Section 68. Find Music Files from iTunes Entries


68. Find Music Files from iTunes' Entries

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

33 Find and Play Music


SEE ALSO

62 Repair a Missing Song Entry

66 Convert Audio Files to Other Formats

67 Consolidate Your Music Library


iTunes acts as an intermediary between you and the bare music files that make up your digital music collection. Its internal database structure translates the files with their austere names and folder paths into an easily navigable continuum of music, interlinked by Artist, Album, Genre , and other info tags . You can accomplish most operations involving your music by simply dragging song entries out of the iTunes' song listing into other applications, particularly on the Mac where applications such as iMovie are designed to interoperate with iTunes.

However, this arrangement doesn't mean you won't ever have to find the original raw music files in their organized folders. You might want to attach an MP3 or AAC file to an email message, for example. You might have to upload a song file to your website. These operations require you to be able to find your way to the original music files to which the iTunes' database entries point.

1.
Navigate to the Music You Want to Find

Using the iTunes Browse lists or the Search bar in the Library view, or any playlist or other music source in the Source pane, navigate to find an individual music file that you want to find on your hard disk.

2.
Select a Song File to Find

Click to select the song file you want to locate.

NOTE

You can't use this method to locate multiple files on the disk at once; if more than one song entry is selected, the Show Song File menu option is disabled.

68. Find Music Files from iTunes' Entries


3.
Reveal the Song File on the Hard Disk

Choose File, Show Song File (or right-click the song title and choose Show Song File from the context menu). A Finder or Windows Explorer window appears, showing you the selected file in its location on the hard disk. You can copy this file to any more useful location, such as your Desktop, for use with other audio-editing applications.

NOTE

Don't move the file from its location on the disk, particularly if you use Windows. See 62 Repair a Missing Song Entry for more information on the consequences of moving a file and how to recover from it.

4.
Allow iTunes to Keep Your iTunes Music Folder Organized

Note the path to the file's location. If you have enabled the Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized option in the Advanced pane of the iTunes Preferences window ( open the window by choosing Edit, Preferences in Windows or the iTunes, Preferences on the Mac), you can be sure that the file can always be found by navigating first into your iTunes Music folder (inside the Music folder on the Mac, or in the My Music folder in Windows, then inside iTunes , where the Music Library database file is kept), then into the folder named for the artist of the song as set in its info tags. Open the folder corresponding to the album the song is on; inside that folder is the song file itself.

If the Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized check box is not enabled, you'll have to use the steps described in this task to find your music files because there will be no predictable way to locate them as there is when the option is enabled.

TIP

If you have Mac OS X Tiger or an indexing system such as Google Desktop on Windows, you can quickly locate music files using their info tags with a Spotlight or Google search on your computer's disk. This approach is still not as elegant as using iTunes' folder hierarchy, but it'll do in a pinch .




iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap
iPod + iTunes for Windows and Mac in a Snap (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672328992
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 152
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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