Determining Where and How the Music Library Music Is Stored

It is much easier to organize an empty room, so it is good practice to set up the organization of your iTunes Library before you fill it with music. In this section, you'll learn how iTunes organizes the music in your Library. If its standard practices aren't good enough for you, you can change its ways to suit your own organizational preferences.

Working with the iTunes Music Folder

As you import music into the Library, files are created for each song you add (whether it's from a CD, downloaded from the iTunes Music Store, or imported from an existing file). When you first started the application, iTunes created a folder in which it stores all the music it manages for you.

The default location of this folder depends on the kind of computer you are using. On Windows computers, the folder will be stored in a folder called iTunes Music, located within your My Music folder. On Macs, this folder is also called iTunes Music, but it is located in the Music folder within your Home folder.

To see the current location of the iTunes folder on your computer, open the iTunes Preferences dialog box and then open the Advanced pane (see Figure 14.1). At the top of this dialog box, you will see the iTunes Music Folder Location box. Within this box, you will see the path to your iTunes Music folder.

Figure 14.1. The current location of your iTunes folder is shown on the Advanced pane of the iTunes Preferences dialog box.

Tip

In case you don't remember from the last chapter, you access the iTunes Preferences dialog box by pressing Ctrl+ (Windows) or + (Macs).

Just for fun, go ahead and open your iTunes Music folder so you can see it for yourself. Use the path you see on the Advanced pane to find it. If you haven't added any music to your Library yet, it might be pretty dull. To see what a full folder looks like, check out Figure 14.2.

Figure 14.2. Don't be envioussoon your iTunes Library will soon be as full of good tunes as mine is.

As you can see, within the iTunes Music folder is a folder for each artist (in the figure, my B.B. King folder is highlighted). Within the artists' folders, each album from which you have added music is shown. Within each of those folders, the tracks you have added are individual files (see Figure 14.3). If you take a close look at Figure 14.3, you can see that the files have the extension .mp3, which means these files were imported in the MP3 format.

Figure 14.3. In this folder, you can see all the songs contained on the album The Best of BB King (which is an excellent album by the way, not that I am qualified to be a music critic).

Configuring the Location of the Music Folder

In most cases, the default location of your iTunes Music folder will be fine, and you don't have to do anything about it. However, there are some cases in which you will want to change the location of this folder. For example, suppose you have several hard drives in your computer and the one on which the folder is currently stored doesn't have a lot of room. Even though individual song files are relatively small, you are likely to end up with thousands or tens of thousands of them in your Library. That can add up to a lot of disk space. You might want to change the location of your iTunes Music folder so that it is on a drive with more room.

Note

If you already have music in your Library, changing the location of the iTunes Music folder won't hurt you. When you select a new folder, iTunes will remember the location of any previous music you have added to the Library and will update its database so that music will still be part of your Library.

To change the location of this folder, do the following:

1.	Open the Advanced pane of the iTunes Preferences dialog box.
2.	Click the Change button. On a Windows PC, you will see the Browse For Folder dialog box (see Figure 14.4). On a Mac, you will see the Change Music Folder Location dialog box (see Figure 14.5). Figure 14.4. You use the Browse For Folder dialog box to move to or choose a new home for your iTunes Music folder. Figure 14.5. The Change Music Folder Location dialog box looks a bit different from its Windows counterpart, but the purpose is exactly the same.
3.	Use the dialog box to move to and select the folder in which you want your iTunes Music folder to be located.
4.	Click OK (Windows) or Open (Mac). You'll return to the Advanced pane, and the folder you selected will be shown in the iTunes Music Folder Location area.
5.	Click OK to close the iTunes Preferences dialog box.

Setting Other Organization Preferences

The location of the folder in which your music will be stored is likely the most important part of the organization preferences. However, you'll need to understand a couple more preferences. These are also located on the Advanced pane of the iTunes Preferences dialog box:

Caution

If you have iTunes copy files to your iTunes Music folder when you add them to your Library, be aware that it does actually make a copy of the file you are adding. This means you will have two files for each song you add to the Library. After you have successfully added songs to your Library, you should delete the song files from their original location so that you aren't wasting disk space.

• Keep iTunes Music Folder OrganizedThis preference causes iTunes to organize your music as described earlierthat is, by artist, album, and song. Because this is a logical way to organize your music files, I recommend that you leave this option active by making sure this check box is checked.

• Copy Files to iTunes Music Folder when Adding to LibraryThis preference causes iTunes to make a copy of audio files that already exist on your computer (such as MP3 files you have downloaded from the Internet), and it places those copies in your iTunes Music folder, just like files you create by importing them from a CD. If this preference is inactive, iTunes uses a pointer to song files you are adding instead of making a copy of the files; it doesn't actually place the files in your iTunes Music folder. I recommend that you make this preference active by checking its check box. This way, all your music files will be in the same place, no matter where they came from originally. If you don't have iTunes make copies when you add songs to your Library and then you delete or move the song files you added, iTunes will lose track of the song and you will experience the "missing song file" problem. To learn how to solve that problem, see "Solving the Missing Song File Problem" on page 329.