Import iTunes library into clean installation of Catalina

Hullo all, hope you can help:

I backed up my iTunes library (the entire "iTunes" folder—contains about 95GB of music ripped from my CDs) on an external hard disk.
I installed Catalina on a newly reformatted hard disk on my iMac.
I copied the backed up iTunes library into ~/Music (Home folder → Music).
I launched the Music app. It showed my handful of iTunes purchases, but not my playlists nor the music I had ripped from CDs. 🤔

Clearly, my iTunes library was not upgraded at that point. The Music app was just seeing the music associated with my iCloud account. Second try:

I quit and I deleted the new "Music" folder that was created (~/Music/Music).
I launched the Music app holding down option. It asked me the choose a music Library and pointed it to the "iTunes Library.itl" file (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl).
The Music app launched. Again, only my iTunes purchases appeared, no playlists. 😢

Any idea how I can get the Music app to upgrade and see my older iTunes music library? There are plenty of playlists, ratings, play counts, album artwork from rare CDs that I scanned myself, even some digitised vinyl. This process has worked with previous OS updates, so I would expect my backed up iTunes library should somehow be able to be imported.

Any thoughts?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 14, 2019 1:29 PM

Top-ranking reply

Slavsta

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Mar 14, 2020 10:04 AM

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

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
Option-clicking the Catalina Music app and selecting the old .itl file - the same thing without even the playlists.
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!

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93 replies

Oct 18, 2019 1:21 PM in response to turingtest2

Ok, noticed a new behaviour. If I delete all the new "Music" libraries and launch the music app, it pops up this dialogue box:

When I select "Choose Library..." and point it at my "iTunes Library.itl" file, it doesn't like it and pops up the same dialogue box again. If instead I select "Create Library..." it launches and shows just my iTunes purchases, none of my ripped tracks. So the behaviour we are observing is not "half importing" or anything like that. It's actually not importing anything at all, as if the .itl file were not at all parseable.

If that doesn't give anyone any more ideas, I'll downgrade a second Mac to Mojave, install my iTunes library, and then upgrade to Catalina without reformatting. Let's see if that does anything.

turingtest2

Level 10

278,003 points

Oct 15, 2019 8:33 AM in response to Orestes Chouchoulas

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

Oct 16, 2019 1:28 PM in response to turingtest2

I also have a very similar issue...

1) Backed up iTunes folder to external drive

2) Wiped HD and installed Catalina from USB

3) Opened Music app and used import option to import all files from back up

4) Files no exist in Music/Media/Music folder

5) Turned off Sync Library option as I do not want to sync c. 200GB of music

Result is that my library just shows a few purchase from iTunes and not my library which h I can actually see on disc.

6) If I then also try to create a playlist and add a track it seems t try and re-download it to my Music library. I'm not sure why this has got so much more complex.

turingtest2

Level 10

278,003 points

Oct 16, 2019 1:44 PM in response to reb_tribal

Regarding 4) is Copy files... enabled under Music > Preferences > Files?

Regarding 5) do you have a subscription to either Apple Music or iTunes Match?

You could potentially access the old library by holding down option as you launch Music, clicking Choose Library... and browsing to the iTunes Library.itl file in your old iTunes folder on the external drive.

tt2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,003 points

Oct 16, 2019 2:09 PM in response to reb_tribal

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

Oct 19, 2019 7:14 AM in response to turingtest2

Hi tt2, neither of these helped I'm afraid. No issue with permissions, and the same behaviour persists with previous iTunes libraries.

So I downgraded a spare MacBook to Mojave, copied my iTunes Library over, and opened iTunes. Everything worked fine, artwork, playlists, tracks were all present. I consolidated and organised that library on Mojave, just in case. Then I upgraded the MacBook to Catalina without reformatting. I launched the Music app, and no music was present. I quit and option-launched the Music app, navigated to the .itl, and again, no music was brought in, exactly the same behaviour as before.

There must be a significant bug that prevents Music from seeing/upgrading some iTunes libraries at all.

Oct 24, 2019 8:50 AM in response to chocojun

I submitted a bud report for this issue, linking to this discussion. Not sure how many people have a similar issue, but I suspect it would help to chime in on this thread if you are experiencing something similar and show that you are affected by the bug. From my testing, it looks like the fact that it was a clean installation did not matter.

