Catalina & iTunes

When you hold option as you launch Music you will get an dialog box prompting you to choose or create a library. If you choose an existing .musiclibrary library file then that just opens, but if you choose an old .itl file it must be converted into a .musiclibrary database before Music can open it, and you'll get asked for a new location to store that. From the look of things the library on the external drive should be in standard shape, which means that if iTunes opened it there it would just work. I assume that it will also work when Music imports it even though the library that was backed up to that drive would originally have been on a different volume. You shouldn't need to copy or move anything to start with, however deleting the current (presumably empty) library from the ~/Music/Music folder (leaving ~/Music) will mean that you can save the converted library to ~/Music/Music when prompted for a place to save it. After import you can check that the media folder is set to ~/Music/Music/Media (it may be set to iTunes Media on the external) and then consolidate (File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files) to bring in local copies of the media, assuming you have room, so that the library in your computer is independent of the external drive. You may need to adapt and repeat to get video content into the TV app.

If you'd upgraded rather doing a clean install it would have happened automatically the first time you launched Music.

tt2

You can option-start-music, then select the library on the external drive. Assuming you haven't made any use of the initial Music library you might want to delete that first, then save the library the Music will want to make when you open the .itl in the standard location of ~/Music/Music. Once imported you can consolidate to ~/Music/Music/Media to make the library independent of the external drive.

tt2

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2