Import iTunes library into clean installation of Catalina

When you deleted the ~/Music/Music folder did you also empty the trash? If not Music may still know to look for the previous file where it is currently living in the trash, and it may also "remember" upgrading the old iTunes library so it doesn't try to do it again. I can't seem to make that happen here but offhand it is the only thing I can think of.

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... 😀

Here is what I did, and it required some manual intervention. I have my iTune Library on it's own "iTunes Drive." Apple Music went ahead and created its Folders, and I halted the process early. Then I manually shifted all of my iTunes Artist / Compilation folders into the folder iTunes--the one normally found in HD/USER]/Music. I did not organize all of the files that directly, and many were bootlegs. Amazingly, I then told the new Music app to import simply the iTunes Folder on the iTunes Drive. Boy did that work. After about 1/2 hour, all the files were converted, they were better organized than I had them, and I am good to go! It was that simple. I lost absolutely nothing, and absolutely nothing was left out other than select Playlists that I created, which of course were made up of existing tunes. Essentially I could easily remake them.

To recap:

Place all of your music Folders, generally arranged by musician if not Compilations, into one Folder. Then have the new Music app Import that one Folder. And you are done. No XML files, no itl files, just raw data. Most of my music is ALAC or FLAC, and it worked flawlessly -- and the best part is that I had a TON of loose Beatles music and the new App even knew how to organize it -- i.e. by what album. It was that simple.

turingtest2 wrote:

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

That's where I put the files following the process above – it was a conscious decision. It is okay to put it one level higher like you say. But I guess in this case you'll have to put the "iTunes Library.itl" one level higher as well before you run Music with the option key.

I did attach one screenshot wrong though (I can't edit my post any longer). This is what the content of my original "iTunes" folder was:

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community.

tt2

4) Odd. They should have been imported unless Music > Preferences > Files has the copy files option turned off.

5) Normally you'd want your entire iCloud Music Library available unless you were testing things. In such a case you'd be better connecting to the original library rather than importing media into a new one, which requires everything to be reconciled with what is already in the cloud.

tt2

Yes Yes! Finally I found someone with the same issue as me.. (Probably same as you) I have been using für 10+ years now and have put a lot of effort into organizing my music library which I cannot access anymore. This is heavily disappointing and I hope that Apple will deliver a solution soon!

Thanks for starting this thread, will definitely watch closely!

Yes, my library did the same. One thing I did notice was by leaving Apple Music/iTunes open overnight it did sync quite a bit of music. But my main problem arose from having my music in an external hard drive.

I do recommend looking at the activity window in "Music" as it does seem to keep you informed of what it's doing behind the scenes.

I do wish you luck on your music library recovery/rediscovery!

`Oldfiz

1) you‘re absolutely right, they are on the same level.

my hierachy is:

Macintosh HD/Benutzer/USERNAME/Musik*

and as you stated right, there are two underlying subfolders in that „Musik“ Folder:

• itunes
• music

So when I wrote „...i moved it into the „Musik“ Folder I meant the Root Folder- long story short, they are on the same level 🙂

(I assume the itunes folder could also be stored somewhere else, As long as it is not changed during the whole moving process. But let‘s not complicate things even more 😂).

2) you got what i meant, but sure enough it could be explained better with different words and through being a native english speaker 🙂

The idea is indeed weird. I did something similar long ago back in itunes and saw the same behavior...

you can - to test things - also try it with only one album you pick out of your itunes media folder and drop it on the music.app mediathek GUI (?) then check if the path to the file has changed - cause it should have...

also make sure u back up your library as a first step.

For example: I actually copied my library from the external hdd to the „user/USERNAME/Musik“ Folder (Root🙂) on the computer and left the original as a backup on the external hdd... so to refer back to your initial question - yes doubled the library twice 😃

A guy on macrumors also posted another solution i misinterpreted, which led me to the question, what would happen if i would...

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/catalina-10-15-music-no-importing-my-old-itunes-songs.2184506

I don‘t know if it is allowed to post links here, but ok 🙂

*it probably varies, depending on system language it might be „music“

(Pre-) Final report:

The step of dropping the iTunes Media folder onto the Musik Mediathek’s sidebar does NOT duplicate any files; it just added a few tunes that hadn’t been organized by the former .itl file.

AND: Adding totally new files doesn’t create a new music/media folder. The app Musik puts new music into my old iTunes Media folder. The newly created “Music” folder only contains the newly created (and active) ”Music Library” file, nothing else.

Unfortunately, if the counter on the bottom of the Musik window doesn’t lie, over 1,000 albums have disappeared.

Possibly there has been a mess of earlier tunes cleaned up (I didn’t care for my iTunes in the first years, it’s only six years that I’m doing an accurate job here) but I can’t tell for the moment.

Otherwise everything seems to run smoothly. Adding date tags have been kept (back to 2008 where a major crash made me add every tune from scratch after running iTunes since 2000).

Next step: Making my DJ software understand the new lib …

quote:

„AND: Adding totally new files doesn’t create a new music/media folder. The app Musik puts new music into my old iTunes Media folder.“

This sounds like you haven‘t changed the music.app media path in the preferences of the software... you can upload a screenshot of your preferences and see what it looks like...

and regarding the dj software - it better is not relying on the .xml file that itunes used to create...

I always open iTunes, go to settings and set the iTunes media folder in my external drive as the location of my iTunes library, and then import a folder, select the entire external folder and watch it go.

When it's finally done with that operation, I have all my iTunes stuff in my new install.

Keeping track:

after deleting everything in the Music folders, and rebooting, I actually got (partially) what I was hoping for! My library seemed to just... appear! None of the music files are present, but they're mostly available to download from the Cloud, thanks to iTunes Match.

Copying the files I have in the correct location, does NOT equal to downloading the file. In fact, if I place the music file in the correct folder where Music expects to find it, the track still shows as downloadable, and if I do that, it creates a file right next to the one I placed myself, with a " 1" suffixed to the name. No good.

But I could live with not having all my physical files, if:

• I could totally trust the matching algorithm (I can't, I've caught it before)
• the song count were exactly the same

After rebooting to the OLD disk, I discover it's short about 150 songs, which is about 2% of my songs. No good.

So I export my song library. I get an xml file. All the file locations are formatted with the old file structure, iTunes Media etc etc.. I don't think I want that. I reboot to the NEW disk. I export the library again, to compare the two files. I cut all the info from the OLD library file except for one song, which happens to have not been matched, nor uploaded, but still showed up from my Cloud library (kudos!).

Importing that one-song library does nothing. Apparently. Let's try a reboot.

The solution posted above by Snowdog212 is the correct solution and better than the one marked as the solution in this thread. For anyone in the future who experiences this problem, you may encounter an error when trying to open the "iTunes Library.itl" file. If it says something about connected devices, turn off home sharing and media sharing in system preferences, then reboot your computer. After that, the directions posted by Snowdog212 solved the problem.