iTunes 12: Unable to transfer music between computers

Thanks for replying Drew. Actually the other way around. Here's the scenario:

1. On my iMac, I have a few playlists that my wife wants on her iMac
2. We both sign in with my Apple ID and use our Home Sharing with my Apple ID for Both iMacs.
3. On my iTunes, I drag the playlist she wants to the left and a flyout with her playlists shows up
4. On her flyout, I can not just drop the playlist and have it create/copy the playlist with the same name to her iTunes.
   1. Reason: Because each of her existing playlists become highlighted, as if I wanted to drop my playlist into one of her EXISITING playlists, as opposed to creating/copying a new one the my playlist name
   2. It doesn't look like Apple thought this through very well.

Workout: On the remote iTunes, create a temp playlist - say name it 1TEMP. On my iTunes, remote drop it into this temp playlist. Works fine but is a giant pain given we each have dozens and dozens of playlists.

Can you work on her Mac & copy your playlists or tracks over?

I don't recall ever being able to make playlists on remote Macs via Home sharing. I have always dragged tracks onto the destination and then generated the playlists manually on that machine.

I make a Smart playlist with the criteria 'Date added is last xx days' on the destination to make the process a little easier, and sort that by album or artist to generate playlists via the cmd+shift+n shortcut (new playlist from selection).

Otherwise Dougs scripts may be able to automate some playlist creation if you are on OS X.

http://dougscripts.com/

Apologies if this is not helping 😟

Okay, like many people here, I have had this issue as well, and I was CERTAIN that I was following every step perfectly. Spoiler alert: I was not.

I had Home Sharing on, both computers, and both computers logged into MY single appleID. Nothing was working. I couldn't see the settings bar at the bottom, I couldn't drag anything anywhere... I was freaking out. I shut everything down, made sure everything was up to date, I was losing it. It turns out, that somehow my homesharing was enabled, but under a different email address... I was still logged into my appleID on the itunes window, but for some reason it was different on my home sharing for that one computer. So I disabled home sharing for both computers, re-enabled them, and made sure I used my AppleID email on both. Now everything works as expected.

(still wish there was a way to drag a playlist from one computer to another, and have it create that playlist on the other computer without duplicating all the **** songs...)

nimrod337 wrote:

(still wish there was a way to drag a playlist from one computer to another, and have it create that playlist on the other computer without duplicating all the **** songs...)

That still not working? iTunes 11 does do that if I drag from the list of playlists in the sharing list, dig around in the UI to see if it can work for you.

Same issue here. Spent hours trying to figure this out.

This had actually been working during the duration of this thread, but NOW it isn't. The OLD way was to select the remote computer's iTunes library, select the tracks you wanted to IMPORT, then right click (command-click if you don't have right click turned on) one of the selected tracks and choose IMPORT (I forget if it read "import songs" "import tracks to current library" or what, but it was definitely "Import" something). All metadata, ratings, playcounts, etc. would be imported to the local iTunes library, and you could freely delete, remove, trash the tracks from the remote computer, and then play those tracks over Home Sharing without having data strewn all over the place. Apple obviously wants TOTAL CONTROL over everything, and if you won't use Über Alles ITunes Store now for all things, then tough toenails. Thanks Apple. You're getting closer and closer to pushing me out of the Apple fold. I'm sure I'll be saving THOUSANDS of dollars, and requiring thousands fewer painkillers once I dump all this 1984 BS, and start rolling things with logic and functionality. Sure, I'll miss the flashy glitz, but oh well.

Ok, so this really helped me Nimrod. I must therefore ping back to tell you I have found a way to drag a playlist and it copy the songs. I have also included a checklist so people get this working. I am using Yosemite with iTunes 12.2.16 - copying/importing does work.

1) Log into iTunes on both machines using the same Apple ID. It must be the same one on both machines.

2) At least one of the machines is probably used with a different Apple ID than the one going to be used for sharing. Check the account listed under File > Home Sharing. Even after signing into iTunes with a different ID, the Home Sharing ID fails to change. Ensure on both computers that you turn off Home Sharing using this menu option if it doesn't show the Apple ID you are logged into iTunes with.

3) At this point you will be able to import files though the process is not exactly intuitive. Select the remote iTunes library source, and then select the songs/albums you want from any view and drag them to the left. Keep an eye on the left hand side of the iTunes application as you do so and you will notice that a target area is unveiled and the different iTunes media types (Music, Music Videos, Movies ... Tones etc) are all highlighted round with a single box. It is not possible to specify where the items end up, but for music/albums that doesn't matter - I haven't tried the other media types. Once your selection is dropped into that target area the copying will start, denoted by the status text at the top centre of the iTunes application window.

4) Now to copy a playlist, it's just one extra step. In the destination iTunes library, I repeat the destination iTunes library, create a new Playlist. Now select the playlist you want to copy. When you drag the playlist, the icon you are dragging will display the number of tracks in the playlist. You will also note, that the target appears again, this time the playlist you created in your local library is listed (on mine it was below the isolated item Purchased). Keep dragging the icon over the playlist and a target zone will be displayed highlighting only the playlist you are hovering over. Drop the icon there and once again the import will start. Once complete, you will have a playlist on in local iTunes library containing the tracks from the source playlist - but the kicker is you didn't have to copy individual files over.

