Old iTunes folder to Catalina or Big Sur Music.app

Rather than force download each individual folder you might want to have a peak at the Mobile Documents folder. It can be found at Finder—>Go—>option key reveals Library so select it—>Mobile Documents. Stuff in iCloud appears also in this folder. If your music is there you might be able to chose it as your Music Media file location. This advice comes with a big maybe. Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't suggest backing everything up first.

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community. The active .itl file would seem to be the one you have there modified today. You can ditch iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes Temp, and the Mobile Applications folder will be redundant if you're on iTunes 12.7 or later. Now the question is, is all your media inside that iTunes Music folder, or is it elsewhere such as that iTunes Folder 2021 you posted a shot of earlier, or split between the two? Moving the library is easier when it is in the standard iTunes/iTunes Media/<All of your media> layout but it can usually be fixed after the fact if necessary.

tt2

See my user tip Make a split library portable - Apple Community. I'd recommend getting the library in portable shape on an external drive to it can be easily backed up or transferred to a new computer.

tt2

Greetings Matti, Thankyou for sharing a detailed method to transfer iTunes to Music on Big Sur...it worked well for me, a transfer of 106GB, a fair size.... didn't get the artwork though but I can sort that out. (from a 2011 Mac Laptop-High Sierra to a 2014 Mac mini - Big Sur.) Many thx.

Keith

Thanks for doing this. I just finished installing my iTunes Library from a late 2013 MBP on Mojave to a MBA M1 on Big Sur.

Admittedly I had to read through this a few times, but it went as written with a little help from captsri on #5 and #8.

Well done. My playlists, ratings, play count, album art all intact.

Next time I see you, coffee is on me.

Question:

What to do with the iTunes Media folder? It still holds Audiobooks, Home Videos, Music Copy, Podcasts.

Leave it?

Rename it?

YOU ARE THE MAN!

My iTunes Music Library was stored on my 2012 iMac running 10.15.7. I moved my library over to my MacBook running 11.1, and was really disappointed my I couldn't see any of my music in Apple Music. You saved my bacon.

Does this recreate exactly how iTunes looked? It's easy enough to get the content and folders from iTunes to Music, but what I need is all the work I have done with the way iTunes looked over the years (what columns are showing in each folder, how wide they are, what order they are in, what view is being used, etc.) I use iTunes in an atypical way I suppose from casual music listeners.

Thanks for this Matt, and all the other good people finding their way through this incredible maze. Erm... it just seems weird to me that Apple expects its devotees to go through this extraordinary process. Why the **** doesn't Big Sur just automatically update everything that iTunes did? Me I only have 123Gb of Music on a separate drive... which I've only been collecting for 14 years since my first iPod... seems to me that it's the manufacturer's responsibility to deliver upgrades to its users without threatening the loss of their entire music collection. Why do we put up with this nonsense? I gave up last night and listened to Spotify instead. Isn't there a clever fix out there that someone has created, a piece of code that we can just run? Having recently wrestled with Apple TV, I'm getting the distinct sense that when it comes to entertainment as opposed to straightforward computing, Apple's legendary arrogance is running away with it. Shame on you Apple. Give us a fix, the back of my hand to you.

Many thanks again for posting this methodology... I'm back at it, after having consolidated my library. Note that I am doing all this in Big Sur. After Step 5 my Music library looks great in Music. Everything seems to be in order. But...

My music library / music files reside in the legacy file "iTunes Media" not the "iTunes Music" folder, and therefore a Question:

In my case is the intention of step 5 to rename the old "iTunes Media" folder - where all my music and relevant folders reside - to simply "Media"?

Everything seems to work perfectly before Step 7, which seems incorrect based on the location of my song files. I don't want to reset the folder location - to Music/Music/Media - but rather to keep it as it was, by default, which is Music/Music/iTunes Media. That is, if I don't change the name of the iTunes Media folder.

So should I

1) rename "iTunes Media" to "Media" (Step 5)

2) combine that with the old duplicate "iTunes Music" folders (Step 5), then

3) reset the library to point to Music/Music/Media (Step 7) etc

I appreciate your thoughts. Thank you!

Thanks Matti, this looked quite good. I tried it two times now and I thought it worked. My music is playing and all my playlists are there, so far so good. But the original files that I copied into the "Media" folder aren't used even though I tried to change the preferences a few times back and forth. The complete library refers to the old disc location when I check the files using CMD & Shift & R.

If someone has a recommendation how to fix this I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks!

EDIT: I found the solution. Just re-organized the library and used the referring commands to combine files which copied them from the old location to the new one.

Thanks again, your workflow got me started and now everything is perfect!

Thank you, again, Matti for the migration assistance. I seem to have gotten things in order...

however my library of song files (mostly mp3's converted from CD's) and new songs added to a library have recurring issues following a migration to Music 1.1.4.110 & Big Sur 11.3.1.

A few observations regarding problems within iTunes / Music:

1. Album art and lyrics of imported songs initially appear to be missing until you access file via "get info" on the title in iTunes
2. info within imported songs cannot be altered - changes (to genre, comments, changing album titles, etc) neither save to the songs within iTunes, nor within the file details on your local drive / folder taxonomy.
3. new .mp3 songs cannot be changed from original, input, file. No changes to album art, or song details, including, lyrics "stick" either, but rather always revert back to details of imported file.

I've done a lot of trouble-shooting - checking permissions, making sure all the info was in the previous files etc. It appears to be a problem with either Big Sur 11.3.1 or Music 1.1.4.110. or some combination of the two.

Has anyone run into a similar problem themselves? If so, do you have any tips or tricks you can share please? Thanks!

Hello. Thank you for this step-by-step guide.

My old Mac recently died (hard drive dead), and I managed to transfer everything from my old Mojave set-up to the new Big Sur iMac.

Music came through. All good. Until I noticed that all my music was in the cloud, and nothing was linked to my local files.

That's when I started searching and found your guide. I followed this step-by-step about 5 times by now. Even deleted all iTunes and Music preferences one time, and then started fresh. But – whatever I do – I still end up with my library not noticing my local files, but referring to the matched Apple Music ones only. It does download my original MP3 and purchased iTunes files when forced... but I thought there was an easier way just to see the local files again. Anything I might be doing wrong?

thanks,

Stefan.

Thank you.

At least it worked to have all ratings and play counts. so no issue with that.... And I am not sure, maybe iCloud Music already messed up my local files before I migrated.

Than you for the follow-up though.

I guess I just have to re-download all my purchased tracks. Tedious, but that should work. Only 120GB to go... ha.

I can't believe i can't get past step 1 here, but if you rename your old iTunes folder Music while in the ~/Music folder, the computer tells you that you obviously can't have two identically named folders in the same path.

I must be missing something very obvious since others have managed to do this with success. Please help!