Hacking iTunes, fixing playlists and play counts....

Ever since 12 came out, I have regretted changing from iTunes 11.4. I finally decided to fix that. Navigating 12, even 3yrs later, just sucks. For MANY years I used iTunes on my PC, before ever switching to a Mac.

I was constantly working on my music database. But since the change over, I have barely made use of iTunes, other than to keep trying to get used to it...

Swapping from 12 back to 11.4 was pretty easy. But three things get lost.

1) Play counts
2) Playlists
3) New music

The IDEAL solution would be to edit the 12 .itl file to work with 11.

With enough work, I was able to get back the old playlists and play counts. There are two files that are relevant. The iTunes Library.itl, and iTunes Music Library.xml. The.itl contains the library info and possibly the play count. The .xml file I can read and it shows the play count, but also seems to contain playlists. I can't verify for sure what is what though by replacing just one or the other.

Currently I have 11 back with play counts and playlists. I grabbed an older .itl file from a few years ago. So I lost some recent counts and playlists.

I tried to synch my iPod to 12 to get updated plays, then synch it to 11. Didn't seem to do it. And I know care has to be taken not to fully wipe it... In fact I actually lost songs when I synched it back to 11.

I lost a couple playlists from12. I am okay with that. I got most of them back. So here is where I am at now.

I need a safe procedure to "refresh" and rebuild my library. Currently all music is organized and stored in media folder. All the more recent stuff is there, but it is not in the library. I could move it all to the music folder, then tell it to add new or something. And delete the (currently empty) music folder contents. But I do not want doubles in my library. It is a LARGE library, or I would just go and manually add in the stuff. Newer stuff is easily more than a thousand songs. And many are singles, not whole albums.

I would like a scheme to use my iPod to synch the correct play counts in. But loosing a couple years of counts isn't as concerning as loosing a couple decades of them would be.

Any ideas????