How do I move iTunes library into Music Library?

[Zoom]

Just got a new Mac mini M1. I have an older Mac mini (2018) that has both an iTunes folder (where most of my media actually resides) and a Music folder (where a small amount of media resides). I'm guessing the iTunes stuff is all legacy stuff that's been carried forward through various system upgrades and migrations. I'd like to simplify everything and get it all into one library, the Music library.

99% of my music is ripped content - MP3s mostly. I do NOT (and WILL NOT) use Apple Music or iTunes Match... I tried and it royally screwed up my library. I've spent years getting the titles, artists, years and album art the way I want it. I also have dozens of playlists that I need to faithfully transfer.

I can't find a way to do this, and I've even called Apple Support. I need to transfer this stuff to the new Mac. Note that I tried Migration Assistant, and it failed miserably, several times (also worked with Apple Support on this for hours, and failed). So I'm starting from scratch and manually copying over my music and photos. Photos are easy... it's all in one big library file. But my music library is fractured, split into iTunes and Music stuff. I want to move to the new system and be done with iTunes stuff.

Help?

 

[ItWasNotMe]

It's a nightmare and I'm sure there are better ways of doing it than this

Most important of all, try it with a few files first

I had same situation, made worse by moving from HS to BS. My music was on an external drive that I could move to the new machine.

This is what I did, but note that I lost all ratings and play counts and artwork that was not embedded in the mp3's went missing. There are a few other things that I don't use such as 'Love' that this would lose as well.

It also depends on whether you have Movies, TV Shows or Home Movies in iTunes. If you do then I'd do the AppleTV migration first using a similar process to the one below.

1. Copy the whole of iTunes somewhere else, make sure there is at least two backups

a. For me, one of these copies was on the old machine, still referenced by iTunes on that machine​

2. Rename the iTunes and Music folders (if there is one) on the new machine to something else, these is going to get eaten away in step 5
3. On my new Mini M1 I created a brand new Music instance with a brand new, empty music folder

a. Turn Keep Music Folder Organised ON​

b. Turn Copy File to Music Folder when adding to Library ON​

c. Turn Automatically update artwork OFF​

4. Playlists - Most of mine are smarts. This may not work if they have been constructed manually, though you may be able to do this at the end. I wanted it up front so I could check things as I progressed

a. From iTunes export all playlists​

b. Import these into Music​

5. This is the time consuming part. It also destroys the copy on the new machine so step 1 is really important

a. Start Music​

b. In chunks (could be by Album artist or Album, ...) drag that group of files into the Automatically add to Music folder​

c. Check all the files have been added in the correct location​

Why? Well some of my files disappeared completely, especially .m4a files. I mean completely, nowhere on any drive, not in trash (or bin as it is now)​

File import seemed more secure than automatically add but even more time consuming​

d. By the time you have finished there should be no files in the original​

6. Playlist by playlist check the item counts comparing old iTunes to new Music

a. Hunt down the missing files​

7. Replace the other parts that went missing, such as artwork
8. Rebuild the ratings
9. Reset the columns and column order in 'View as songs'

Took me about a day for c14,000 items but to reiterate, no ratings or play counts and some artwork lost

 

[Zoom]

Wow. That's nuts. But thank you very much for the detailed response.

I really would like to preserve my ratings, because I have several smart playlists that use them.

Maybe it's not worth all this effort. Maybe I just need to copy everything over (both the iTunes and the Music folders). Ugh.

Apple, this is ridiculous. You're better than this.

 

[JippaLippa]

Wow. That's nuts. But thank you very much for the detailed response.

I really would like to preserve my ratings, because I have several smart playlists that use them.

Maybe it's not worth all this effort. Maybe I just need to copy everything over (both the iTunes and the Music folders). Ugh.

Apple, this is ridiculous. You're better than this.

I know you won't like my answer but I think the best solution would be to start from scratch and rebuild your library in Apple Music, as hopefully it'll be the new standard in the apple OS for years and years.
I'm in the middle of the process myself...very annoying, but at least I have a new system that works well.

 

[allan.nyholm]

@Zoom

It struck me some minutes after writing this comment that; "why would anyone want to emulate a music application via Rosetta2 on a M1 Mac?"

I wouldn't be satisfied with my comment if I was asking your question - having someone recommending alternative music players which all would have to be emulated.
I forget that this a new architecture completely.

Is it possible for you to continue using iTunes with the Retroactive application that I read is soon to working fully under Rosetta2 on an M1 Mac?

You'll then of course have to run iTunes via Rosetta2 and I'm not sure how good that is in general as I've only experiences Rosetta1 during the PPC->Intel days(which wasn't bad)

If you have your music ripped and could use a different musicplayer then I would give Museeks a try https://museeks.io/ - if only to listen to your musik without it doing things to your Music Library.

I'd take a look first with Museeks if your iTunes playlists(if they matter more than the MP3 tag data) can be imported fully.

There's also https://swinsian.com/ for you to at least try.

I'm not entirely advocating you move away from iTunes and I understand the frustration with Apple Music and iTunes Match. I've been there too; CD's imported(which takes forever as we know) , artwork scanned from CD cover and then let iTunes Match at the time smack me hard with new artwork.

Even now, with my imported CD's I have lost the original artwork when using Apple Music. I've been seeing if any other music playing application could be just that, a music playing application with all my content sealed off from Apple Music. That thought don't last very long as I also have music that is purchased in the iTunes Store that is DRM protected so that other music players won't touch them. I really ought to just seek to burn CD's with those albums and rid myself of the DRM that way .. ponders...

