Import iTunes library into clean installation of Catalina

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. :)

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 =)

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 …”)?

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... 😀

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?

(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 …

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? 🤔

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...

Yes, I could convert my lib into 128 kBit/s files. I could chop my hands off, too.

The entire process took about 20 minutes for 42,017 files or 409 GB. (Copying the files beforehand from my external Adata SSD took another 23 minutes.) And, again, AT NO POINT in the process of assigning the old lib to Musik does anything duplicate.

Quote: “This sounds like you haven‘t changed the music.app media path in the preferences of the software”

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 …

Last night I relied on the .xml file—and it saved my a**. ;)

Fortunately, it contained my newest data. But I know, it won’t get updated any longer. I need to switch to a software that is able to handle the Music Library file—Mixxx won’t do so, I’m afraid.

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 🙂