Back Up Your Purchases

As you grow your iTunes library, you’ll want to back up your purchased music and videos. Backing up in iTunes is just like burning an audio CD, but you’ll change your preferences to burn a data CD instead of an audio CD. And if your songs and video won’t fit on one CD, iTunes will simply prompt you to insert additional blank CDs or DVDs as needed.

If you’ve only used one computer to buy music, you can use the Purchased playlist in your Source list to find your purchased music. But if you’ve used a few different computers to buy music, you can create a Smart Playlist that will look for your purchased music no matter which computer you used.

Tips

How many CDs will I need?

With the playlist selected that contains the songs you want to back up, look at the bottom of the iTunes window for the number of songs, and combined file size. CDs hold about 650 MB of files, so you’ll be able to estimate how many CDs you’ll need to complete your backup.

Smart Playlist settings

When you create a Smart Playlist to look for your purchased music and audio books, make sure to use these search terms: "Protected" and "Audible." These are the two audio file types that you get when you purchase music, video, and audiobooks from the Music Store.

Move your files to another computer

Besides backing up your purchased songs, you can also use data CDs to move your music to another computer. It’s much easier to copy files across your home network, but if your computers aren’t connected, CDs will work just fine.

Steps

Create initial backup of your purchased music

Create a Smart Playlist that contains the purchased songs you want to back up, by searching for songs that meet "Any" of the following conditions: "Kind" contains "Protected" or "Kind" is "Audible."
Now open iTunes Preferences, and click Advanced.
Click the Burning button. Change the Disc Format to Data CD. Click OK.
Pick the Smart Playlist you just created, and click Burn Disc.
Insert additional CDs or DVDs as necessary.

Back up your recent purchases

Create a Smart Playlist named "My Backups to Date" that matches "All" of the conditions you set.
Select "Playlist", "is", and then select the initial backup playlist you created.
Click the + button to add a new condition. Select "Date Added", "is after", and set the date to the date of your last backup. Click OK.
When you’re ready to do a new backup, choose the "My Backups to Date" playlist you created, and click Burn Disc.
Insert additional CDs or DVDs as necessary.
When it’s done, select the "My Backups to Date" playlist, go to the File menu, and then choose Edit Smart Playlist.
Set the date to today’s date.
Now the next time you want to back up your purchases, only music and video purchased after your last backup date will be captured.
It's a good idea to go back to iTunes Preferences, click Advanced, and then click the Burning button. Set your Disc Format back to Audio CD.