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How Do I Transfer My iTunes Library To A New Computer?

Hello -

I recently bought a new laptop (Windows 10 PC) and am hoping to transfer my iTunes library from my old computer (also Windows 10 PC) to the new one.

I keep all of my music files in a folder on my desktop titled "Music" and those files have been dragged and dropped into iTunes on my old computer over the years. I've copied this folder to an external hard drive and then pasted it onto my new computer in a folder on my desktop that is also called "Music" - just like on the old computer. So the files have been transferred to the new computer, but I'm trying to avoid having to drag and drop the individual files into iTunes, because the files in the "Music" folder are in tons of different subfolders for different artists/albums/etc. I have everything meticulously organized and close to 20,000 individual songs.

Now that the files are on the new computer, in the same folder they were in on the old computer, I'm hoping there's a way to also transfer over my iTunes playlists and general iTunes organization that I spent hours setting up on the old computer. There's got to be a file on my old computer that serves as a link between my Music folder and iTunes itself - perhaps bringing this file onto my new computer will make my new iTunes behave just like my old iTunes? Or is this wishful thinking?

Thanks in advance,

Mark

Posted on Dec 27, 2020 2:54 PM

Best reply

turingtest2

Level 10

273,189 points

Posted on Dec 28, 2020 3:25 PM

You'll make things easier in the long run if you stick to the overall iTunes folder containing media folder layout. What you do inside that folder is up to you. I generally recommend people let iTunes manage the folder because as far as iTunes is concerned the layout doesn't matter, so why bother micro managing it. Of course the thing about good advice is that we don't always take it ourselves. I use a custom version of a script I've written called ConsolidateByMoving that I used to move new and changed tracks into the precise location I want for them. I stick to the general <Artist>\<Album>\## <Name>.<Ext> layout of iTunes, but allow for longer file and folder names, change The Artist and The Album into Artist, The and Album, The so things sort the way that I want them, and have certain genres go to their own folders.

Clearly you're not going to want to consolidate the library or rearrange files, so just take the first steps from my earlier post:

You should be able to manually create a Mangle Jones folder inside C:\Users and move the relevant folders (\Desktop\Music* and \Downloads) inside it so that they are in parallel locations to your original library. Leave the iTunes folder where it is in the active user profile folder. This should allow the iTunes library to reach the content at the expected paths.

*To be specific, create a Desktop folder inside the newly made Mangle Jones folder, then move the Music folder from your desktop into it. You can then press Ctrl+C to copy the Music folder, right-click on your actual desktop and use paste shortcut.

tt2

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How Do I Transfer My iTunes Library To A New Computer?

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