Steve T's Semi-Cohreant Ramblings

I was pretty dumb a bit ago and used iTunes on my work laptop to purchase some content. I say dumb because I am going to have to turn this laptop in next March when they “lean the workforce”. I wanted to make sure my playlists and ratings from my work laptop made it to my home PC where I want to store all of my music. This is how I made sure everything got copied.

• Step 1: Clear out the target machines iTunes library. I didn’t want any extra songs clogging my library.
• Step 2: Create a folder to match the layout on the current iTunes install. Mine is D:Music.
• Step 3: Copy all of the folders in that Music folder to the target machine. This took my home network (100MB) about 30 minutes.
• Step 4: Export your library. File->Export Library…
• Step 5: Copy that library.xml file to the target machine
• Step 6: Import the library. File->Import… Locate the XML file and click open. This takes a few minutes for my library, but not too bad
• Step 7: Delete any duplicate playlists. The old playlists will get migrated with the library.xml file
• Step 8: Try and play any purchased songs. This will require you to authorize this machine with your iTunes login.
• Step 9: Optional: De-authorize the old machine. Advanced->Deauthorize Computer… I will do this before I turn in my laptop so I have an extra one. You get 5 machines for authorized music.

Actually pretty simple, and everything gets copied including playlists, play counts, ratings, and podcasts. I will probably figure out a way to sync that D:Music folder so I can do a non-drive backup and sync between my home PC and the laptop. It won’t preserve all of my rating changes, and that sucks- but not much you can do about it except keep exporting and importing every time.

Off to get some peel and eat shrimp. Have a great weekend.