Automatically Import Music Into iTunes

Martin Brinkmann
May 11, 2009
Updated • Nov 29, 2017
Music, Software
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15

The same software developer who created the iTunes Playlist Exporter application, has created another useful third party tool for Apple's iTunes media manager.

The software program is called iWatchSyncer; its main purpose is to monitor a folder on the local hard drive for new music, and to synchronize any new song it finds with the iTunes software.

The usefulness depends largely on how you acquire new music. It may be very useful if you rip CDS or buy digital copies from third-party stores, as you may need to get the new tracks indexed by iTunes then. If you purchase music solely on iTunes, you have no need for the software.

Update: Apple introduced a folder watch option in iTunes 9. A program like iWatchSyncer is no longer required for this. Instructions on how to set up the folder watching in iTunes directly are available on Apple's Support page.

iWatchSyncer

The software has been designed to be foolproof. All the user needs to do is to pick a folder on the computer system that should be monitored for new music files.

The only other available option is to select a playlist to be created or extended with the music that is found in the monitored directory. This is an optional step though and not required for the music import to work properly. The software will check the folder for new music periodically and add it automatically to iTunes whenever new music is discovered in that folder on the drive. It looks like the interval is set to 1 minute as music that is moved to the folder gets quickly added to iTunes all the time.

The program has to be running in the background for this to work properly. It uses quite some computer memory (34 Megabytes on a Windows XP test system) which might make it to memory hungry for some computer systems. Could be worth a try for users who regularly add music to a specific folder and its subfolders on a computer system though. The music does get added to iTunes regularly as well.

Update: iWatchSyncer has not been updated since 2009 which may be an indicator that the program is no longer compatible with the latest version of iTunes. The program is not really needed anymore since the release of iTunes 9. Apple has integrated an "automatically add to iTunes" folder in the application which you can use to automatically add music to the program.

Summary
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Software Name
iWatchSyncer
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Multimedia
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Comments

  1. goddert said on May 12, 2009 at 9:17 am
    Reply

    @Depechie
    Correct. Usually I know when I add some music and launch it manually afterwards. But I see the point …
    One could use Filenotify (xtware). Likewise small app to observe a folder and launch another application upon a change. (choose the first version – it’s freeware and only 73k)

  2. Depechie said on May 12, 2009 at 8:37 am
    Reply

    @Goddert: Indeed, but if I’m not mistaken it will not do it ‘on the fly’, it will only ‘sync’ when you execute the program. What I was looking for, was a small application that will add files/folder each time I copy them into the iTunes library directory…

    @Martin: You are right! I’ll take a look at it to see what I can do about the memory usage.

  3. goddert said on May 12, 2009 at 7:41 am
    Reply

    itunes library updater does the same, more and better and doesn’t occupy your whole memory.

  4. Depechie said on May 11, 2009 at 11:21 pm
    Reply

    @seth: sorry… I have no experience in any other OS then Windows.

  5. seth said on May 11, 2009 at 11:15 pm
    Reply

    any chance/ideas for an OSX solution to this?

  6. Depechie said on May 11, 2009 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Again Martin, thanks for the great review :)
    Hmm I didn’t check the memory usage, I will keep that in mind when I get a newer version out!

    Indeed there is an interval while files are added, this to allow windows to do his copy/move procedure.

    1. Martin said on May 12, 2009 at 12:11 am
      Reply

      Depechie the memory usage can be that high if music has been found and is transferred but it would be nice if the program would use less when sitting minimized in the system tray.

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