Problem importing iTunes library

[Sallie]

I've just installed Mezzmo after purchasing it and DownloadStudio. I had no problems importing all my photos, videos and mp3 music files which I'd purchased from various sources. All of my media is located on an external 5T USB3 drive connected to my laptop, which will be my media server. Yesterday I tried to import my iTunes library which is over 71,000 songs, nearly all of which are "Apple Lossless" format. After over 12 hours (?!?) I finally had to force close Mezzmo, as it was showing "Downloading album artwork" (over 140, 000 files) and "Processing active playlists" (19 playlists). This same info had been displayed for several hours, with only the artwork number changing slightly occasionally. I had deleted all playlists from iTunes except the default (All Music Files) and one other I'd created, which contained about 230 titles. Mezzmo showed the 2 playlists, with the correct number of files in each. It just seemed to be hung up on the artwork and "phantom" playlists.

I should also note that I haven't set up anything for streaming yet, as I wanted to organize all of my media first. Is there something else I need to set up first?

Also, I don't believe the Apple Lossless format supports any sort of meta data, anyhow, so maybe I should delete iTunes from Mezzmo and just import the folders containing the files?