I mean seriously, is there no way to move my whole iTunes library and Rekordbox database to another computer without having to manually relocate every single file of my +19000 song collection?
If so, maybe I might as well go back to Serato, since at least they recognize the fact that most people use iTunes for their music management.
@Antti > If you used the exact same username and file path, no, you wouldn't need to relocate anything. And even if you used a different username and things were not in the exact same file path, you could do a mass / batch relocate of the entire collection by simply relocating one file, and all others would be relocated using that same change.
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Relocating one file seems to work for only one folder at a time. My music collection has approximately 3500 folders.
And if the same file path is required, how would migrating between operating systems be possible? Currently moving from Macbook -> Windows desktop & Windows laptop.
Ah, well in that case, it's not as simple - you're changing operating systems and they use different path structures. If you had used the Backup / Restore method, it would have rebuilt that all for you no problem.
You could have always followed the instructions I provide in this article about moving your collection.
Actually that wasn't an issue, since I haven't used Recordbox that much on my macbook. But now after starting fresh on my studio desktop I noticed I can't even migrate my files to an external HD without breaking everything. I watched the video, but that scenario is so simplified it doesn't help since I'm talking about thousands of folders in my case.
Anyway I have to keep investigating and see if using a backup might be my solution. I'm a bit wary to invest more time in Rekordbox if iTunes management is not fully supported, since I use multiple DVS systems. Anyway thanks for you help.
I have "thousands of folders" as well, but they're all housed within one master "Music" folder. If yours are spread all over the place, it's really a case of poor file management and you should take this opportunity to consolidate and organize them a bit better.
iTunes is pretty well supported, but that comes down to the user's needs and expectations based on other applications as well.
Thanks for the answers.
I'm pretty certain this is just a case of user error as I'm pretty new to Rekordbox. The tutorial isn't explicit about how Rekordbox recognizes parent folders, so maybe that's the source of my confusion.
However, I did get a "backup failed" message on my first attempt of making a backup...
Adding a new piece of software is one reason to do some house cleaning on my collection and trying new stuff out. :)
I appreciate the help and I'll make a post once I figure things out.
@Pulse
I can confirm that everything now works as it should and have a shared library and database with my desktop and temporary macbook.
For some reason Rekordbox didn't start reading the folders on the external drive on the first try, and that seemed to lead me to think things were broken. All is well now, even though now iTunes can't find the files on my external...but at least I'm able to get back to DJing.
Much thanks for the help! :)
Awesome! Glad to hear you were able to sort some of that out.
One thing to note is that path & filenames longer than 256 characters (or which contain non-standard characters) may be the issue with a failed backup / import / export. You should be able to check the log file (in the user's Documents\rekordbox folder) to see why.
@anti-k you're supposed to also put your itunes library file on the drive and select it when itunes asks where your library is.
I'm having the same issue and was not able to resolve it. I had my music library in itunes structure (folders for each artist) on an external drive and used itunes playlists to sort my music. On rekordbox I used those same itunes playlists since it syncs up with the itunes xml. I recently bought a new mac to replace my old one and used migration assistant to transfer all my data and files, so essentially they should be identical.
Unfortunately, when I plugged in the drive to my new computer to transfer the music onto my internal HD, the drive got corrupted. Luckily I was able to rescue all my files and uploaded it onto the internal HD. In Itunes I updated my library location and everything was fine there. When I opened up rekordbox, my tracks under itunes played but the ones on my collection were missing so I tried to relocate them, but it would find the first file, but not the rest.
After trying this a few times with no luck, i decided to create a new music folder with all the tracks in a single folder. Doing this, I was able to get rekordbox and itunes to read all the files, but I still didn't retain any of my beatgrid information.
Update: I noticed when I look at my collection, my tracks have the correct beat grids and cue points, but when I look at my tracks under itunes, that information is gone. Why would this be different if the file location is the same?
If the UID of the file from iTunes is considered to be different, that wouldn't match the database, and thus show as blank, but because the file within the collection remained, that would still match the entry in the database.
The quick solution here (which is too late for you) is to always maintain a backup of your data.
And personally, I don't recommend using iTunes to bridge across to DJ software, it never ends up being as functional or practical as we hope.