Import iTunes library into clean installation of Catalina

@Snowdog212,

You are my hero because (1) you solved the problem and (2) you have 153,263 songs.

By the way, I was using Mojave 10.14.6 and iTunes 12.8.2.3

Have you considered posting your solution as a User Tip? I've seen many questions that were be answered by your advice.

Glad it helped! Drove me nuts for a while...... Yes, 153,263 songs LOL! I've been using Mac since the Mac Plus days back in the mid 80's. So it's quite a few CD's over the years! No, I'm not really familiar with how to do the user tip thing. Feel free to share or post anything from what I posted here. Just trying to help.

Hi all,

Thanks for all the given solutions, i just upgraded to Catalina and ran into the same problems discussed here.

I will soon implement the solutions, but i also discovered another issue and i wonder if you experience this too, but maybe this wil work after implementing the solutions you given.

The "help" of Music app says you can simply drag and drop new music files into the opened windows of the music app, but when i drag a music file from my desktop to the opened music app, nothing happens, you can see the file is returning to the desktop.

So it seems that drag and drop of music files is also not working?

I'm going to watch the relies on this because it's where I was at to an almost exacting story! Sorry my response isn't helpful, as I manually downloaded every single song I had. It's all backed-up and "doubled" like yours and I'm looking forward to the community response as to a possible Vulcan Mind meld of the libraries.

Hey unusualroutine,

thanks for adding your solution.

I share your concern about divided music folders and will love to know if you find a solution for this issue. So will I do in return if I come across a solution earlier. :)

This confuses me, though.

Doesn’t it mean you doubled all your music files twice?

First by creating a new library (as described in your solution path further above under 4./5.: “… will take some time …”), second by dropping the “iTunes Media” folder onto the Music Mediathek on the app’s GUI (as shown in your picture above: “… which took quite some time …”)?

Thanks, unusualroutine.

This is expansive and well documented.

Two comments:

1) According to your screenshot at step 1 you didn’t move the complete iTunes folder to the Music Folder but NEXT TO the Music folder. It shows clearly that „iTunes“ and „Music“ appear on the same hierarchy.

All other steps afterwards seem clear to me.

2) Your process of “melting” the libraries by dragging the iTunes Media folder onto the Musik GUI “Mediathek” (not the iTunes GUI, as you’ve mistyped ;) …) is a really weird idea (did you find out yourself?) but if it works – well then, I’ll give it a try.

Since my library is almost 500 GB big (and stored externally, too, for a while but this sucks) my steps of migrating my music lib should be well-thought …

Thanks again!

Alright, alright.

Seems to work properly — except that I probably won’t be able to double my library on my SSD. I will just run out of space, I guess? At least if there’s happening a real duplication — which I can’t verify yet since there is no new media/music folder been created in “Music” (or elsewhere in the folder “Musik” above of it).

Do you remember how long it took for your 300 GB lib, this activity “Dateien hinzufügen” (adding files) after dropping the iTunes Media folder onto “Musik”s “Mediathek” in the sidebar?

I could imagine that you could split the „doubling“ process, so for example, all artists from a to l and then after the process is done you delete and repeat with m to z...

alternatively you could convert your library to 128kbps... 😉

I couldn’t handle it mentally to sit next to it during the copy process, but I would guess it took about 2-3 hours from a usb3 hdd on to a 2015 macbook and a Adata XPG SX8200 SSD 🙏🙂

I think with rougly about double the size of your files it should take somewhere around 5-6 hours.

how many files does your library actually count? 🤔

Since I‘m not so sure if you received it the way I intended it, the 128kbps conversion was supposed to be a joke 🙂

Quote:“

Right. But why should I? The path is correct, it’s working.

I could manually move the iTunes Media folder into the Music folder (while the Musik app is closed) and reassign it after opening Musik. But I’m scared of confusing things and make a mess of a formerly running system …“

You could copy your achievements back to your adata ssd or another external medium, and move it the way you suggested it, but if you‘re pleased the way it is, them there is probably no need to change anything.

I am glad it worked out for you and can only wonder why my „readdition“ created a duplicated library, although I am totally fine with the results 🙂

Thanks for documenting your process so well. I am going through the same headache.

