Copying Song Options

One problem that arises when using multiple libraries with iTunes is that, if you use iTunes features such as rating your music or keeping track of play counts, then when you import music that you have in one of your libraries into a different library, that extra information is not copied over to the new library. When copying music using PowerTunes, it will make sure that this extra information comes along for the ride.

There are two types of track information that you deal with in iTunes: some that is embedded in the music files themselves, and some that is only stored in the iTunes library database. For example, fields such as a song's Name, Artist, Album, and Genre (as well as many others) are actually stored inside the music files themselves. If you edit one of these fields in iTunes, iTunes will modify the music file to update it with the new value you just entered. Since this data is embedded in the music files, when you import those music files into another library, iTunes can automatically read that same data back from the imported files, so you'll end up with the same information as you had entered in the original library.

However, there are a fair number of fields that are not stored inside the music files, and are only stored on a per-library basis. Some examples are song ratings, play counts, equalizer settings, and custom volume adjustments. The set of non-embedded data roughly corresponds to what you see in the Options tab if you do a "Get Info" on one of your tracks in iTunes. Since this data is not stored inside the music files, if you import those files into another iTunes library, the data for those fields is not available to iTunes, so your newly imported tracks will all have default values assigned for those fields (e.g. 0 star ratings, play counts of 0, etc.).

Using PowerTunes to copy your music between libraries solves this problem. After importing the copied music files into the destination library, PowerTunes will transfer over all the settings from the original tracks to the newly imported ones. The full list of data that is copied this way can be found in the "Music Copying" section of PowerTunes' preferences window. If you do not want this information copied, you can uncheck the "Preserve Song Options" checkbox, or you can uncheck individual checkboxes for those fields you do not want to have transferred.

The one notable omission from this list is the "Date Added" field. iTunes automatically assigns a value to the "Date Added" field upon the time of import, and does not allow the value to be changed by another program or even manually by the user, so this field will not be the same in the destination library as it was in the original library.