NA Delicate surgical procedure (itunes)

[Let'sgoflying!]

So, I have successfully wrested away all my music back from NoTunes. Huge job, great joy.

I noticed during the summer that all my music on the ipad and iphone had shrunk from 300 to less than 90 without request (or error) on my part. Each device had much less than before but not all the same music was missing. Same on the laptop; noTunes music had mostly vanished even though I had not opened the noTunes (non-)app in months. I had not added, bought, borrowed, removed or messed with the music in any w/s/f (way, shape or form). I don't keep it in the cloud.

Aha, but I am wise to noTunes, over the years I have been jacked by them similarly so I had occasionally made a backup folder and dropped songs in there as time passed. So I had multiple folders containing 95% of my music. Took a while to compile, sort, remove duplicates, name them the way I like them. They are in one folder on my desktop, mostly mp3s, m4as.
Yes I made a backup of the final file on a separate device.

Now I need to erase all music from my devices and reinstall from the master folder on my laptop.

How would you proceed?
1. Continue with noTunes or use another app (which can share across devices, not monkey with the file or song format, not 'misplace' them, etc)?

 

[Stewartb]

Apple Music make iTunes yesterday's news.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

Is that a riddle? Or something to do with cat litter?

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

Would be really cool if noTunes could be prevented from renaming my songs.
I name them a certain way for a reason!
As soon as you dump them in noTubes, it goes online and bastardizes your work.
I have unchecked the box regarding that and CDs, and the same with WMV.
They are no longer your property when noTunes gets ahold of them.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

Only option I could find is losttunes.

So, how do I move music from the laptop itunes to the ipad?
I used to plug the laptop in, click the sync button and boom.
Now it goes through Steps 1 & 2, starts Step 3 and then quits doing anything, and the music is not transferred. Thanks

 

[masloki]

Sounds like a couple unrelated issues. Not sure why songs are evaporating off your iThing. It has been so long since I have chosen songs and synced them as Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, Prime Music etc etc have more variety than I do - that is the gist of @Stewartb 's comment. On your computer, when it can't find the song, it gets an '!'. If it gets that, the file may be pulled off your device...? And depending on your setup, iTunes may sync your phone/tablet over wifi. But, not sure why you would end up with different corruptions on different devices.

To get iTunes to stop fixing your music names, get an mp3 metadata editor. iTunes ignore and fixes filenames based on the metadata. I have experienced the repeated hilarity of songs from compilations and from studio albums getting hijacked. You can press ctrl-i in iTunes and edit the metadata that way. In theory, if you edit within iTunes it should respect your entries and store them within the itunes library DB.

So, if iTunes manages your music within filesystem, you should be set. Manage the names, etc within iTunes. When you try to do some inside, and some outside iTunes, it will break.

 

[Sac Arrow]

The best solution is just to maintain your music in MP3 format, separate from Itunes and then re-import as needed when stuff disappears.

 

[exncsurfer]

Google music has worked ok for me. They seem to be trending towards the same music rental model as the other options, so probably not worth trying for you and probably not compatible with your i-things.

Lately, they keep prompting me to try their subscription service. When I search my phone for music I know is on there it sometimes will show 'their' library results and not my local results which you would think would take priority in a search.