How do I restore my thousands of songs collection from a backup?

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How do I restore my thousands of songs collection from a backup?

I have thousands of songs and other music from many sources backed up on a non-Apple cloud service. I had to wipe my Mac HD and restore macOS 10.15 from the Recovery partition to resolve multiple problems. I then reinstalled all non-Apple software, and recovered Documents and Desktop from iCloud. I do not subscribe to Apple Music, but have recovered both iTunes and Music directories from the cloud backup.

How do I import these successfully?

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Oct 23, 2020 12:00 PM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

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Nov 8, 2020 4:13 AM in response to rwzpv

Typically you would restore all of your user data into the locations it was in before you restored your Mac. The Music library would typically have been backed up from ~/Music/Music and the old iTunes folder, which may contain your active media folder, would have been in ~/Music/iTunes. Restoring both of these folders should restore your Music library.

tt2

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Answer 2

rwzpv Author

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Nov 11, 2020 2:30 PM in response to turingtest2

Unfortunately, restoring 79 GB of those files did not work for me.

Recovered files from before the "wipe," put into Music, now only 12 songs show, less that before.

Interestingly enough, all the songs are on my iPhone, sometimes in duplicate or triplicate.

Any way to retrieve them? Music keeps trying to sign me up, but I not interested in any more subscriptions--too many already that I have to eliminate.

Any further advice?

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Answer 3

turingtest2

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273,251 points

Nov 11, 2020 5:00 PM in response to rwzpv

You can adapt. Some of the iTunes features have moved over to either Music or Finder. iFunbox will run on Catalina, which you can use to extract the media files. They can be copied into the Automatically Add to Music folder in your media folder to add them to your library. Or you can try to resolve the issue you have with your backup. If you can see the media files in it you should be able to add them to your library.

tt2

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Answer 4

turingtest2

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Nov 11, 2020 3:10 PM in response to rwzpv

See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device - Apple Community.

tt2

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Answer 5

rwzpv Author

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Nov 6, 2020 10:17 AM in response to rwzpv

So no one knows how to restore music library?

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Answer 6

rwzpv Author

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Nov 11, 2020 4:50 PM in response to turingtest2

Unfortunately, in Catalina, iTunes has been replaced by Music. Those 2018 steps aren't available in Music.

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Answer 7

rwzpv Author

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Nov 12, 2020 9:48 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks, After copying the covered ~/Music and ~/Music/iTunes to ~/Music in my Home folder, and _then_ synching with all my devices through iCloud, everything came back.

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Answer 8

turingtest2

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273,251 points

Nov 12, 2020 9:52 AM in response to rwzpv

You're welcome. 🙂

tt2

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How do I restore my thousands of songs collection from a backup?

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