Consolidating Your Library Temp

If you have your music stored in lots of different places (and you prefer to be super organized), you might want to think about consolidating your library.

To consolidate, you must have double the hard drive space available that your library takes up. For example, if your library takes 12 GB of space, to consolidate you will temporarily need 12 free GB available. Also note you will lose all your playlists and singers when doing this. This is a temporary workaround until I write the Consolidate command, at which time you can freely consolidate without losing any information.

1. Add to library all the songs you want to consolidate from different places. (Skip this step if you don't need it.) davequestion: How do you know?
2. Select your Library playlist.
3. Select File → Export → Entire Playlist: All Files, then follow the directions. If you want to match the "kJams Music" folder style, pick Heirarchic, then Artist. Export to a folder with a new name, for example "kJams Consolidated."
4. Wait for the export to complete. Have coffee or something.
5. Still in your Libray, select Edit → Select All, then Edit → Trash Original Files. Yes, this will move your previous library files to the trash.
6. Wait for the trashing to complete.
7. Quit kJams.
8. In the Finder, go to your "kJams" folder (probably at /Users/<you>/Music/kJams/).
9. Trash the "kJams Library" folder and the "kJams Music" folder. (Note: Do NOT trash the "kJams" folder that contains them, nor the "kJams CDs" folder.
10. Move or Copy the "kJams Consolidated" folder (or whatever you named it) to its new permanent location. I suggest you put it into the "kJams" folder.
11. Optional: If you exported to a folder structure that matches the "kJams Music" folder, you MAY at this point try to rename this new folder to "kJams Music."
12. Run kJams. Did you skip the previous step? If so, you will have an empty library. Otherwise, kJams will now load your consolidated library automatically.
13. If you did skip that step, then go to File → Add To Library, and pick kJams Consolidated, pick Tags (if a dialog asks you about it), then hit okay.
14. Wait for it.
15. You're done!