Import iTunes library into clean installation of Catalina

Hi all, after a bit of struggle (same issue, only importing purchases and Apple Music files), this is how it finally worked.

OLD SETUP

My trusted 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 running High Sierra with a "System" SSD boot partition and a "Data" internal HDD RAID array, where the iTunes Library is residing in a Data/Music/iTunes Library folder (the database itl. file is there and the actual music is residing in the subfolders).  This includes ~250Gigs of CD's ripped to Apple lossless.

NEW SETUP

A new Mac Mini running Catalina

An External LaCie

The intention was to move the library along with playlists and obviously the many lossless files to the Mac mini with the new library permanently residing on the external LaCie.

So I copied the entire Music/iTunes Library from the Mac Pro to the external LaCie (took a while over USB 3.0!) resulting in LaCie/Music/iTunes Library... structure

WHAT DIDN'T WORK

1. Using the Migration Assistant.   I wanted a clean setup, created a new user on the new Mac, but the Assistant also recreated a "new old" user on the new system and suspiciously quickly copied over something.  I ended up with a new Music Library under a different user that contained neither my playlists nor the original rips, only purchased and Apple Music stuff.  No good
2. Option-clicking the Catalina Music app and selecting the old .itl file - the same thing without even the playlists.
3. Trying Import Playlist... from the Mac mini - nothing

So I thought if in the old setup the actual iTunes Library.itl was residing on a non-system volume (Data/Music/iTunes Library) along with all the ripped albums, how the heck the new Music app is going to tell the difference if I make the path to the library database file exactly the same?

I then changed the name of the external drive from the default "LaCie" to "Data", Option-selected the Music App on the Mac mini, pointed to the old iTunes Library.itl database  and voilà! - all of my files and playlists are here.

I hope the above makes sense. In any case, the solution seems to be to move your library and the location of the database to an external volume and do the same so you skip the extra steps here because of my unnecessarily complex scenario (moving the library from the internal hard drive an old computer running High Sierra to the external drive on the new one running Catalina)

Спасибо!

I just recently purchased a new 16' MacBook Pro and was having the exact same issue (with exact same results from troubleshooting) as Orestes on the original post. I finally got 95% of my desired end result by doing the following:

Consolidation

In iTunes on my original machine (MacBook Air), I consolidated files being sourced from outside my iTunes folder (if any) by clicking File > Library > Organize Library... > Consolidate Files > OK

File Transfer from Old MacBook Air (iTunes) to New MacBook Pro (Apple Music)

I copied my entire iTunes folder from the original machine to a flash drive (iTunes folder was located in Users > MyName > Music > Media > iTunes) which took about 20 minutes to copy for ~32gb worth of music.

I inserted the flash drive into the new machine and copy/pasted the entire iTunes folder into my new Media folder (Users > MyName > Music > Music > Media).

Automatically Add to Music Folder

The iTunes data I brought over contained a folder called "Automatically Add to Music" - I took all the other content in the folder and put it into this folder so my new file path is: /Macintosh HD/Users/MyName/Music/Music/Media/Automatically Add to Music - this was per a suggestion earlier in this thread. I made sure it was linked to this path by clicking Music > Preferences > Files > Change... and selected the "Automatically Add to Music" folder from the finder window.

Doing this brought over all my songs (with some duplicates, but nothing major) into the Apple Music search/song/artists libraries. However, my playlists were still not showing.

Import Playlist

Per Orestes' suggestion, I took the File > Library > Import Playlist approach and selected the iTunes Music Library.xml file as well within my iTunes folder on my FLASH DRIVE - this is important because for some reason after I added these files from the transfer above into the "Automatically Add to Music" folder, the xml file as well as the iTunes Library.itl file disappeared; I was able to just use the xml from my flash drive and it worked fine. That said, I believe this xml file was created after the consolidation (?) - please correct me if that is not the case. Regardless, I now had that file and was able to click it to import the playlist.

All of a sudden all my playlists came over with about 98% accuracy - for some reason 2-5 songs from each playlist were missing but I went through one by one and added them, as they had made it through the migration. All my metadata though was now showing "01/20/20" (today) as the date added. The music which was bought from the iTunes Store would show all the correct metadata regarding original song release date, etc. but the information from my MacBook Air would essentially be overwritten by this migration.

