Moving iTunes from PC to Mac

[HvyMtlPlyr]

Hello All:

I posted this in the iMac forum but didn't get any repsonses. Probably better to post it hear in the app forum.

Recently bought the 27" i5 and am in the process of moving all my stuff over. I currently have about 5500 songs in iTunes. Of that, about 3800 songs are in my iTunes folder and the rest are in a folder called MP3. The problem is my MP3 folder has a total of 4300 songs - the ones that are in iTunes as well as a bunch more. I don't have all the MP3 songs in iTunes as I don't listen to them often so I didn't want to bog down iTunes with extra music that I don't always listen to. The more music I added to iTunes on my PC the slower it ran.

Having said all this, everything I read about moving the library says to consolidate it before you move it. If I do that then I'm going to have about 1700 duplicate songs on my Mac.

Is there a way to move the files as is and change a global path setting from /My documents/My Music/MP3/... to mac/music/mp3 so that all my music that was in the MP3 folder will point to the new location on the Mac? Or does anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks,

Bob

 

[Caleb531]

In the iTunes preferences (iTunes > Preferences...), in the Advanced tab, there in an option to change your iTunes folder location.

 

[GGJstudios]

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The more music I added to iTunes on my PC the slower it ran.

The number of songs in iTunes shouldn't have any effect on how fast iTunes runs. I have close to 30,000 songs in my library and iTunes is very fast. Many members here have much larger libraries than mine.

Having said all this, everything I read about moving the library says to consolidate it before you move it. If I do that then I'm going to have about 1700 duplicate songs on my Mac.

You won't have duplicates if you consolidate the library first, then move only the consolidated library.

 

[HvyMtlPlyr]

Thaks for the replies. I guess there's no other way to do this than move the songs into iTunes. The reason I have the MP3 directory is that I have a bunch of full CD's in there, but didn't import all those songs into iTunes. I have an early 30GB iPod and do a complete synch instead of manually managing the songs. It's much easier this way since I have the disk space on my iPod. Having said that, I don't wany just load every song from every CD into iTunes.

Oh well - small price to pay for having a great system.

 

[r0k]

Thaks for the replies. I guess there's no other way to do this than move the songs into iTunes. The reason I have the MP3 directory is that I have a bunch of full CD's in there, but didn't import all those songs into iTunes. I have an early 30GB iPod and do a complete synch instead of manually managing the songs. It's much easier this way since I have the disk space on my iPod. Having said that, I don't wany just load every song from every CD into iTunes.

Oh well - small price to pay for having a great system.

I have about 30 gig of mp3 files that are not in iTunes. I also have a few dozen titles I purchased through iTunes. (I prefer Amazon because there never was any drm and any device can play back mp3 but only some devices can play music purchased from iTunes).

There is no reason why you must put your data in iTunes any more than you must put your photos in iPhoto. There is an option to "let iTunes manage my files" and I always turn that off. Files are files. You can bring over that big folder full of music directly to your Mac and stick it in your home folder under music. You can then let iTunes import everything (without making duplicate copies). By complete sync, do you mean "autofill"? I believe you can still use autofill without allowing iTunes to make duplicate copies of all your mp3 files.