Copying songs from one iTunes library to another while retaining track info?

[MattG]

NOTE -- I'm not illegally copying anything. This is in reference to content going between my own personal computers.

That being said...I have a problem. I have two iTunes libraries on two different computers. Two separate libraries (and no I don't want to sync them completely). Every so often, I have the need to copy songs from one to another. This is what I do:

1. Go to the songs at the file level.
2. Copy the folder to a flash drive.
3. Drag the folder into iTunes on the target computer.

What's happening is the songs come over, but many times they don't come over with artist/album names and song titles, leaving me to manually rename everything. How can I copy/export these from the source computer, and put them on the target computer and still retain all the tags?

 

[Nermal]

Have you tried the "Home Sharing" feature at all?

 

[MattG]

Have you tried the "Home Sharing" feature at all?

No, but I also need to be able to copy this data to different iOS devices (one is a work device and one is a home device, so different iTunes accounts). Does that make a difference?

 

[balamw]

If they are all authorized to use the same iTunes account it should work very smoothly.

Home Sharing works really well, including with iOS devices.

B

 

[MattG]

If they are all authorized to use the same iTunes account it should work very smoothly.

Home Sharing works really well, including with iOS devices.

B

They're not using the same account, though...different iTunes accounts. One is work, one is home.

 

[sammich]

The songs should have their metadata (title, album, artist etc.) stored on the file themselves. Is the audio you're trying to copy in MP3/M4A format? Does the info appear in the window when you quicklook or open it in another application (on the original machine)?

 

[philden]

What you are doing should work. I do this a lot, usually over an ethernet connection, but have used an intermediate flash drive.

I can only think of two reasons that it might fail. One is that the file format you are using for your music does not support internal saving of the data. I think that only aiff format might have this problem.

The other reason could be that you are copying the wrong files. Do you have more than one copy of the music files on your computer, inside and outside the iTunes library?

Phil.

 

[balamw]

I think that only aiff format might have this problem.

WAV too, but just convert these to ALAC if you want to use them everywhere.

I think there may also be some issues with OLD MP3 files with old ID3 tag formats.

B

 

[MattG]

Oddly enough, it seems like it's only the music I've purchased from iTunes that does has this problem. When I drag it to the computer, the only thing that comes over is the track name, except it puts a number in front of it (e.g. "01 Song" instead of "Song"). It brings over nothing else.

Music that I've ripped from CDs or purchased from Amazon comes over just fine.