Hopefully this was helpful - I didn't exactly document as I was going since I was working on this for about 4 hours today trying various tactics, but what I did above worked for me! Good luck folks; hopefully they properly patch this at some point.

I copied my old iTunes folder to my new Mac, opened Music, Import, selected the iTunes folder itself (not a file or folder within it). Apple says that it will get everything in a folder, so I let it. Shortly, all my playlists and music were available in Music. This was from High Sierra to Catalina.

Music could not find songs? -> Replace path in .xlm

I've read your post fast so I hope I'm not off-topic: in my case the account username (~/) was not the same, and thus the song paths in the .xml were different.

I just cmd+f the .xml (open in Textedit) and replaced all "//myusername/" occurrences with "//my.user.name" (in my case the new account username had dots compared to my previous one).

Note: it helps to place the whole iTunes Music folder beside the Music one so that you don't have to type all path, just the account username :). In case you do need to change the whole path, you can drag'n'drop your iTunes Music folder in Terminal to get the path.

Hope this helps others.

Cheers

It seems to have worked quite smoothly for me; I did it a couple of times because I wanted the "Media" folder to have a more accurate structure. Here's what I did.

First, I matched the OS and Music versions on both Macs: they were 10.15.7 for Catalina and 1.0.6.10 for Music. Then, I copied the "iTunes" folder to an external disk.

When upgrading to Music, it creates a new "Music" folder aside your original "iTunes" folder – in the "Music" directory. In this folder, it creates a new "Music Library" file, which you can ignore as you won't need it for the transfer.

Here's the initial look of the Music app before the procedure:

Also, I checked what the default path to the media was (as I will mention later, I did not alter it manually):

And here's what the "Media" folder initially contains:

My original iTunes folder on the external disk contains far more stuff:

I suspected that most of that was legacy, so I copied just two items: the "iTunes Media" folder and "iTunes Library.itl". I specifically moved them to the "Media" folder on the new Mac, because that's where I wanted the files to be:

The key to the whole thing – as I think I've found out to be – it is to delete the "Music Library" file before the next step (with extensions on it's "Music Library.musiclibrary") .

Next, as already described in this thread, I ran Music holding down the option key and hit "Choose Library...". I selected "iTunes Library.itl" from the "Media" folder.

Pay attention to the next step if you don't want to end up with extra folders, since this dialog doesn't feel to be working right:

Make sure you select "Music" with your cursor and type in "Media" under "Save As" – this is the way to work around this thing if you want the new library file to be saved to the root of the "Media" folder. It prompts you to overwrite "Media" as it already exists – agree to that.

If you choose to type in anything else, it will create a folder with the requested name and write the "Music Library" there – I didn't want that.

If you don't delete the original "Music Library" file – as I mentioned above, – the whole thing will not work (I assume this is what happened to the creator of this thread). It seems that the overwrite prompt is triggered by the name of the folder ("Media" in my case) and thus it doesn't get your permission to overwrite the "Music Library" file – hence the original library file remains.

Finally, I checked the path in "Preferences" once again:

I did not change this manually.

Prety sure you have moved on since, but i found a solution to move my library correctly.

-Use Retroactive App (https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive) to install and run iTunes on Catalina.

-Duplicate your old iTunes folder juste in case you screw up.

-Open your freshly installed iTunes holding the option key and chose the library from the iTunes folder you just copied.

-Go to File>Library>Organize Library...

-Clic on Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Music"

Once iTunes have done processing you should be able to import your library in the new Music app

I actually melted the old iTunes and the new Music library already. I also got completely rid of the iTunes Folder,

so all the Music is in the new "music" Folder now.

I did it just as described above: I went into the iTunes Folder and just dragged the "iTunes Media" (containing all the Music Files) and dropped it in the music app (notice the red mark in the picture above in the left sidebar).

The whole Library was doubled, which took quite some time, since in my case it was more than 300GB...

After that, I checked the Path of the files in the music.app and they all referred to the new place (music Folder).

All the data remained, so for example tracks I added to my library back in 2008 still had the same Date under "Date added".

The only bizarre thing was, that the remaining space, that the ssd showed (410GB of 1000GB) didn't add up with the doubled

library, although both libraries had the same size when I opened up the Preferences of each of them... - In other words I should've had less space left on the ssd than Catalina would try to make me believe... This might be an individual problem that could be addressed to my ssd swap, or something else like a Catalina bug?!

