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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Import iTunes library into clean installation of Catalina

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