Moving iTunes library from Mojave MBP to Catalina MBP?

[Nacho98]

I have a 2015 MBP running Mojave.

I have a 16" MBP on order, which will be running Catalina.

I will set the new MBP up brand new, not from a backup, and will manually move my photo and music libraries over. Will do all settings manually, etc.

I've been planning on updating the 2015 MBP to Catalina and work out any dreaded music issues with the loss of iTunes on that machine and THEN move the library over to the new 16".

Do I need to do it that way, or can I skip updating the 2015 MBP to Catalina altogether, and just transfer the iTunes library from the Mojave machine onto the new 16"?

 

[Nacho98]

Actually nevermind - I went ahead and took the plunge and everything synced over perfectly in the music app. No lost artwork, song tag conventions, nothing. I'm shocked.

 

[Yesshows91]

I'm shocked too. I'm having a hard time with playlists. I have about 300 playlists in 30 folders and transferring from Mojave/iTunes to the Catalina Music app hasn't been working well. The Music files themselves have transferred fine, but my playlist folders are becoming smart playlists which I've never used. Very frustrating. Can you please go into detail on how you transferred your playlists?

 

[Nacho98]

I didn't have to do anything - they just showed up correctly after I did the update to Catalina.

What I AM having problems with though, is deleting playlists off devices.

I manually manage music and have figured out that I can drag and drop songs and playlists onto the device when it shows up in the Music app sidebar, and I can delete songs from a device in the Music app by selecting the device in the sidebar, selecting the songs, and pressing the delete key (right clicking no longer does anything), and for each of these three steps no Finder window is needed for any of this.

BUT I cannot find a way to manually delete a playlist off a device from the computer, because the playlists on the device don't show up under the device in the sidebar. This is infuriating.

 

[posguy99]

I'm curious, was your library on the system drive, or on an external device? I've read several horror stories about Catalina attempting to copy libraries to the system drive. How much of that was user cluelessness, I have no idea.

I won't be attempting to install Catalina before next June of course, but my library is > 2TB on an external. It's certainly not something I want on the internal, or want it to try to move to the internal. I don't see any point in experimenting with the current version, who knows how it'll act when it's actually something worth installing.

 

[Nacho98]

For clarification I don't have my 16" yet - I went ahead and did an upgrade to Catalina on the old machine to hopefully iron out any garbage now so that when I do get the 16", it SHOULD be a straightforward library transfer...trying to iron out everything ahead of time to make the transition as painless as possible.

 

[Gator1pk]

I’m shocked everything transferred perfectly. iTunes likes to randomly create folders and scatter my media files and loves to delete playlists. Must be because I use an external drive and have it attached to my Time Capsule.

 

[Nacho98]

So what's the course of action to move everything from this computer running Catalina to the next computer running Catalina? I will not restore from backup, I want to set the new one up clean and just transfer the entire library over via an external drive.

 

[dmb8021]

I'm getting ready to do what I think the OP initially intended to do, which is transfer my iTunes library from my old MBP which has Mojave installed to a new MBP which has Catalina. Will this work? Will my iTunes library automatically work with the new music application in Catalina?

 

[Nacho98]

1) Is the manual transfer to the new machine as simple as copying the entire iTunes folder and the entire Music folder and pasting it over on the new machine in the same location?

2) Same with photos, just grab the photo library?

3) Any reason this can't be done on a large enough flash drive as opposed to an external drive?

 

[hawkeye_a]

Ive been setting up my new 16” running Catalina (my old Mac was running Mojave).

Transferring the photos library was straightforward, but im struggling to transfer the iTunes library.

Most of my media is on an external drive. I want to transfer the playlists.

Any suggestions folks?

 

[mikzn]

Ive been setting up my new 16” running Catalina (my old Mac was running Mojave).

Transferring the photos library was straightforward, but im struggling to transfer the iTunes library.

Most of my media is on an external drive. I want to transfer the playlists.

Any suggestions folks?

Press the hold the option key while opening music App to "Choose Library" browse to select the previous "iTunes Library" (iTunes Library.itl) and it should import into "Music App" with all the playlists, playcounts, artwork(hopefully) etc.

This option will create a new "Music Library.musiclibrary" with all the same info and settings including playlists, playcounts etc. - the artwork is a hit and miss - sometimes there is missing artwork - in my case it slowly re-downloaded the artwork over a few days (but that was on an early beta version) - maybe the artwork transfers better now

 

[Vmix350]

I have a 2015 MBP running Mojave.

I have a 16" MBP on order, which will be running Catalina.

I will set the new MBP up brand new, not from a backup, and will manually move my photo and music libraries over. Will do all settings manually, etc.

I've been planning on updating the 2015 MBP to Catalina and work out any dreaded music issues with the loss of iTunes on that machine and THEN move the library over to the new 16".

Do I need to do it that way, or can I skip updating the 2015 MBP to Catalina altogether, and just transfer the iTunes library from the Mojave machine onto the new 16"?

Hello,

I am so glad to read your post I am doing exactly the same I have a new 16" and was debating how to go ahead as I wanted a clean install on it. I think I will now go ahead and do what you have done, update the old 15" from Mojave fingers crossed and then iron out any problems before copying across to the new 16.

I understand what you have done so far, can you let me know if you come across any issues when you copy / move the photos and music libraries to the new Mac and any other issues you come across?

As far as I can tell you should just be able to transfer the folders to the new mac via an external drive but guess there is bound to be some issues there always is lol.

Thanks

Dave

 

[AJMike]

I'm getting ready to do what I think the OP initially intended to do, which is transfer my iTunes library from my old MBP which has Mojave installed to a new MBP which has Catalina. Will this work? Will my iTunes library automatically work with the new music application in Catalina?

I had had issues with Catalina 15.2 - all kinds of Finder freezes that are documented in other forums - so I went back to Mojave for a while. Of course, that meant that photos and music are not the same! Anyway, I did a clean reinstall of Catalina 15.4, this time no obvious OS problems BUT my Music library got all screwed up. I subscribe to Apple Music, but all my local files are (or were) MP3. After the Catalina install, much of my library showed up as protected Apple AAC files, which cannot be played on a non-Apple music player. Now I have the long task of re-converting my files using a third party app. With some 5000 files to be re-converted, I am not unhappy about being locked in by Covid 19!