Copying/moving music library to a different Mac loses all playlists

Question

Copying/moving music library to a different Mac loses all playlists

I am trying to move my music library to a freshly installed MacMini running MacOS Ventura 13.2. The music is stored on an external USB-drive which I connected to the new Mac. The Music app finds all the albums and titles. All my playlist also appear, but they are empty. I have already tried to copy the "Music Library.musiclibrary" from the old to the new Mac, to no avail. Also exporting the database to .xml and importing did not solve my issue. Any hint how to restore the content of the playlists?

Some details: my music library contains some 10'000 titles, all from my own sources, nothing from Apple Music. The playlists are organized in playlist folders. The older Mac is running the latest version of Monterey. The playlist still works on the old Mac, I also have TimeMachine backups available.

Many thanks for any advice

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Feb 12, 2023 7:38 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

turingtest2

Level 10

272,887 points

Feb 12, 2023 7:55 AM in response to AppleGardener55

See Move your iTunes/Music library to a new computer - Apple Community. Playlists should come over if you copy the .musiclibrary database. Make sure to opton-start-Music and explicitly select the package you copied over.

tt2

Reply

Answer 2

Feb 13, 2023 8:15 AM in response to turingtest2

Many thanks @turingtest2! The hint to "option-start" music did the trick in my situation, and all the playlists are back. Now I still have another issue: about one-in-five of my albums are missing their cover picture, albeit they still are on the same external hard drive. Has the way cover art is stored changed from Monterey to Ventura? Or has it also something to do with the .musiclibrary?

BTW: having seen the link to your excellent contributions "Move your iTunes/Music library to a new computer - Apple Community", it appears to be categorized to "iTunes for Windows", and therefore I didn't pay much attention at first, as I am Mac only. Only at second glance have I discovered the Mac section.

Many thanks again!

Reply

Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

272,887 points

Feb 13, 2023 8:34 AM in response to AppleGardener55

With iTunes the artwork cache was stored in the same folder as the iTunes database and typically transferred with the library. Music uses a hidden library folder for this which isn't so easy to migrate. If you embed all of your art you give Music a head start as it only has to work with local files. https://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php has some scripts for embedding, or reembedding artwork that might potentially help you.

tt2

Reply

Answer 4

Feb 13, 2023 8:43 AM in response to turingtest2

I'll check whether I can find the hidden folder on the older computer - unix is not completely new to me. Would copying that folder to the new computer help music to find all the cover art? Otherwise I'll check out the dougscripts - there are many to browse....

Reply

Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

272,887 points

Feb 13, 2023 9:22 AM in response to AppleGardener55

The location should be ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.APMArtworkAgent/Data/Documents. Search Doug's for artwork and see what comes up. I don't have particular titles in mind, but something to embed associated artwork when your library is connected to the old machine, and something that re-embeds it (updating the cache) on the new one.

tt2

Reply

Copying/moving music library to a different Mac loses all playlists

Similar questions