In iTunes, how to tell what playlists a song is on?

In iTunes, is there a way to see which/how many playlists a song is on?

I have over 11,000 songs and a whole bunch of playlists in my iTunes. My example: lets’ say I get a newer, better version of a song I already have in iTunes. (Let’s say “Rain” by the Beatles). I import the newer version, and then want to delete the old version so I don’t have too many duplicates. The old one may be on several different playlists, (i.e., Top 100 of 1966, Beatles playlists, weather songs playlist, etc).When you delete a song in iTunes, it automatically deletes it from any playlists it is on.

Without having to manually check each and every one, how can I see what playlists a song is on BEFORE I delete it, so I can write down the information and put the newer version back onto the same playlists?

Thanks~!

 

when you go to import/rip the track in iTunes does it give you the massage "this track already exsists in your iTunes library. Would you like to overwrite it?".

If so then I don't think it will effect your playlists if you overwrite the existing.

 

Control-Click (on Mac) the track you want the playlist info for. A floating menu will appear. Click on the "Show in Playlist" menu item and it will show you every playlist the song is associated with. If you're on a PC the keystroke combo might be different. Sorry, can't help you there.

I do wish there was a script that allowed me to copy the playlist associations for different tracks and apply them to others. I'm constantly upgrading tracks and replacing older versions. It's a pain to "re-playlist" them by hand.

 

agreed, in both Mac and Windows versions

 

If you're simply replacing a song then you should just do it behind the scenes. Rip the "new" version of the song, then close iTunes and copy the newly created file into the folder that contains the song you want to replace. Delete the "old" file of the song and leave the new file in its place.

When you start iTunes again and go to the "old" song to play it, iTunes will show a ! indicating that it cannot find the file. It will then ask you to locate it. Simply point to the "new" version of the song and iTunes will continue along happily, like nothing changed, but you'll have the newer version of the song without losing any metadata associated to it.

Once you've done the replace, you can tell iTunes to delete the "new" version of the song that you ripped originally to get the file. I've replaced entire albums this way without losing the metadata I've gathered since 2001.

 

Only by right-clicking or control-clicking.

One of the main feature requests for years has been a column heading for PLAYLISTS in the main iTunes List display. The members of the iLounge Forum have been yelling about this for a long time, and Apple really should address this.

I haven't found a way to automatically replace batches of songs with updated copies; the only thing that works is to tweak them manually, even if the path is identical. When the path is broken, the file location or file name has changed, that's when the dreaded "!" broken-link alert comes up.

 

Thanks so much, guys. I actually knew at one point, but had totally forgotten, that you could right click and make it display all the playlists that a song is in. Though I agree that having an option to display that information would be much, much more helpful.

RicP, does that method really replace the old file with the new on all the existing playlists? If so, that would seem to be the way to go. I recall trying this once a long time ago and it not going so well---though I could have done a wrong step in the process, of course.

(just as a side note, it always bugs me when people post a question here, get a bunch of helpful replies from people, but then never take the time to just simply post a "thank you". So thanks again everybody)

 

Okay, I tried the control click thing, an indeed a floating menu comes up. However "Show in Playlist" is not a menu item

 

Should be. Note the 5th-from-the-bottom section, "Show in Playlist":

 

If "Show in Playlist" doesn't appear, then the track is not in any playlist.

 

The "Show in Playlist" feature is quite helpful. Another is "Show Duplicates".

It's helpful to go back every now & then and do some "house cleaning" within your library.

 

Show Duplicates only looks at song titles, IIRC. I think there's a better DougScript that handles that.