Music Torrents Not Seeding Properly? Blame iTunes
March 14, 09 by sharky 7,680 viewsiTunes just isn’t torrent-friendly. Importing or playing back your music files directly from a seeding torrent into a media player that alters ID3 tags or metadata can cause them to stop seeding. If otherwise healthy torrents are now getting stuck anywhere from 91-99% (or worse, at 0%), prompting you to redownload the files - most likely the culprit is iTunes. Even if you didn’t manually change the properties or tags on an MP3 file, iTunes may happen to be set up to do this automatically, thus altering the files and causing tracker seeding errors.
This situation isn’t isolated to just iTunes - even through Windows Media Player there’s the "Advanced Tag Editor" which will also alter the actual MP3 files (metadata), rendering them ‘unseedable’. Likewise, the VLC Player also has an internal Playlist feature that allows for direct editing of tags.
Turn off "Keep iTunes Music folder organized"
During the installation of iTunes 8.1, be sure to select the "No, I’ll change the file and folder names myself" option.
If iTunes has already been set up, you can uncheck this feature in Edit > Preferences… > Advanced tab:
Fixing your torrents:
Unfortunately, the only option is to redownload the remaining parts of the torrent to bring them back up to 100%. In µTorrent, this can be done en masse by stopping all torrents, and while holding down the CTRL key, select each torrent that you need to recomplete. Right-click, and select "Force Re-Check". After they’ve been checked, start the torrents.
0% Finished — If (some of) the music torrents are showing 0%, then likely the actual filenames have been changed, not just the ID3 tags. If you wish not to blow your ratio at What.cd or Waffles by having to redownload the entire contents of the torrent again, click on a torrent, and then click the "Files" tab in µTorrent. The proper filenames will be shown - simply go into the torrent folder and rename your files as originally listed in the torrent. After renaming, do a Force Re-check and restart the torrent. If both the filenames and the tags (metadata) were changed, a checked torrent may still report anywhere from between 0 to 99% complete.
Future Solutions
Keep your music playback directories separate from your seeding torrents. Make a backup copy for the music you intend on listening to, and leave the torrent directory for seeding only. For this, an external harddrive comes in handy.
©2007-2010 • 
01 • Andrew Says: 14.03.09 at 3:24 pm
Just use winamp or any other sophisticated player. I’ve been using it for years without it changing the metadata or file names.
itunes sucks. I only use it to sync my iphone.
02 • WWJD Says: 14.03.09 at 3:31 pm
fyi, Fallout Boy sux.
03 • honey Says: 14.03.09 at 4:41 pm
Not only iTunes, this happens with windows media player aswel.
04 • Floopy Says: 14.03.09 at 6:21 pm
Fall Out Boy ftw, fyi n00b so stfu. kthxbai.
05 • Jefo Says: 14.03.09 at 6:28 pm
I like Songbird!
06 • Joaquin Phoenix Cant Rap Says: 14.03.09 at 6:32 pm
If you choose iTunes as your audio player then you deserve to have this happen to you.
WINAMP FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
07 • McoreD Says: 14.03.09 at 7:20 pm
This is some really bad advice. It is like replacing the Dance floor for a bad dancer. Wrong solution. Keep the default iTunes settings and create a copy of the downloaded torrent in a different HDD to seed. Now you can enjoy iTunes file management abilities and also seed torrents completely.
08 • One Cool Fucker Says: 14.03.09 at 7:33 pm
still a trader n00b
09 • Harshytkage Says: 14.03.09 at 9:19 pm
All those saying that iTunes sucks have probably been witness to the absolutely STUNNING library organisation features…or maybe it’s the BEAUTIFUL ergonomic interface, i mean, c’mon, iTunes sux if you have a large music library and you need them organised…
get real…
010 • sx Says: 14.03.09 at 11:24 pm
foobar FTW
011 • Diji1 Says: 15.03.09 at 12:33 am
One easier solution: don’t use this appalling piece of software in the first place.
012 • agreed Says: 15.03.09 at 1:16 am
then it’s agreed, Fallout Boy sucks.
013 • a/s/l Says: 15.03.09 at 4:53 am
there’s plenty of nice music library addons for foobar2k that don’t change your files, or WinAmp is pretty nifty nowadays.
014 • WWJD Says: 15.03.09 at 6:16 am
iTunes sucks
015 • John Says: 15.03.09 at 7:14 am
Well, the fact is that sometimes after downloading some music, the guy that posted, fucking changes the meta data. I’ve once downloaded an album which had on the title something like this: Fucking Noob Rips or simply his name or his team name (Fucking amateur rips). Oh well… I’m forced to change the meta data with MP3Tag. And, dude.. Fall Out Boys? Woaa..
016 • John Says: 15.03.09 at 7:17 am
Because for music, we don’t always find scene releases. Actually, it’s very hard to find scene releases for old albuns. If it was a scene release, we wouldn’t have to change the meta data nor have any problem related do the encode. Just my 5 cents.
017 • Evilrabbit Says: 15.03.09 at 2:32 pm
For people who just want to use iTunes (like me) because they are too lazy to try anything else: under Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced, check the “Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to Library” button. This will make a copy of any song you download and drop it in the iTunes folder, leaving what you are seeding untouched. When you decide that you have seeded it for long enough, just delete the copy in your downloads folder. This does take up twice the space on your hard drive, but if you are using iTunes anyways you are probably not one of those people that has terabytes of songs and it won’t hurt you too much.
018 • Charlie Says: 15.03.09 at 8:31 pm
If youre gonna upload any music, best to use EAC anyway, then transcode from there.
First of all, best quality that you can get (your leechers will love you long time!!), and no seeding errors from those nasty little tags. If someone is gonna upload something that has been tagged or ripped with WMP or iTunes, they need to reassess what they are doing.
019 • joseph Says: 16.03.09 at 2:27 pm
What noobs use iTunes?
Use foobar2000 or other.
020 • Eis Says: 14.04.09 at 10:07 am
another solution for seeding is simple: Ctrl+A highlight all the files, right-click and select “dont download”. Then utorrent will skip the missing pieces and seed again. especially usefull for ptracker.
021 • David Koresh Says: 20.05.09 at 11:41 pm
Itunes is actually very good.
I know it goes against ‘yall’s hipster indie mentality or whatever, but really, its quite good even compared to foobar2000 or winamp (yes I’ve used both), which don’t really have any huge advantages over itunes other than giving the user a sense of superiority, apparently.
Oh not to mention, winamp and foobar2000 aren’t natively available on mac.
022 • emily Says: 30.08.09 at 8:18 pm
I have invites to Demonoid, Waffles, BitMeTv, RevTT, SDBits, Bit-HDTV, HD-bits.ro, STMusic, and Torrent-damage. If you are interested in joining one of these sites, email me at: roberts209@gmail.com
023 • Chris Says: 19.04.10 at 2:58 am
@ 07 • MCORED
You’re a fucking idiot.. It worked perfectly, Thanks bro!