Convert All Songs in my iTunes Library to the same Bit Rate at Once????

robotfist · Oct 23, 2010

I am running out of space on my laptop drive. After weighing all my options, I have decided to down convert all the songs in my iTunes library to 160kbps (they are all currently 320kbps) to create more drive space. Does anyone know if there's a way to down convert all the songs in my library to a lower bit rate at once? I know there's an option to down convert songs to 128kbps when transferring them to an ipod. I basically want to do the same thing but with the 200GBs of music I have in my iTunes library.

Any suggestions?

techie4life · Oct 23, 2010

Here's one way I have used before:

With iTunes open, open up its Preferences pane.
Under General, click Import Settings.
Pick 160kbps as your desired bit rate.
Click ok and exit out of the Preferences pane.

Now go select all of your songs, right click on them, and hit "Create MP3 Version." It should start converting them, but don't click off any of the songs otherwise it will be harder to select each one that is the old, 320kbps version to delete.

The one problem I foresee with this is it creates new versions of your songs, taking up more disc space. I would probably recommend converting blocks of songs at once so you don't run out of space, then delete the old versions before proceeding to the next block.

Hope that helps!

robotfist · Oct 23, 2010

Yeah, I was hoping there was some sort of shareware out there that would delete each older version of the song immediately after it had been converted. That way I could select the whole library, press convert, go to work, and come back to everything finished.

Would automater allow me to create a script that does that?

Leddy · Oct 31, 2010

Hi Robotfist,

Just a thought, but do you really need to carry all your songs with you?

External USB drives are pretty cheap these days and you could offload your library to an external drive thus preserving your files rather than reducing the quality of your library.

You'll lose detail from your files by transcoding them to a lower bit rate and once that information is gone, it's gone for good.

Cheers.

Julie1 · Sep 14, 2013

This was very helpful - thank you!!!

Hi thank you this was very helpful! Would you believe that I have had my ipod shuffle for years and I never knew until now that you could change the quality of the songs?

techie4life said:
Here's one way I have used before:

With iTunes open, open up its Preferences pane.
Under General, click Import Settings.
Pick 160kbps as your desired bit rate.
Click ok and exit out of the Preferences pane.

Now go select all of your songs, right click on them, and hit "Create MP3 Version." It should start converting them, but don't click off any of the songs otherwise it will be harder to select each one that is the old, 320kbps version to delete.

The one problem I foresee with this is it creates new versions of your songs, taking up more disc space. I would probably recommend converting blocks of songs at once so you don't run out of space, then delete the old versions before proceeding to the next block.

Hope that helps!

ChrisA · Sep 14, 2013

Julie1 said:
Hi thank you this was very helpful! Would you believe that I have had my ipod shuffle for years and I never knew until now that you could change the quality of the songs?

This is an old thread. iTunes has changed. Now in 2013 iTunes will downsize the songs as it syncs them to you iPod. So you can keep the higher quality files on your Mac but make them smaller for your iPod

The "shuffle has always done this from day-one.

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Convert All Songs in my iTunes Library to the same Bit Rate at Once????

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robotfist

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ChrisA

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