having your Cake and listening to it too

My cousin Barry and her family have an iMac, which they love. And they love iTunes for playing their music. But when they travel, they would just as soon have all of their music on the MacBook too, but for RIAA/DRM reasons, Apple prevents machines from syncing or transfering music easily from one to another.

I think her wanting to have copies of her music both on her desktop and her laptop is entirely reasonable. Both computers are even authorized to the same iTunes accounts so they can play the same materials purchased from the iTunes Music Store. She just wants to copy all of her ripped CDs from one computer to another, and she certainly doesn't want to have to rerip every CD, or reenter any metadata she's already put into the desktop.

One solution is SuperSync, a software program that was designed specifically for people who want to sync their iTunes libraries among more than one machine. Very useful and highly recommended.

But Barry e-mailed me today for a quick-and-dirty solution to get her library from the iMac to the MacBook before they pull out of the driveway later. I have gotten this same question many times over the years, so I thought I would share it here. There are several ways to skin this particular cat, but this is what I recommend as it is relatively quick and as simple as I can make it. (I also have hints on how to share music files among different profiles on a single machine for those low on drive space.)

How to transfer music from one of your iTunes libraries to another.

• Open iTunes.
• Create a playlist of the music you would like to transfer elsewhere.
• Click "Burn Disc" (lower right).
• A "Burn Settings" dialog box should appear. Select Data CD or DVD.
• Burn the playlist (you'll be prompted to insert a blank disc.).

While viewing the playlist, the bottom of the window should indicate the number of items, the play time they represent, and the memory they take up (if not, click on the information there and it will toggle).

Keep in mind that blank CDs can hold about 700 MB, DVD-Rs hold about 4.7 GB, and DVD+R DLs (Dual Layer) hold about 8.5 GB. Choose accordingly, or break up the list over several discs. TiTunes may offer to split the list over several discs for you (I don't recall.).

Now take those disks to the machine where you would like to copy your music.

• Check your Preferences (Command-comma), and look under the Advanced tab.
• Make sure you have "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to Library" turned ON You can turn this off later if you like. I keep mine off so when I am sampling new sounds or playing a downloaded podcast they are not automatically added to the library.)


• Insert the disc you have just made, and it should appear as a source in the left pane of iTunes. • Select the playlist or click within the playlist and select all (Command-A or Edit > Select All)
• Drag the selection to "Music" under the Library.

This should start the process of adding the files to your library. iTunes may or may not alert you to duplicates and ask if you would like to skip them. If you do add duplicates, that's okay. When viewing the Music library, you can select File > Show Duplicates to see what you may have more than one of after you have finished transfering everything.

You can repeat this process for additional discs as needed.