Caring for your iTunes Library

Once you have more than a few files on your system, and especially if they are coming from more than one source, it's a good idea to start organizing your files in a clearly structured manner. This is a good practice because it makes things easy to manage if you have to transfer files to another drive; you know exactly what files are in which directory.

The advanced tab in iTunes preferences

Organizing your library

There are a couple of options for organizing your files. The first is to have iTunes organize your files automatically based on the file tag info. To enable this function open your iTunes preferences, select the advanced tab and check the the two options; Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized and Copy Files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library. Note: If you change the relevant tags iTunes will move the file, this might cause Scratch LIVE to lose track of the file's location.

Consolidating your library

A useful function in iTunes is Consolidate Library, once you've been collecting music for a while, you might find you have files spread over your hard drive, on your desktop, on external hard disks, etc. This function copies all the files in your library into a single file structure. Very useful for backing up, keeping your drives tidy. Consolidate Library is in the advanced menu in iTunes.