Retroactive works fine on an Intel Mac and with the fix seen here in the top header, there is some hope yet for continuing to use iTunes on an M1 Mac

GitHub - cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive: Retroactive has been discontinued. You should transition from Retroactive to supported apps such as Music, iTunes for Windows, iMazing, Photos, Darktable, Lightroom Classic, and DaVinci Resolve.

Retroactive has been discontinued. You should transition from Retroactive to supported apps such as Music, iTunes for Windows, iMazing, Photos, Darktable, Lightroom Classic, and DaVinci Resolve. - ...

github.com

That's all I have.. I can read in the comments that there are those who have been where you are - I haven't been there just like that.

 

[ItWasNotMe]

Wow. That's nuts. But thank you very much for the detailed response.

I really would like to preserve my ratings, because I have several smart playlists that use them.

Maybe it's not worth all this effort. Maybe I just need to copy everything over (both the iTunes and the Music folders). Ugh.

Apple, this is ridiculous. You're better than this.

Yep, completely nuts.

There are lots of threads here from around the time Music was introduced. You might find something there or Dougsripts to help. I came to the conclusion that dull as it was going to be, it would take me less time to do by hand than do the research.

The issue with ratings is that they are obviously not part of the mp3 tags, just held in the library.

I have ratings for all my tracks as well, the day I quoted included copying them from the old iTunes to the new.

Not that hard for me, just tedious. Most of my music is rated 3. I already had smart playlists for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 starred music plus one for unrated. First job was to make sure that the unrated on iTunes has empty (I use this as a checklist when I add new stuff)

Once I had the same number of items in each of iTunes and the new Music I put the two machines side by side, arranged the new Music Unrated playlist in track name order, did the same on the old for 5 star and ticked off those, Repeat for 4, 2, 1 and then anything left was three so just did those in one edit. Boring....

 

[RobbieTT]

I just grabbed everything from the iTunes folders and dropped it on the 'Automatically Add to Music' folder and left it to do its thing.

It worked perfectly with no drama.

After that I just deleted the old iTunes folder structure to leave the default Music folder structure shown above.

 

[Zoom]

I just grabbed everything from the iTunes folders and dropped it on the 'Automatically Add to Music' folder and left it to do its thing.

It worked perfectly with no drama.

View attachment 1711899

After that I just deleted the old iTunes folder structure to leave the default Music folder structure shown above.

Did it preserve all the metadata? Rating? Custom album art?

And I've never heard of this... there's a special folder under /Music where you can drag and drop song files? And you dragged the "/iTunes/iTunes Music" folder onto this folder? (Did it copy or move?)

 

[RobbieTT]

I dragged the contents of the iTunes media folders - there is usually more than one (eg 1 for Apple Music downloads, one or more for ripped music etc, maybe another for compilations etc).

Metadata and rating was preserved (I understand it will not do that if Apple Music is not set to automatically organise the library) and most, but not all, custom artwork made it over too.

Some artwork required me to re-select the displayed album artwork and a few (4 or 5) vanished so I had to go find them again. I think that was down to poor organisation by me at some point. I also had a number of albums duplicate themselves - again, my error as I had home sharing turned on whilst doing the reorganisation. I corrected that after an initial test run of a dozen albums.

The special folder pre-dates Apple Music and was included with iTunes for a number of years. Not sure when it first appeared though but it is a great feature.

If I had to do it again I would probably run everything through a tag editor first as I found quite a few tracks had become separated from their parent album tags whilst being managed by iTunes - probably due to the moves from Mac to Mac plus iTunes and OS upgrades over the years. It could have been an ideal time to do a bit of clean-up rather than using Apple Music itself to correct any errors.

Anyway - do some experimenting with some test albums so you can see and understand what it does.

 

[srbNYC]

I've always wondered about this mess of Music vs iTunes. I see my Music app is set to an "iTunes Media" folder in Music/iTunes. That doesn't make sense when there's no longer an iTunes app—but does it matter?

 

[Zoom]

I just copied it all over... and it seems to be working okay. Maybe Apple will eventually give us some took or upgrade that will get rid of the iTunes folder.

 

[CaptainMux]

I dragged the contents of the iTunes media folders - there is usually more than one (eg 1 for Apple Music downloads, one or more for ripped music etc, maybe another for compilations etc).

Metadata and rating was preserved (I understand it will not do that if Apple Music is not set to automatically organise the library) and most, but not all, custom artwork made it over too.

Some artwork required me to re-select the displayed album artwork and a few (4 or 5) vanished so I had to go find them again. I think that was down to poor organisation by me at some point. I also had a number of albums duplicate themselves - again, my error as I had home sharing turned on whilst doing the reorganisation. I corrected that after an initial test run of a dozen albums.

The special folder pre-dates Apple Music and was included with iTunes for a number of years. Not sure when it first appeared though but it is a great feature.

If I had to do it again I would probably run everything through a tag editor first as I found quite a few tracks had become separated from their parent album tags whilst being managed by iTunes - probably due to the moves from Mac to Mac plus iTunes and OS upgrades over the years. It could have been an ideal time to do a bit of clean-up rather than using Apple Music itself to correct any errors.

Anyway - do some experimenting with some test albums so you can see and understand what it does.

How does it get its library information...ratings, etc.?