Splitting your library up into multiple libraries

If you have a large music library that is slowing iTunes down, or has simply become too large to handle easily, you can use PowerTunes to split up your library into multiple smaller ones. Before starting the process, there are a couple decisions you'll want to make.

First, decide how exactly you want to split up your music, and how many libraries you'll be creating. For example, you might split up your music by era (70s, 80s, etc.) genre (rock, classical, etc.) or by type (music in one library, video in another). You can create your libraries all at once before copying any music, or you can create them one at a time as you go along.

Next, you'll want to decide whether you want to have the actual music files remain in their current media folder where they are, or instead create new media folders for new libraries and make separate copies of the music there. When you use the "New Library" button to create each of your new libraries, in the configuration sheet that comes up, if you want to keep all the music files in the original library's media folder, you'll want to click the "Use same media folder as library" radio button, then choose the library you're splitting up from the pop-up menu to the right. If you want to have new, separate media folders for each of your libraries, leave the "Create new media folder" radio button selected instead.

Now that you've got a library created, you'll want to actually copy over the music you want to have in that library. The easiest way to do this is to collect the music you want to have in that library into one or more playlists in the original library. You can then just drag those playlists from that library and drop them on your new library to transfer all the tracks and playlists over to the new library. One particular trick that can be handy is to set up a smart playlist in your original library that automatically collects the tracks that meet a certain criteria (e.g. all tracks whose year is between 1970 and 1979 for your 70s library), then just copy the smart playlist over to your new library.

You then just repeat this process for each new library you want to create to finish splitting up your library. PowerTunes will not delete any tracks or files from the original library when you do your copies, so everything there will remain intact there until you are sure you want to delete it yourself.