Can iTunes handle more than one library?

[Giuanniello]

Hello,

found out that along years of owning Mac computers my iTunes library contains a lot of stuff that I'd review and delete, was wondering if there is a way for iTunes to handle different libraries, say I want to start and check the music and decide later on which to keep and which to get rid of or, better, adding music to a different library than the main one as to then pick what to keep and what to delete without to make the main library grow too much, is there a way I can have iTunes, or another music player for Mac, to handle different libraries or collections so that I don't clog up the main one?

Grazie

 

[F1Mac]

Yes, but you can't use multiple libraries at the same time. Launch iTunes while pressing Option and a dialog asks you to choose/create a library.

 

[Giuanniello]

Great!!!

I can put in a new library only the music I want to "test" or easy listening and then eventually add it to the main library.

Thank you for your suggestion!!!

 

[Boyd01]

Just be careful if you have multiple libraries. While it's easy to put a library on an external disk or network drive, the database containing all the metadata is always stored on your startup drive by default. So if you inadvertently start iTunes and the external drive isn't connected, it can corrupt the database. This really shouldn't happen, but it does. I had a big mess to clean up from this a few years ago. Perhaps Apple has improved it with newer versions of iTUnes, don't know.

But this kind of problem can happen if you just accidently click on iTunes and the external disk isn't available, or if you forget to hold down the option key at startup. See the section of this article about moving the Library database. As long as both the database and media are on the external drive, you won't have a problem. You will get an error message if they aren't available, but the database won't be corrupted.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to-a-new-hard-drive/