KJams Music Folder

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Do you want to change the location?

Do NOT change it within kJams. Instead, do the symbolic link trick!

A Conversation

If you prefer a conversational style, you might like this exchange. Then come back here and read up.

What it Is Not

You do NOT (manually yourself) store these kinds of song and other media files:

  • downloads from the web
  • downloads from any software other than kJams
  • media files (that have already been Ripped into a common format) from any disk or storage device (hard drive, thumb drive, burned data disc, file transfer, email etc) that you otherwise or acquired outside of kJams
  • it is NOT a user folder. THOU SHALT NOT TOUCH!

What it Is

kJams automatically Stores ONLY these kinds of (optionally zipped) Audio+G files:

  • Songs you have personally Ripped from a CD or SuperCDG / NEO+G disc using only kJams
  • Songs you have purchased thru any of the built in music stores.
  • Songs that have been "moved" there when you did "Add to library…" and you picked "Move"
  • It is for kJams to use. You (the user) do NOT use it!.

The "kJams Music" folder is the folder pointed to by the Advanced preference panel. This is where kJams stores any song files that you have manually Ripped from CDs or purchased in a kJams Music Store. It does NOT store files that have been transferred from another source into kjams. This folder is organized and maintained by kJams. You do not own this folder, you can not change things inside this folder, you must not rename anything inside this folder. Also you should never place anything in this folder yourself (like songs that you transferred into kjams from another source). Likewise you should not change this preference to point it to a folder that contains files that you placed in there (eg: the music folder you created to hold music transferred in from another source). The contents of this folder correspond to the database that kJams maintains. For this reason you must not attempt to manage it yourself, otherwise the database would become out of sync.

If you manually place songs within this folder (DON'T YOU DARE), and then you go to kJams and attempt to "Add To Library…" those songs, you will get an error telling you that the songs should already be there. They should already be there because kJams expects that it already knows about every song in that folder, since that folder was created only by kJams ripping songs into it or placing them there after downloading them from a built-in music store. It is saying that if there ARE songs in the folder that you are not seeing in the library, then most likely they have become orphaned by kJams itself, due to some bug. <email>dave@kjams.com|Talk to Dave</email> if you suspect this is happening and he'll fix it for you on Tuesday or Thursday evening PDT.

If you want to change the location of the "kJams Music" folder, say to an external hard drive, then i recommend simply copying the existing folder to the location you want it (then you know it has the correct name), then change the preference under Advanced to point to the same folder at the new location, then delete the folder from the original location. NEVER change it to point to a folder of "your music" (see above: What it is NOT). Only ever use the preferences panel to refer to a "kJams Music" folder that was created by kJams or optionally copied to some other location, or an empty folder on a hard drive or server of your choice. Do not ever manually place files in this folder.

Adding Existing Music

If you are really trying to just add a folder of existing music to kJams, even if on an external drive, then just drag the folder onto kJams. That's it. If you want your music all in one place, then copy it to where you want first, THEN add drag it on to kJams. Don't put it in the "kJams Music" folder. Rather, you should make a NEW folder, NEXT TO the "kJams Music" folder, and put all your existing music in there, then add THAT folder to kJams (via drag and drop, or via "File->Add To Library…".