Old iTunes folder to Catalina or Big Sur Music.app

These instructions were AMAZING! When I upgraded from Mojave to Big Sur on my laptop a few weeks ago, the upgrade went super sideways. With regard to my music, this meant I was left with my Mojave iTunes folder on a backup external hard disk, and a completely clean install of Big Sur on my laptop with an empty Apple Music.

My music library is 48 Gig for 7000+ songs.

I followed these instructions and so far (a day later) everything I've checked and care about appears to have come through perfectly including playlists and ratings.

As reported by others, in Step 8 when I quit Apple Music, I got a popup "Saving Music Library....". I went and had dinner and when I came back maybe an hour later, it had completed successfully and quit properly. (So I don't know exactly how long it took, just that it was less than an hour.)

THANK YOU SO MUCH! I never would have figured this out on my own.

Sorry, but this did not work for me. I am trying to import an old iTunes library/folder from MacOs 10.6.8. Perhaps this requires a different strategy? When I select the file you mention (iTunes Library.itl), I get the error message "iTunes Library.itl does not appear to be a valid library. Please choose another". Is my situation hopeless? Because I had to do a clean install of BigSur, I didn't have the opportunity to let the new OS convert the iTunes library. I'd appreciate your advice...

Thank you so much for testing this and sharing! I got a new MacBook with Big Sur and the Music app and was concerned I would loose a music collection it took years to collect.

I was running El Capitan on my old MacBook with my iTunes .itl file on my computer but the media files on an external hard drive. So around step 7 things got a bit different but I fumbled through and music.app was recognizing the files ok. Funnily enough it didn't find 140 of the 16,495 songs at first but after several hours of playing music and using the app with no other apparent background processes, it finally found the remaining files. Weird. I'll never know what files they were. None of it took an exceptional amount of time except processing the artwork.

If any one is wondering I tried the same process for my movies and home videos and the new TV.app using a copy of the ituneslibrary.itl file from my original iTunes library. The creation and swapping process for the TV library.tvlibrary file was the same as above.

Thanks again!

First fix the name of your Music library. With Music closed rename the folder ~/Music/Music 1 as ~/Music/Music

Copying 29Gb of data would be likely to take some time. I suggest seeing if you can get away with moving the folder rather than consolidating the library. With Music closed move the folder ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music inside ~/Music/Music/Media. If the folder Media doesn't exist then create it. If it already contains a folder called Music rename that as Music1 first. Launch Music and confirm that your content is still accessible. If so use Music > Preferences > Files and reset the media folder to ~/Music/Music/Media. Your Music library should now be self contained, although there could still be legacy iTunes content such as audiobooks, movies, podcasts, TV shows, etc. that needs reorganizing elsewhere with the new apps. If for any reason your content isn't accessible after moving the Music folder then close Music and put it back where it came from.

tt2

This didn’t work for me.

At Step 3 I get the rainbow wheel of death for over 4 hours (my library is very large - 180GB).

Is there any other way to ‘save’ the iTunes library I’ve been compiling for a decade?

Can I install an old version of iTunes on Big Sur and use that as my default program?

Any advice or help would be much appreciated

Oops. Sorry Apple, maybe I spoke out of turn. You just open 'Music' while holding down option and it asks you for the library file you want to use. And hey presto, there it all is. Will it work? Perhaps. Will report back. Certainly my playlists and recent additions seem to be there... It's OK Apple, I still love you. Even if you treat me bad.

For 2 & 3 see Repair security permissions for iTunes/Music for Mac - Apple Community.

tt2

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community. You likely need to option-start-Music and select the old .itl file to convert to a .musiclibrary database.

tt2

If you're trying to get to the default layout of a music library then your library file should be:

~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary.

and your media folder should be:

~/Music/Music/Media

Like iTunes, Music doesn't scan the media folder to see what should be added or removed from the library to match it. You can use File > Add to Library > {Media Folder} to import any music content in the media folder than isn't already known to the library. Video content should be organized under ~/Movies/TV/Media. Podcasts and audiobooks can be imported into Podcasts and Books respectively.

tt2

I'd just copy iTunes folder to ~/Music directory. After it, I'd run music.app with opt key and select old library. music app to create a new library and all're ok.

But now I have and a ~/music/music folder and ~/music/iTunes folder))

Wonderful! Works really well (especially with the explanation of the many different levels of `Music`:-). But, indeed, as @breegenie pointed out, the "saving music library" can take time. Especially if you have 260GB of music collected over 50 years...

Aidwannislard, you will unfortunately find that the iTunes to Music transfer doesn't carry over all the views and what info (like columns) was showing or not. The important bits are there (folders, playlists and content), but it's a big mess (unless you were always using the default view settings anyway).