5 Steps to a Ship-Shape iTunes Library

It is not an alien feeling if you think your online or digital music library is in a mess. With unlimited downloads available from the net, music files transfers from various sources such as CD’s, USB drives, external hard-drives and mobile phones, the music library does becomes disorganized. We recommend the following 5 easy steps to clean up your iTunes library so that listening to music remains a pleasurable experience for you. 1. Create a back-up of your library: This is the vital first step before we proceed further because, in case the cleaning process goes wrong, you may lose your entire collection. So, copy all your audio or video files to your iTunes music folder. Then, copy the iTunes folder to some other drive on your machine or preferably on an external drive. 2. Get rid of the duplicates: When we copy music from different sources, we don’t pick and choose individual music files. Instead, we paste the entire folder in our library, which results in duplication- a serious headache. To fix this problem, click on the Show Duplicates option in File menu and then keep the shift button pressed, which would then show you the exact duplicates according to length of the track. For a huge library, use software like Dupe Eliminator for Windows and Dupin for Mac users. 3. Delete the junk: There is loads of music in any library that no one ever listens to. So, just hit the delete button on those tracks. If you have not star-marked the songs in your library, this can be an uphill task. But it is worth taking the pain rather than keeping junk in your library. 4. Keep a check on the hidden files: Often, after all the hard work of deleting duplicates and junk files, these files still remains listed in our music library. So, to get rid of these hidden files as well, you can use a cool plug-in, The Exorcist by Songbird, which can be easily downloaded from the Internet. 5. Back-up the data and restore your library: You are required to backup again now because you will have to close the iTunes completely and delete the entire original library in order to restore the new one. After you switch it back on, just add the new backed up folder to your iTunes and it will import the new organized folder into the library. After following this process, your library will become much easier to browse, though it would be difficult to say that the library would not become messy again. But even if it does, just follow this quick-guide again and you are done with your job.