There is no music in Music app after upgrade from Mojave to Monterey

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There is no music in Music app after upgrade from Mojave to Monterey

I upgraded from Mojave to Monterey. I thought all of the iTunes content was supposed to automatically find its way to the replacement apps (Music, Podcast, etc) But when I open the Music app there is no content.

If I hold down the option key when opening Music, it wants to know where the library is. I can see an "iTunes" library with many sub folders, but when I select any of those folders nothing happens.

If the upgrade did not migrate the library items how do I do it manually? (Same question for my audiobooks and podcasts etc!)

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Aug 28, 2022 7:48 PM

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Answer 1

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turingtest2

Level 10

274,564 points

Aug 29, 2022 8:38 AM in response to sheridancarole

Press and hold down Option as you launch Music. Browse to and open the iTunes Library.itl file in your previous iTunes folder. Video content is added to the TV app in the same way. Audiobooks need manually importing into the Books app. You might want to prepare some metadata in Music before you do so. See Organizing audiobook chapters - Apple Community for details. AFIAK there is no way to import media into the Podcasts app, but your subscriptions may have synced through the cloud.

tt2

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Answer 2

Aug 29, 2022 9:22 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for responding so quickly. I was able to import my audiobooks successfully. But I still need help with music.

I did try to open the iTune itl library (named it iTunes Monterey, as shown in screenshot below, so that I could tell it apart from the original iTunes) but it just keeps spinning as "loading" - for over 4 hours now and it doesn't appear anything has loaded.

Is that normal? (FWIW: My iTunes library is 78GB, my Macbook has a 500GB SSD drive with >80 GB free)

Also, I can't tell did the audiobooks get relocated or do they remained as is? Can I delete them from the original iTunes folder? (So that they do not appear in the Music folder?) Music -> iTunes2 -> iTunes Music -> Audiobooks

Thanks again.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

274,564 points

Aug 29, 2022 10:04 AM in response to sheridancarole

Some users have reported issues loading their iTunes libraries into Music. You may need to start over with a fresh library by option-starting-Music, and then use File > Library > Import Playlist and select an XML file generated by your old iTunes library, assuming it was creating that file. If not it is possible to use an older version of macOS running iTunes to generate an XML file from the .itl file. Your media doesn't need to be present for this to work.

Books and Podcasts use hidden folders for their media content. Once you've imported audiobooks to Books it should no longer be using the original files, but I would back these up in case you ever need to replace anything or move to another computer. Reclaiming your media from the hidden cache may not be trivial.

tt2

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There is no music in Music app after upgrade from Mojave to Monterey

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