Program to simplify iTunes library management

Question

At the moment I use iTunes to view and listen to my music library (I use MusicBrainz Picard to tag and organise everything), mostly because it supports ID3v2.4 tags, because it adheres to the album and (album) artist sort order by default and because it has nice colour effects when expanding an album.

However, sometimes it's quite a hassle to get iTunes to recognise modified files or to get iTunes to recognize when files have been added/deleted, especially if you've got quite a big music collection.

I'm looking for a program that analyses iTunes' music library and scans the library for any new or missing files (and adds/deletes them from the library), and reflects changes made to a file's tags in the iTunes database.

Preferably I'd want the program to be gratis, but a small fee is also OK. It must run on Windows (preferably Windows 10).

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Please note that I'm not looking for iTunes alternatives. I'm aware of other free music players, but I'm happy with using iTunes for now (version 12.3, that is).

Answer 1

There's a program called iTunes Library Toolkit that meets this question's requirements.

Unfortunately it's not gratis, but the cost isn't very high (£3,99 for one computer for one year).

It allows you to

• scan user-defined folders for new media (the user can specify which file types iTLT will scan for) and add any new media to iTunes' library
  • This can be a different folder than the one that's specified in iTunes' settings
• check iTunes' library for any non-existing files and remove them from the library
• scan iTunes' library for modified files and reflect any changes in iTunes' library
• generate custom playlists/folders
• generate an HTML catalog of your music library
• automate the above functions

According to program's website, the program works on Windows XP, 7 and 8. I can confirm that it also works on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
Any iTunes version from 10 onwards is supported, including version 12.