Replace Songs in iTunes with Higher Quality Versions Keeping Stats

Aug 14, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: kirsch

I had a few albums in my iTunes library that were ripped way back in the SoundJam days, before hard disk capacities were what they are today. After I upgraded my sound system, I decided to re-rip some of my favorites from the the CD into higher quality 256 kbps AAC. The problem, though, was that I had these songs in many different playlists and with high play counts and other information I didn't want to lose!

Here's how to get around this problem:

  1. Rip the new CDs with the higher quality setting.
  2. Trash the files you are going to replace and empty your Trash. The files can be found by right-clicking the songs and choosing "Show in Finder".
  3. Back in iTunes, right-click on the new songs you just ripped and select Show in Finder. Keep that window open for future reference.
  4. Delete the songs you just ripped from iTunes but tell iTunes to keep the files.
  5. Try to play the old songs, the ones that you already deleted from your hard disk. A ! symbol will appear to the left of each song and iTunes will say that it can't find the file. It will prompt you to locate it. Do so, choosing the corresponding file with the higher quality replacement. If you don't know where it is, you can drag it from the Finder window into the dialog iTunes is displaying.
  6. Do step 5 for all the new files.
[kirkmc adds: There is another way to do this, though it involves making sure your tags on the files in your iTunes library match those on the CD before you rip it. If they are the same - album, artist, song, and genre - you can just rip the new tracks and iTunes will tell you there are already songs with the same names and ask if you want to replace them. It will do this, maintaining the exact same information, such as play count, last played date, etc. If you have changed the tags on the tracks in your library, you need to make the same changes to the tags on the CD's tracks.]

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