How to Add Folders of Music to iTunes

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Updated January 16, 2020

When you want to add songs to iTunes, you don't have to add them one at a time. Instead, put them into folders and add the whole group at once. When you do that, iTunes automatically adds all the songs in the folder to your library. Here's how you do it.

These instructions apply to iTunes 8 and later.

How to Drag and Drop a Folder of Music into iTunes

You have a couple of options for bulk-importing music into your iTunes library. The first involves dragging and dropping.

Create a new folder on your desktop (or somewhere else that's easy to find).
Drag the songs you want to add to iTunes into that folder. These files may be ones you downloaded from the internet or copied from an MP3 CD or a flash drive.
Open iTunes.
Navigate to your music. Go to the top menu and select Library, then go to the left panel and choose Songs.
Drag the folder from your desktop to your iTunes library. A blue outline appears around the list of songs in your library.
Drop the folder, and iTunes copies the folder contents to your library. You can delete the folder from the desktop once the transfer is complete.

How to Import a Folder of Songs into iTunes

You can also use menus in iTunes to import a folder of music files. Here's how.

Create a new folder on your computer and add the music files you want to import to the folder.
Open iTunes.
Click the File menu and select Add to Library (on a Mac) or Add Folder to Library (on Windows).

You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command+O (Mac) or Ctrl+O (Windows).
A window displays where you select the folder you want to add. Navigate through your computer to find the folder you created on your desktop and select it.
Click Open or Choose (depending on your OS and the version of iTunes).
iTunes copies the contents of the folder to your library. You can delete the folder from your desktop once the transfer completes.