I hope that makes sense and that this blow-by-blow guide helps someone else out there.

Cheers!

Geofferson Billy Bob the Third

.

I've been trying this for an hour now, no target area unveils itself. In the past I've moved thousands of songs between computers easily but this time, I'm beat.

I don't use a Mac, but the following worked for me in Windows.

1. In Itunes go to the library for the remote computer and select the songs you want to copy to your computer.

2. Right click on the highlighted song(s) and select COPY

3. Go to the library on your computer, click in the main window (where all your songs are shown) and press COMMAND V to paste.

It's slower than the old method, but it works in Windows, and hopefully will work on a Mac.

It is unclear to me what you mean by 'no target area unveils itself'

If you mean that the other library doesn't show up in iTunes you should check that home sharing is using the same Apple ID on both machines, otherwise please try to explain more for better assistance here.

The Apple home sharing help may be enough to clarify how you need to activate & manage it…

https://www.apple.com/support/homesharing/getstarted/

I was referring to the below post by GeoffersonBill that I've copied and pasted below. In point 3. he says that "the target area is unveiled". It's not and yes, the other library is definitely showing up and we have only the one apple ID that we use on our 2 iMacs, 2 Macbook Pros, 1 Macbook air, 4 iPads, and various iPods and iPhones we use as a family, we've only ever set the 1 Apple ID up.: As many others mentioned above as happened to them, I may view both computer I'm sitting at and remote computers however I can't drag a song from my remote computer to computer I'm sitting at. It's like I can only have one open at a time.

This is what GeoffersonBill commented as a work around but it's not working for me.

"Ok, so this really helped me Nimrod. I must therefore ping back to tell you I have found a way to drag a playlist and it copy the songs. I have also included a checklist so people get this working. I am using Yosemite with iTunes 12.2.16 - copying/importing does work.

1) Log into iTunes on both machines using the same Apple ID. It must be the same one on both machines.

2) At least one of the machines is probably used with a different Apple ID than the one going to be used for sharing. Check the account listed under File > Home Sharing. Even after signing into iTunes with a different ID, the Home Sharing ID fails to change. Ensure on both computers that you turn off Home Sharing using this menu option if it doesn't show the Apple ID you are logged into iTunes with.

3) At this point you will be able to import files though the process is not exactly intuitive. Select the remote iTunes library source, and then select the songs/albums you want from any view and drag them to the left. Keep an eye on the left hand side of the iTunes application as you do so and you will notice that a target area is unveiled and the different iTunes media types (Music, Music Videos, Movies ... Tones etc) are all highlighted round with a single box. It is not possible to specify where the items end up, but for music/albums that doesn't matter - I haven't tried the other media types. Once your selection is dropped into that target area the copying will start, denoted by the status text at the top centre of the iTunes application window.

4) Now to copy a playlist, it's just one extra step. In the destination iTunes library, I repeat the destination iTunes library, create a new Playlist. Now select the playlist you want to copy. When you drag the playlist, the icon you are dragging will display the number of tracks in the playlist. You will also note, that the target appears again, this time the playlist you created in your local library is listed (on mine it was below the isolated item Purchased). Keep dragging the icon over the playlist and a target zone will be displayed highlighting only the playlist you are hovering over. Drop the icon there and once again the import will start. Once complete, you will have a playlist on in local iTunes library containing the tracks from the source playlist - but the kicker is you didn't have to copy individual files over.

I hope that makes sense and that this blow-by-blow guide helps someone else out there.

Cheers!

Geofferson Billy Bob the Third"

It should be a case of selecting the songs & dragging them, the sidebar should appear as you drag & show the 'local' library on that Mac so you can add them to the library.

You can see if enabling the sidebar helps at all too, that should be an option in the view menu.

Yes thank you, I think it would help to enable the sidebar, that's how I've dragged between computers in the past but I can't work out how to do it right now. There is no option that I can see in the view menu to enable the side bar, I just checked again and I've been looking for hours. I've spent so long trying to transfer just over 100 songs from one computer to another with no success but was easily able to do it in the past on older versions which were much more intuitive. I've moved our computers over to OS X El Capitan 12.10.1 and iTunes is also up to date with the current version and I'm no wishing I didn't because I'm struggling to keep up with the changes on how to do simple things.

I got onto my iMac to see if I could do it on there and had it working in a matter of seconds - transferred some songs from my MacBook Pro to the iMac. So what was the difference between my iMac and MacBook Pro? I decided a mouse was what I'd try. After hours and hours of trying to transfer music from my iMac to MacBook Pro via home sharing and it not working, I plugged in a mouse to my MacBook Pro rather than using the touch pad and had it working within seconds. No idea why, just glad that I've done what I've been trying to do and can get on with life.