I would have imagined that, since I actually pay for iTunes Match, the library would have just "appeared", like it does when you get a new iPhone and it syncs automatically. Obviously that's not the case.

Here's my twist on the problem: I added a PCIe SSD disk, onto which I installed a fresh Catalina. I left the other disk in, I'm copying all the parts I want to keep; that had Catalina as well. In its Music folder, there are both the iTunes library, and the Music library. The Music library copy did nothing at all. Trying to import it didn't work (error).

With your process, I tried not copying all the music files, but just one.

Music had identified my Purchases, so those were already present; I only copied ONE song, hoping to see the Ratings get copied. So I get a message saying "Some songs ween't imported cuz they couldn't be found" which makes sense.

I'm also getting all the Podcasts copied. All my playlists seem to be there. But no info for that song =-(

So I tried again. All the Podcasts are there again, my playlists are there twice!, but again no ratings for that song, or any of my Purchases for that matter.

Something's not working. Starting over. Deleted everything in the new Music. When I launch Music, everything is still there =O so it actually stores the info somewhere else. I'm going to have to try some things involving reboots.

Thanks for the help

Nothing. Weird.

So I try importing the entire OLD library. Now I get the Import bar. Perhaps I mixed up the formatting? No matter, when it ends, there are no additional files.

I notice another oddity. Between OLD Music and NEW Music, there's a difference of about 150 songs, for a total of 13 GB. That's too much memory. ...could these be all podcasts? No, because my old Music folder is 53.44 GB (it only includes the downloaded stuff), while Music thinks the library is only 50.05 GB.

I suppose I could copy all my files in the NEW correct locations, then import the files, and then handle the 7000+ dupes I'll end up with.

Not sure what else to try.

I've read through all of the responses and could have missed this (I apologize), but here's my situation:

iTunes Library (.itl and typical pre-Catalina file structure) created on Mac Mini 2018 in November 2018 on an external drive. Library and all files stored on external drive.

Mac Mini upgraded to Catalina in October 2019. New library is created in ~/Users/name/Music/Music/musiclibrary.musiclibrary (without my knowledge, just found this file after reading this thread). This holds 1.5 years worth of ratings and organizing my 1.28TB music library (mostly apple lossless files of CD Rips and albums downloaded from bandcamp and iTunes Store).

Get new 16" MacBook Pro in June 2020. Plug in external drive to new MBP and chaos ensues.

On new 16" MBP I've tried opening the .itl file (hold option, open Library from external drive), but this opens my iTunes library from just before upgrading to Catalina in October 2019. FYI, all of my iTunes purchased music from iTunes shows up in my Library as available to download.

Then, I find out about the new library file that my Mac Mini 2018 made and put that file on my external drive and transfered musiclibrary.musiclibrary to my new 16" MBP into the ~/Users/name/Music/Music/ folder. Upon opening it (option open Music), all of my ratings and playlists are syncing, with files in the correct location, but none of my artwork in showing up. If I Get Info on a single file, the artwork shows in the file properties, but no artwork shows when I play a song or view albums (like in Recently Added).

I'm fine with completely rebuilding my TV and Podcast Libraries, but I can't start over on Music. I've done it too many times and put in a lot of work rating songs and making playlists....but I also want my artwork to show up. Being able to just keep my music in a single folder on the external drive and my Library file either on the local drive or external drive, would be awesome.

I wrote this reply because most posts on this thread mentioned updating from a non-Catalina machine to a Catalina machine. My situation is a machine that converted itself to Catalina and then transferred to a machine that's known nothing besides Catalina.

Thank you for any responses!

I've also tried keeping my external drive with all of my music files plugged into the Mac Mini 2018 and accessing the music through a network Shared Library. This works pretty well, but I still have no artwork and I can't rate the songs when playing a network shared library, which is what I really want to do, rate and organize.

Just wanted to say THANK YOU! I've moved it from pc's to macs over the years by just copying the directory, but with this latest Macbook Pro 16 on Catalina it wouldn't work. But you just saved a 15 year old iTunes library but most importantly all my playlists :)