This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the. An app called M3Unify is able to produce playlists and also export the music within the exported playlists. What makes this app different is that it can also rename the files it exports using tag substitution patterns, and can export the files as subfolders, with specific instructions detailing how the files are put in folders when exported. The app converts, copies and organizes your playlists' and albums' music files into folders, and creates the.m3u file that lets you play your playlist on any media player. For every album, you can include an image file with album artwork. You can browse and select which of.
My last few columns have mostly dealt with problems with Apple’s iOS 10 Music app. There are plenty of these, and while there are workarounds for some of the changes, many of the missing features are just gone.
This week, it’s time to step back from what’s broken, and answer a few questions about how iTunes works: I look at file conversion, playlists, and album artwork.
Does iTunes convert?
Q: My iTunes library contains a lot of MP3 files that I ripped with software other than iTunes. When I add these files to iTunes, or sync them to my iPhone, does iTunes convert them to AAC files? If so, does this mean that the files take up extra space on my hard drive?
There are two questions here. The first is about the file formats that iTunes supports, and the second is about syncing.
Since iTunes uses AAC as its default format for ripping CDs, and files purchased from the iTunes Store are in that format, many people think that iTunes only handles AAC files. iTunes supports files in the following formats: AAC, MP3, WAV, AIFF, and Apple Lossless. (It also supports Audible audiobooks.) iTunes can store and play files in any of those formats. Also, there seems to be a common belief that AAC is a proprietary audio file format created by Apple. This is not the case. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding, and is part of the MP4 specification.
![M3Unify M3Unify](/uploads/1/1/8/3/118302668/254783204.png)
iTunes only converts files in two specific situations. The first is when you add WMA files to an iTunes library on a Windows PC. When you do this, iTunes converts them to the format you’ve set in the Import Settings dialog of the General preferences, because it does not support the WMA format. iTunes does not, however, delete the original WMA files, and it’s up to you to do so if you don’t want to keep them.
The second is when you tell iTunes to convert high bit rate files to lower bit rate versions during a sync to an iOS device. You control this on the Summary pane of your iOS device when syncing.
When iTunes performs this conversion, it doesn’t keep two versions of the files, but converts the files on the fly, putting the lower bit rate versions on the iOS device. This allows you to save space on your iOS device by choosing a lower bit rate for syncing, yet keeping higher bit rate versions of your files in your iTunes library.
Which playlist is a song in?
Q: I have lots of playlists in my iTunes library. Sometimes I want to find which playlist a specific song is in. Is there any way I can do that?
If you right-click or Control-click a song you can choose Show in Playlist to see all the playlists that contain the song.
Choose one of the playlists from the sub-menu to go to the selected track in that playlist.
Deleting an artist
Q: Is there any way to remove all of an artist’s music from my iPhone? I only see options to remove songs or albums.
It’s not easy to find how to delete music from the iOS Music app. To delete a song or album, find the item, then tap and hold until a dialog displays. Tap Remove or Delete from Library. This works for music you’ve synced, or for music you’ve download from the cloud. If you try to do this with an artist, the only option available is to start an Apple Music radio station.
You can, however, delete an artist’s music if you know where to look. Go to Settings > Music > Downloaded Music, and you’ll see a list of the music on your iOS device, listed by artist. Swipe to the left on an artist’s name and then tap Delete to remove their music.
Since each entry in the list shows how much space an artist’s music takes up, you may want to do this when you need some free storage on your device.
Artwork in my car
Q: My car system only supports low-resolution album art, but I have lots of artwork in my iTunes library that is very high resolution. Is there a way to reduce the file size of all my artwork? I have a big library so I need a solution that doesn’t require me to do this track by track.
Doug Adams’ $2 Re-Apply Downsized Artwork does exactly what you want. You select some tracks, set the resolution you want, run the app, and it changes the artwork. There are lots of options for the final artwork: size, padding, and more. Star sky for mac os. The only limit is that iTunes won’t let it work on more than about ten or twenty tracks at a time. Atomic number 48.
Another app from Doug Adams, the $5 M3Unify can export files from your iTunes library while downsizing album artwork. If you only want to prepare some tracks to view in your car, you might want to use this.
Munificent Antonym
Have questions of your own for the iTunes Guy? Send them along for his consideration.
Awhile back I wrote a review of my portable digital audio player, the Fiio X3 2nd generation (Amazon US, Canada). The summary of that review was that this is a bare bones audio player, with a simple UI, that is beautifully-built with an attention to sonic quality. It sounds fantastic but has a few UI quirks that take a bit of getting used to.
The Fiio players don’t come with their own software for keeping track of what’s stored on them. There are a few software options out there that aim to help with this, but most of them integrate with iTunes and I’m trying to wean myself off of that mess. Whats the best torrent downloader. The two best options for integrating sync with iTunes seem to be:
- Dapper (macOS, free demo, $27)
- iTunesFusion (Windows, free, $10, $15)
I have not tried these. If you have, I’d love to hear your impressions in the comments. My summary from reviews of Dapper is that it uses a custom set of playlists (using a prefix in the playlist name) to figure out what to export to your card. For less than the app’s listed 27 bucks, I can do the same by just creating custom playlists and exporting them myself.
You might be saying, “how can you do that? iTunes won’t let me export playlists.”
I have another utility excitingly named Playlist Export that does just this. Pick a playlist from the list and it will dump the m3u file and optionally copy the files to a destination of your choosing. It’s even somewhat smart in that it allows you to adjust the file paths on export to match up what you have on your player’s SD card. This is of crucial importance, because by default, the paths are slightly different than they are in my computer’s music collection.
In my case, the “Music File Path Settings” must be changed from /Volumes/Bulk/Music/rob’s iTunes Collection/ to an empty field on the Fiio’s card. I’m using relative paths for my playlists, and the m3u files are exported to the top-level music directory on the Fiio’s SD card.
An couple of example playlist entries might look like:
Note the lack of a leading slash here. The files are stored in ArtistAlbum Name format. Yours may well look different, depending upon how you’ve formatted your music naming in your library.
![M3Unify M3Unify](/uploads/1/1/8/3/118302668/344187921.jpg)
This is great for dumping copies of playlists from iTunes, optionally with the included music. What it is not great for, is keeping a playlist in sync with the source computer. If your playlist changes, the contents on the Fiio won’t necessarily reflect those changes.
Don’t even think about editing a playlist on the Fiio itself. It’s not great for that.
Munificence
And that brings me back to the device. Fiio, if you read this, please give us something that can edit the included library on the device. It is impossible to synchronize library metadata (information about the songs on the player) with an external source. Play counts, ratings, favorites and playlists are all locked inside the player, never to be used again. It’s a relatively minor complaint, but one I keep coming back to. And it’s the main reason I can’t come up with a more convenient, reliable way to sync music other than just copying and deleting the contents of the memory card.
There are a number of threads on the interwebs with people struggling to figure this out. This one, in particular, was the most helpful I found for decoding the structure of the Fiio’s entries. It’s still a fantastic player and I love it, despite some of its usability quirks.
Munificent Clone Wars
UPDATE
Doug of DougScripts has a little utility to “Stuff a thumb drive with songs from your iTunes library” called M3Unify. I haven’t tried this but it looks promising and might just be the special sauce Mac users need for this. Cost: five bucks.
I’ve been using some of Doug’s AppleScript utilities in iTunes and they’re worth checking out. Some great tools for keeping your library organized.