Author Topic: How to export a copy of MusicBee library cleanly  (Read 3314 times)

Bacchus

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Apologies if this is a silly question with an easy answer, but I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how to fix my files, and this is the best I can come up with.
Basically, my MusicBee source files are a mess. They're all over the place, and there's duplicates here, doubles of my playlists there. Whenever I sync my phone (which is my mp3 player) to MusicBee I inevitably end up with a bunch of extra files on my phone, and really messy playlists.
So basically I was wondering if I can export my MusicBee library to a new location, with the idea being that MusicBee would create a clean copy of all the files it's using, to a new location (I have a LOT of local storage space to play with here). Then, I delete all of the messy crap MusicBee is currently using to get my music, and recreate my library from the new, clean export MusicBee made.
This is probably a really roundabout way of doing this, but I'm at my wit's end with trying to figure out where everything MuiscBee is reading from is located.
Is there an easier way to do this, too? Some other way to get a clean refresh of the files MusicBee is using, getting rid of duplicates ect while still maintaining my playlists? My biggest concern is losing my playlists, they're all several hundred songs long and rebuilding them takes ages.

psychoadept

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To preserve your playlists, you definitely need to work from within MusicBee, but copying files won't help with the playlists. Besides, I don't think copying will be necessary.

To get you started, take a look at this page: https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/File_Organization

You can have MusicBee reorganize your files from wherever they are now to some better-structured location. I would suggest taking it in small batches at first to see what's happening (and maybe do make copies for testing on), but once you're happy with it, it's a quick process to use Move To>Organized Folder on any unorganized files.

Removing duplicates will depend on how well-tagged your files are. The duplicates manager does a good job if the files are tagged consistently.
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Bacchus

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 25
To preserve your playlists, you definitely need to work from within MusicBee, but copying files won't help with the playlists. Besides, I don't think copying will be necessary.

To get you started, take a look at this page: https://musicbee.fandom.com/wiki/File_Organization

You can have MusicBee reorganize your files from wherever they are now to some better-structured location. I would suggest taking it in small batches at first to see what's happening (and maybe do make copies for testing on), but once you're happy with it, it's a quick process to use Move To>Organized Folder on any unorganized files.

Removing duplicates will depend on how well-tagged your files are. The duplicates manager does a good job if the files are tagged consistently.

Thank you so much for the suggestion, I will try this as soon as I have time. As always, super helpful user on these forums!