunch of empty space on the drive by doubling up files.

If you do that and then try to remove duplicates (to reduce space) in iTunes, you invariably end up either deleting the wrong files or losing all the meta information about your albums. With a huge library carefully curated over years, this is a small nightmare.

I completely understand Apple's logic to divide up the iTunes content into separate folders within one "iTunes Media" folder. But it really should have moved over all the content neatly. Not this mish-mash of two content folders for music. Can anyone offer a simple clean way to solve this?

I've spent parts of three days on this. Would really appreciate!

James

Hello all. The referenced solution by turingtest2 that Limnos pointed me to did not work right for me, but the general method led me to figure out a solution. In case it helps anyone else, here’s what I did.

To restate, the problem was that iTunes was referencing music files from the old iTunes Music folder AND from the new iTunes Media folder at the same time. The Mac HD was hosting TWO almost complete music folders at around 130GB each — a real waste of space to boot.

Each time I attempted to consolidate the older library into the newer iTunes Media folder, it created EXTRA MP3 files for most songs, but added a “ 1.mp3” to the filename. That was pointless since it doubled my library WITHIN the new folder. Still, a huge waste of space. And, unfortunately the advice to Show Duplicates and view the library by Date Added to remove the extra files did not work.

I solved it by first backing up all files on a connected drive for reference and easy access. Then on the main HD, I DELETED the content of the newer “iTunes Media/Music” folder.

In fact, I deleted the content from all three of these newer folders:

iTunes Media/Music

iTunes Media/Home Videos

iTunes Media/Movies

Once that was done, I followed the general method outlined by turingtest2. I actually left the “Copy Files to iTunes Media folder” preference ON though.

In iTunes under the file menu I selected “Add to Library…” and selected the older iTunes Music folder as the source. Once it was done adding everything, this time there were no duplicate files!

The only downside was a bit more updating and cleanup. I noticed that it did not bring anything into the new library that I had added this year (2015). So I went back to the saved folders on the external hard drive, gathered all the 2015 music files that were not loaded into the new library, placed them in one temporary folder on the Desktop and then repeated the “Add to Library …” command.

Once that was done I had to repair some song titles and the like. But mostly everything’s resolved. Hope this helps someone else!

Gosh, that happened years ago.

turingtest2 post on consolidating old and new iTunes library structure into one - https://discussions.apple.com/message/18327128 

Thank you, Limnos.

It's funny, I do keep a close eye on those folders. I could swear this change only happened to my system recently. Well, I only experienced problems with missing files, double files, etc. in past few weeks.

Anyway, I'll try this and see what happens ... cheers

James

Okay, those instructions are a version of something I had tried already.

I tried it again and similar result. The Music folder just about doubled in size to 264GB. There were lots of music files sprayed into all the folders with "1.mp3" appended to the end of them.

Trouble is, I tried to View Exact Duplicates to delete all the "new" duplicates from today. But it did not list anything new as duplicates from today. I have a feeling that these instructions are CLOSE but perhaps need refreshing since they are from 2012? Some of the commands in there have moved to different dropdown menus, for instance.

I deleted it and am restoring from last night's Time Machine backup. Then will think what to do next. I may just try the same thing to make sure I did it right, but I can't see what I would have missed.

Hello all. The referenced solution by turingtest2 that Limnos pointed me to did not work right for me, but the general method led me to figure out a solution. In case it helps anyone else, here’s what I did.

To restate, the problem was that iTunes was referencing music files from the old iTunes Music folder AND from the new iTunes Media folder at the same time. The Mac HD was hosting TWO almost complete music folders at around 130GB each — a real waste of space to boot.

Each time I attempted to consolidate the older library into the newer iTunes Media folder, it created EXTRA MP3 files for most songs, but added a “ 1.mp3” to the filename. That was pointless since it doubled my library WITHIN the new folder. Still, a huge waste of space. And, unfortunately the advice to Show Duplicates and view the library by Date Added to remove the extra files did not work.

I solved it by first backing up all files on a connected drive for reference and easy access. Then on the main HD, I DELETED the content of the newer “iTunes Media/Music” folder.

In fact, I deleted the content from all three of these newer folders:

iTunes Media/Music

iTunes Media/Home Videos

iTunes Media/Movies

Once that was done, I followed the general method outlined by turingtest2. I actually left the “Copy Files to iTunes Media folder” preference ON though.

In iTunes under the file menu I selected “Add to Library…” and selected the older iTunes Music folder as the source. Once it was done adding everything, this time there were no duplicate files!

The only downside was a bit more updating and cleanup. I noticed that it did not bring anything into the new library that I had added this year (2015). So I went back to the saved folders on the external hard drive, gathered all the 2015 music files that were not loaded into the new library, placed them in one temporary folder on the Desktop and then repeated the “Add to Library …” command.

Once that was done I had to repair some song titles and the like. But mostly everything’s resolved. Hope this helps someone else!

very confused  as what goes where. from where where is the real music folder

最后更新：2017-10-04 21:47:26

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