Combining Two Old iTunes Libraries On One New Computer

You can press and hold down option when launching Music to get an option to choose or create a library. Click choose, then browse to and open the iTunes Library.itl file from one of the restored libraries (ideally the largest to start with). Choose a place to save the converted Music library. Repeat with the second library. With the second library now use the option File > Library > Export Library to export the library as an XML file. Switch back to the first library and use File > Library > Import Playlist to import the XML file created earlier. You should now have all of the tracks and all of the playlists of both libraries.

See Duplicate songs in iTunes - Apple Community for advice on cleaning up any duplicates.

You will likely want to consolidate the library into a single media folder, after which the remnants of the second library can be discarded to reclaim some space. You might also want to rearrange things such that the media folder is called Media and is the same folder as the active .musiclibrary file. You can consolidate to a new path if you have room, or potentially move/rename the original iTunes Media folder as long as it stays on the same volume.

tt2

Hi there, wpazzurri,

Thanks for contacting Apple Support Communities!

We understand that you're attempting to access your Music on your new Mac from your previous two computers but all you see are the purchases.

If you're not able to see the files themselves to move them to one library, you can redownload the music as outlined here: Redownload music - Apple Support

Once you have downloaded your music, you can show the Music app where the library is stored: Use multiple libraries in Music on Mac - Apple Support

We hope this helps.

Cheers!

How annoying. It is possible the old libraries might have contained some broken links, which would have been migrated when Music converted the .itl file, and could be listed in the exported XML, but then won't import. Short of manually inspecting the XML file and comparing it with the files that have been added, or writing some sort of script to do the same there isn't any way to tell how many issues there were, or whether they are fixable.

I spotted an oversight in my description of the process. Not major, but ideally I'd have told you to turn off the options to Keep the media folder organized and copy files to the media folder when adding to the library. That way you could have tried adding the media folder of the second library to the main library to catch any orphans, tracks in the media folder, but not connected to the library. On import Music ignores any files already known to it at that specific path. When the source folder is outside the media folder and Copy... is enabled, Music makes fresh copies each time. If you think there might be a lot of orphans you can turn off Copy, add the second library's media folder, then see Duplicate songs in iTunes - Apple Community to fix the inevitable duplicates. Sorting same album duplicates on Date Added and deleting all the most recent crop of duplicates will fix things up again, but you will have imported any orphans that weren't included in the XML file.

You can also use the add to library method on the primary library to add in any orphans from that media folder. Dupes shouldn't be an issue with this action.

tt2