HELP iTunes/Macbook/Loved songs query

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Hello,
I get through lots of music and often only find a decent song or two which I’d like to keep instead of deleting the whole album. Currently the only way to save the preferred tracks is to manually go into the folder and move them into a separate folder (Zzarious Artists) which I never delete. I also use the ‘Love’ feature in iTunes and on my iPhone. I want to have all my loved songs on my phone but I often first listen to albums on my Mac. Is there any way that the ‘love’ feature somehow marks the song, in a way that can be searched via Terminal? That way I could search for all loved songs, cut paste and delete the excess albums from the Music folder? Does that make sense? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you :)
 

chscag

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Welcome to our forums.

You should be able to simply only keep those songs you like in your iTunes music library. Removing songs from your library you don't want to keep is very easy to do with iTunes. Once you have all the music you like to keep, then you can sync them to your iPhone with iTunes.

Why would you need to search for them with terminal? Why make things more difficult?

Also, without any further information about your Mac, version of macOS, and which iPhone you have, and what version of iOS it's running, we can only reply generically.
 
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Hello and thanks for the welcome chscag, I fear I haven't explained myself very well.

I'm aware I could delete the music from the iTunes library very easily, I am also not having any issues syncing to my iPhone 7 (13.2.3). However I download music from the internet into my Music folder (50 GB+ full) on my Macbook (El Capitan, 10.11.6) and then import the entire music folder into iTunes every week or so once I've accumulated enough new music. I'll tend to listen to an album at least twice before deciding to keep or delete. As I listen I mark my favourite tracks as Loved so they're easily separated from the rest.

I want to keep the songs I mark as 'Loved' on my computer but delete the rest of the album from my computer but (not just iTunes) manually going into each individual album and selecting all the songs but the 'loved' ones would take a long time. What I am asking is if the act of 'loving' a track somehow marks it in a way they can then all be searched in Finder or Terminal or something, thus cut and placed into a folder, say "Loved" then I can just delete the rest of the albums without having the click into each one and individually delete tracks.

I hope this makes it more clear, if there's any other information you need to answer this please let me know.
Thank you.
 
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chscag

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What you're asking is to save your favorites and eliminate the rest. And you want an easy way to do it.

Not sure I have an answer to do it the easy way without having to go thru everything one song at a time.

However, "Doug's Apple Scripts for iTunes may be of some help. They're free to use and maybe you can find something that will work for you.

Doug's AppleScripts >> dougscripts.com
 
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If you view by songs in iTunes, then sort by “Loved”, it should put all the loved ones at the top/bottom. Then you can select the rest and delete them from there.


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums
 
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Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be the facility I need on there. Which is quite frustrating as you'd think it would be a simple case of searching for all the 'loved' songs, putting them somewhere else and deleting the remainder. I don't understand why it's so difficult :(


@ferrarr, please be aware that only removes the tracks from iTunes.. I am wanting to remove those tracks from the computer! But non manually!
 
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Actually, I think you get the option to delete both the track from iTunes and the track from the computer. I don't use iTunes any more, but I recall there was a popup box that asked if I wanted to keep the file or erase it as well. Have you actually tried deleting a track you don't "love"?
 

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If you Right Click on a song - or a hundred songs - you get these options:

Screenshot 2019-12-06 at 9.05.04 am??.png

Would "Remove from Library" not = remove from Mac?

Ian
 
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Ian, as I recall, if you select "Remove from Library" you are given the choice of keeping the file itself or deleting it totally. That was what I was trying to remember in post #7. I haven't used iTunes in a long time and the ol' brain cells got recycled into something else, like where are my keys?
 

IWT


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That is correct; at least was the case when I tested it this morning (my time). Obviously, I didn't go through with it.

Ian
 

chscag

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Ian, as I recall, if you select "Remove from Library" you are given the choice of keeping the file itself or deleting it totally. That was what I was trying to remember in post #7. I haven't used iTunes in a long time and the ol' brain cells got recycled into something else, like where are my keys?

Jake:

That's sort of what I indicated to him in my first reply. Apparently that's not what he wants, instead he want something that will do all that for him automatically. Which is why I suggested Dougs Scripts to him.
 
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I don't use iTunes, but can he sort or filter on "loved" status and get all the unloved songs together, select them all and delete them all at once? I remember that the option to keep or delete the file came up on multiple tracks for me when I did use it.
 

chscag

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Yes he can. I've done that very thing numerous times. Well, we will let him sort it out whatever way he wants. I'm out of suggestions.
 

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I don't see a post that I thought I had made about this last night.

The OP wants to delete unwanted songs from the computer after he has identified the unwanted songs. I think the option that you guys are talking about (removing the files themselves) isn't appearing for one or both of the following reasons:

1. As you guys have mentioned you do get the option to delete the file from the Tunes library but I'm not sure you get the option to delete the files from the computer unless the iTunes preferences are set to keep the folder organized. This of course assumes that your preferences are set to pull the files into the Tunes media folder rather than leave them elsewhere.

2. Last night when I tried Bob's suggestion (post #5) that did not delete trigger the warning about deleting the file from the computer through I'm not sure why. I'll try and experiment with the a bit tomorrow.
 
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Sly, it's not a warning, it's more of an option. I seem to recall that it asked if I wanted to delete the song from iTunes only, or also from the computer. So the default seems to be iTunes only, but you can opt to erase the actual track file. I don't remember the iTunes preferences, it's been a very long time since I actually used it and now it's gone in Catalina.
 

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