Locating iTunes Plus tracks

Q: I would like to be able to see which songs in my iTunes library are from iTunes Plus, ie DRM free. I do not see an option to view that in “View, Options”.

Is it possible to do this?

Locating iTunes Plus tracks

– Tomo

A: Although there are no default options in iTunes for this, it is possible to setup a smart playlist to track this information.

The key point here is that traditional iTunes tracks will be listed with a “Kind” field of “Protected AAC File” whereas iTunes Plus tracks instead display their “Kind” as “Purchased AAC File.”

Therefore, a Smart Playlist such as the following, which selects tracks based on the information in the “Kind” field should group all of your iTunes Plus tracks into a single playlist:

Locating iTunes Plus tracks

Note that this will not include iTunes Plus Music Videos however, as these do not contain the word “Purchased” but rather simply omit the word “Protected”—so a standard iTunes Music Video would be listed as a “Protected MPEG-4 video file” whereas an iTunes Plus music video is listed simply as an “MPEG-4 Video File.”

However, since all iTunes Plus music videos also have a 256kbps audio track, this may help in creating a secondary Smart Playlist that can be used to group these.

A Smart Playlist similar to the following would work, assuming that you have not encoded any of your own music videos at a 256kbps audio bit-rate:

 

Locating iTunes Plus tracks

This will essentially list all “MPEG-4 video files” with a 256kbps audio bit-rate and a “Video Kind” of “Music Video” (thereby excluding any movies or TV shows that may be in your library). Unless you have encoded any of your own music videos at a 256kbps bit-rate, this should show only iTunes Plus music videos.

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