Haven't experienced any other Problems so far since deleting the iTunes Folder... so it seems to be all good =)

Hey Guys,

since I've spent the whole day with "try - not working - retry", I thought I'd would be helpful for others to share my iTunes import Story...

I came from a 2014 Macbook (120GB SSD) using High Sierra and iTunes and moved over to a 2015 Macbook (1TB SSD) using Catalina with a fresh and clean Install (USB Stick method).

Since my iTunes library was too big to be stored within a 120GB SSD, the complete Library Folder "iTunes" was saved on an External HDD and accessed by the widely known alt + Icon Click.

When I today copied the Library from the HDD to the new SSD and did the Same Alt + Icon Click Method using the new Music App that is widely suggested, the Songs wouldn't play (! sign in Music App), since the original Path of the Song wasn't the same (compared to the HHD), although, all playlists and everything were there and seemed to be fine.

I found an easy workaround on a MacRumors topic called "Catalina 10.15 Music no importing my old iTunes songs" which seems quite odd, but obviously worked for me an might be helpful to others...

1. Copy your old iTunes Folder into your music Folder (/username/Musik/...)
2. Create a copy of your old "iTunes Library.itl" file within the iTunes Folder and rename it to "Music Library" (also remove .itl file extension)
3. Start Music with the Alt-Click and choose the just created File from Step 2.
4. A new Window will suggest to create a new Library i.e. "music". Confirm the message/create the new Library...
5. The App will take some time and your music should be inside it, including Playlists and everything....

The last Issue I haven't solved yet, is the fact, that new Additions to the collection will be copied to the new music Folder.

I would love to mold these Folders into one, but unfortunately Changing The Path in the Music App Setup won't do anything to the

old Files.

So the new "music" Folder only contains the new Library File and all Files added from today and after, whereas all the old files are still stored and played from the iTunes Folder...

Any Help would be greatly appreciated.

I've read your post fast but I hope I'm not off-topic: in my case the user name was not the same (and thus the path) so I just cmd+f the .xml open in Textedit and replaced all "//myusername/" occurrences with "//my.user.name" (in my case the new user name had dots compared to before). Cheers

Have you tried dropping your files here?

I actually melted my Libraries by dragging all Files - so the the whole Folder Containing all the Music into the Library again...

It worked for me and everything seems fine - even the Date Added of the Files is still the original and hasn't changed through the "re-import"...

Hey MacMarvil,

I only „doubled“ it once.

I try to explain it again in other words, to avoid any misunderstandings.

•my Old itunes Library was stored on an external HDD, since it was too big to be stored in the „Macintosh HD/User/USERNAME/Musik“ Folder (Original Standard Path).

• I came from High Sierra installed an SSD with more space and I installed Catalina from Scratch.

• I wanted to end up with my music in the „original“ music Folder and get rid of the external hdd solution,

1) I first deleted the original music folder that catalina/music.app created

(Macintosh HD/user/USERNAME/Musik/music and emptied the Trashbin.

So there shouldn’t be any Files at all in the Musik Folder.

2.) I then moved the complete ITunes folder from the external HDD to the Musik Folder

(Macintosh HD/user/USERNAME/Music)

the result from step 1.) and 2.) should look like this:

For Catalina your media folder should really be ~/Music/MusicMedia, which is one level higher than shown in your last image. You could potentially tap that reset button, then turn Keep organized off and back on again to restructure the folder.

tt2

3.) As a next Step, I renamed the Following File in the iTunes Folder i just moved

„iTunes Library.itl“ into „Music Library“(yes, remove the file extension .itl)

(For Backup purposes I just copied and renamed it...but essentially it is the same 🙂)

You can see the File in the screenshot above from Step 1.) and 2.)

So now - in the last step we melt the Libraries -

take the „iTunes Media“ Folder within the iTunes Folder and drop it in the sidebar of the itunes GUI 🙂.

it now takes a while (and your music Files will be doubled...)

I probably do not need to mention that a Backup is a wise decision in this case 😀

after the copy process is finished, check in music.app, if all your files are referring to the right folder. Right click on a song, then preferences and then the right tab that says „file“ or similar (the new music path is needed, not the old itunes one 🙂

If everything is right, you can now be brave say goodbye to your beloved good ol’ iTunes library and delete the whole Folder... 😀