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Export music on a Mac with Apple's Music app to a Windows PC with iTunes

I'm exploring the possibility of exporting a large music library on a Mac running OS X 11.6 to a Windows PC that will be running either Windows 10 or 11. The existing library makes use of Apple's Music app and the target library on the Windows machine would be in iTunes.


I assume that this is doable, but have been unable to locate any concrete information about such a process. My question is three-fold. One, is such a transfer possible? Two, if so, where might one find step-by-step instructions. And three, assuming one has transferred the library, are the library's metadata (track artists, song titles, etc.) preserved?


tia

Posted on Dec 21, 2021 12:08 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 21, 2021 12:25 PM

Going Windows to Mac is relatively straightforward as Music can read and convert an iTunes .itl file. If the library is in a portable shape then it should work, although I've not actually confirmed. It may be complicated by the fact that the converted Music database doesn't usually go into the same folder as the old .itl file. Regardless, going the other way is much more complicated as iTunes for Windows cannot read a .musiclibrary database. The solution is going to be to export the Music library as an XML file, then transfer both the media folder and the XML to the Windows machine. Before attempting to import the XML file it will need to be edited so that it correctly reflects the new location of each file. Typically metadata is embedded into tracks, apart for files in .wav format, so that would mostly survive a new import of the transferred media, but rating, play counts, playlists, etc. are properties of the library rather than individual tracks so will be reset unless you import an edited XML. Note this method will lose all date added information as this isn't a property that iTunes reads in from the XML.


See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for some general background.


tt2

1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 21, 2021 12:25 PM in response to roominthetower

Going Windows to Mac is relatively straightforward as Music can read and convert an iTunes .itl file. If the library is in a portable shape then it should work, although I've not actually confirmed. It may be complicated by the fact that the converted Music database doesn't usually go into the same folder as the old .itl file. Regardless, going the other way is much more complicated as iTunes for Windows cannot read a .musiclibrary database. The solution is going to be to export the Music library as an XML file, then transfer both the media folder and the XML to the Windows machine. Before attempting to import the XML file it will need to be edited so that it correctly reflects the new location of each file. Typically metadata is embedded into tracks, apart for files in .wav format, so that would mostly survive a new import of the transferred media, but rating, play counts, playlists, etc. are properties of the library rather than individual tracks so will be reset unless you import an edited XML. Note this method will lose all date added information as this isn't a property that iTunes reads in from the XML.


See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for some general background.


tt2

Export music on a Mac with Apple's Music app to a Windows PC with iTunes

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