iTunes Needs Archiving

Allow me to think out loud for a few…

iTunes is a great app, but one feature I really think is missing is some sensible method of archiving songs onto other disks or removable media. Not backup, thats easy both inside of iTunes and out, but instead archiving of tracks out of the current “rotation” and off your main drive.

To do this right the interface would have to include:

• The ability to archive selected tracks (or playlists) to removable media or other location on your drive, keeping all iTunes data like play counts, last played and ratings intact. When archived the tracks would be removed from your main playlist and the files out of your main library.
• iTunes would then have a way to keep track of extended library (perhaps just second XML file), including Volume information, and provide a browseable interface of that information so you can track down songs later without having to resort to looking through 20 backup disks that may or may not be labeled well.
• Once the Volume is found with the tracks you’re looking for provide seamless import of tracks back into the main library like they never were removed.

Sure, hard drives are cheap, and I could just load every track I have into one giant Volume and playlist, but call me strange in that I really don’t see a need to have all those files in one place and as my mood changes I find myself burning a disk or two of stuff I may not want to listen to and putting it on a shelf for some other time.

And the management of Volumes isn’t limited to archiving either. It would be a great feature for people with a laptop + external storage, or a network share that they’re not always connected to or other setup where they may not want to have tracks in their “main” library, but want to connect and disconnect to other libraries depending where they are.

Any Apple UI folks listening?