Nov 1, 2019 1:45 PM in response to tim21i_dot

Sorry to hear, Tim. I had to update my phone today (which had parts of my library synced from Mojave), and all my synced music disappeared. So now I can't play any of my music anywhere. 😕 I'm not sure what it is about our Libraries that makes Catalina choke, but it's rather upsetting. Also hoping for a solution soon!

Nov 1, 2019 5:29 PM in response to Orestes Chouchoulas

Oh my, thanks for pointing this out! I also still have music from a previous sync on my phone and will therefore probably not update for the time being... This is heavily annoying and I can’t imagine that Apple wanted / wants it to be this way. Asking myself when someone official will reply...

rj0920

Level 1

12 points

Nov 12, 2019 2:33 PM in response to turingtest2

Wow. This worked for me.

"You could potentially access the old library by holding down option as you launch Music, clicking Choose Library... and browsing to the iTunes Library.itl file in your old iTunes folder on the external drive. "

recovered all my playlists. thanks a lot for this.

macbook 2012

MattB89

Level 1

4 points

Nov 24, 2019 2:10 PM in response to Orestes Chouchoulas

Thank you for your thread so far, it has been very useful trying to help me migrate into the Music app. Unfortunately I'm still a little stuck so hope you guys can help. I can get all my old playlists but it will not drag the music files themselves along and says it can't find them.

I have an old iTunes library folder structure from a windows PC from late 2017. (Ever since then I've been using Spotify and haven't really touched my iTunes as I haven't had a personal laptop.) I recently got a an old Mac from a family member so thought id import my old iTunes library into it but stupidly updated to Catalina before doing so.

I currently have a subfolder on my SD card which has a few files including:

SD Card/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml

SD Card/iTunes/iTunes Media/(hundreds of artists)

Even from a clean Music app (including bin emptied) if I point the directory at 'iTunes Media' and then import playlists it won't drag across the music but will take a load of empty playlists with an error message saying can't find songs.

Would you mind telling me your subfolder names, maybe its a simple misnaming?

Thank you,

MattB89

Level 1

4 points

Nov 24, 2019 3:08 PM in response to MattB89

After a few more hours trying it turned out it was as simple as moving the entire media library into the new folder called 'Automatically Add to Music' on the main Mac Drive rather than my SD card.

Doing this alongside importing the playlists as previously solved by Orestes sorted my entire mess out.

Located: Users/(name)/Music/Music/Media/Automatically Add to Music

I thought rather than delete my comment though I'd leave it up here incase anyone gets halfway through like I did and needs that last little bit of info to get over the line.

Nov 24, 2019 10:59 PM in response to MattB89

Hey Matt , thanks for sharing! This sounds interesting!

I looked for the folder and it appears that I actually have it thrice on my macbook.

~/Music/Automatically Add to Music

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Automatically Add to Music

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Automatically Add to Music

This looks a bit different from your setup and I am wondering now which folder I should move my "entire media library"? And, what exactly do you mean by "entire media library"? Would this be just the music contained in ~/iTunes Media folder or the whole old iTunes folder, i.e. including the library files?

Happy to discuss!

turingtest2

Level 10

278,003 points

Nov 25, 2019 8:00 AM in response to MattB89

MattB89 wrote:

I currently have a subfolder on my SD card which has a few files including:

SD Card/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml

SD Card/iTunes/iTunes Media/(hundreds of artists)

Even from a clean Music app (including bin emptied) if I point the directory at 'iTunes Media' and then import playlists it won't drag across the music but will take a load of empty playlists with an error message saying can't find songs.

The issue here is that the XML likely refers to the tracks being on some old path, e.g. /Users/<User>/Music/iTunes/.... whereas the files are currently at /SDCard/iTunes/... and thus not where the XML says they should be. You can potentially perform a search and replace operation with the XML file so that its file references match the current paths to the files you want to import.

tt2

Nov 26, 2019 6:43 AM in response to turingtest2

oh my I deleted this old xml file because I had my 'library' on my Synology-NAS. That had an app called ITunes server and all songs were in iTunes on my computer.

Because of this, and the fact that the file was very old I deleted it some time ago. Why can't I just simply import the whole bunch?

Well it seems a good time to say goodbye to the Apple music app.

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Import iTunes library into clean installation of Catalina