Mojave to Big Sur. External iTunes Library.

[MacUser09]

I am still running Mojave and in the next few weeks will update to Big Sur.

I have my iTunes Library on an external HD and was wondering if anyone has any tips on what best to do to avoid any problems with the new OS and finding my library.

It's one ofthe reasond that I avoided Catalina.

TIA.

 

[mikzn]

First - A good Idea to have a back up of the external drive (and keep a back up copy of the "iTunes Library.itl" iTunes Data from the Mojave somewhere)

then it's pretty strait forward

Copy the "iTunes Library.itl" iTunes Data from Mojave to your Big Sur desktop (can delete later) - Hold the opt key and open the Music.app - you should get a dialog to "Choose Library" choose the "iTunes Library.itl" on the desktop and it should import / Create a new “music library” in the main music folder and import all the playlists, play counts and lyrics etc into the new library "Music Library.musiclibrary"

If you wish to keep the music on the external drive it will work as long as the path has not changed - if not (path change?) you may need to manually point the Music App to the location of the files on the external drive see screen shot of music preferences below.

I have all my music on an external and can share the drive with Lion - Mojave and Big Sur - each mac has a different Library file of its own but shares the same music files (set path in preferences)

Your Artwork will probably be messed up - mine was - but everything else works

 

[chipblakely]

Here's a weird one. I also have my Music folder on an external drive. On my work machine running Mojave I can see all of my music in Finder and iTunes. However, when I plug in my external drive on my new machine running Big Sur (and also using Apple Music rather than iTunes) I can only see around half of my music. And the division is alphabetical like it just stopped looking. The sizes of the files are different between the two machines ... it's like half of the data doesn't exist to Big Sur. Any ideas?

 

[redAPPLE]

First - A good Idea to have a back up of the external drive (and keep a back up copy of the "iTunes Library.itl" iTunes Data from the Mojave somewhere)

then it's pretty strait forward

Copy the "iTunes Library.itl" iTunes Data from Mojave to your Big Sur desktop (can delete later) - Hold the opt key and open the Music.app - you should get a dialog to "Choose Library" choose the "iTunes Library.itl" on the desktop and it should import / Create a new “music library” in the main music folder and import all the playlists, play counts and lyrics etc into the new library "Music Library.musiclibrary"

If you wish to keep the music on the external drive it will work as long as the path has not changed - if not (path change?) you may need to manually point the Music App to the location of the files on the external drive see screen shot of music preferences below.

I have all my music on an external and can share the drive with Lion - Mojave and Big Sur - each mac has a different Library file of its own but shares the same music files (set path in preferences)

Your Artwork will probably be messed up - mine was - but everything else works

View attachment 1694686

hi.

i have this test usb drive, which should simulate the external hard drive.

i did the above instructions "Copy the "iTunes Library.itl" iTunes Data from Mojave to your Big Sur desktop (can delete later) - Hold the opt key and open the Music.app - you should get a dialog to "Choose Library" choose the "iTunes Library.itl" on the desktop ",

and this is what happened to me:

- it created a "music library" file, on the hard drive (big sur). is this the way it is suppose to be?

- i had to change the music media folder location (music app) to "/external usb/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music".

- i imported 1 song, so far so good.

going back to the mac with iTunes, after correcting the music media folder location to "/external usb/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music", i had to drag and drop the "music" folder to iTunes, to import that 1 song.

so i added 1 song. and went back to big sur.

big sur, did not recognize that there is a second song. only after drag and dropping the "music" folder, does the music app, see the second song.

maybe you missed a point? thanks.

 

[redAPPLE]

Here's a weird one. I also have my Music folder on an external drive. On my work machine running Mojave I can see all of my music in Finder and iTunes. However, when I plug in my external drive on my new machine running Big Sur (and also using Apple Music rather than iTunes) I can only see around half of my music. And the division is alphabetical like it just stopped looking. The sizes of the files are different between the two machines ... it's like half of the data doesn't exist to Big Sur. Any ideas?

i suggest checking (in mojave) where the files are stored... are they really stored in the external drive?