iTunes Server/Synology

General Discussions
1

We have a very large music collection – 66,000 tracks. We’re able to get the music to import to Plex fine, but we’re not able to get iTunes ratings and playlists to import.

We’re attempting to Run Plex and iTunes Server on the same Synology NAS. We have a Plex Pass subscription. We have iTunes running on a local PC (which is not on all the time – it’s a laptop) and our iTunes music folder library location is pointed to a shared drive on the Synology, however, the location is Synology/Home/Music and NOT the Synology/Music location that I understand iTunes Server is expecting us to use. This may be our whole problem but we’re reticent to move the music collection owing to the size of it – it’s 66,000 tracks of which 64,000 are ‘rated’, the thought of screwing that up (losing ratings/playlists or duplicating the whole collection or whatever) is incomprehensible!

We’ve followed the knowledgebase article here:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200288926-creating-libraries/

We’ve also tried the steps taken by another member ‘dudaai’ here:

I’m more and more sure that our music collection is in the wrong place on the Synology, but we need someone who knows how iTunes and iTunes server works inside out to tell us is it’s okay to just cut and paste the music across. I think I know what to do, I’m just scared to do it!

What’s puzzling me is that the XML file that iTunes is presumably using to store/read/share the ratings/playlists is stored on the PC running iTunes, not on the Synology. It would make sense to me that the XML file should be located on the Synology along with all the music so that the Plex server can read it. If the XML file is on the PC that is running iTunes (where there is no music), how does Plex know it’s there? Perhaps if the music were in the Synology/Music location and not in the Synology/Home/Music location, this would work, but we’re loathed to move it for the reasons stated!

So I guess I’m just asking - if I move the whole music folder from one location to another, is anything bad going to happen?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks in anticipation!

2

I had all kinds of trouble to get the ratings and playlists to show up in Plex since I had my itunes library on a different server than my plex. Finally, I just copied and pasted the itunes music library.xml file into the following directory which I had to create on my plex server: C://users//music/itunes/ I was able to pull in the playlists and ratings. I don’t know how to make Plex music look in any other directory than the default library. I’m not sure what type of options you have on your NAS, but since I am using windows servers, I wrote a powershell script to copy my itunes music library and put it in the default location every time it finds a newer timestamp in the actual itunes directory.

3

Thanks zotje, good to know you figured it out!

We’ll give that a try, not sure how we would get it to automatically update on the Synology - we may just have to manually copy it over when new music/playlists are added unless anyone else has a better idea.

4

I tried the above, both in the root of the synology and on the main file folder, and it didn’t work. Likely because there isn’t a C drive as such.

Anyone else with any ideas? I’m bothered more about playlists than ratings, especially smart playlists. Unfortunately my library is too big for Sonos and they recommended Plex (which I already use for films without issues).