Moving iTunes library from old iMac (Snow Leopard) to MBP with Catalina

[Quackington]

Hello.

I've been meaning to do this for ages, but havn't gotten around to it.

I recently gave away an old iMac (2006 model) which housed my iTunes library. Before doing a factory reset on the machine so it's fresh, I copied the iTunes folder to an external hard drive. I'm hoping that folder will house my playlists, favourite preferences etc.

I'd like to know about the best way to get this library onto my MBP with Catalina, since there's no iTunes library. What's the best app to use, something as close as possible as iTunes would be great.

Thanks.

 

[wickerstick]

Not sure how old the iTunes library is it may need to be upgraded depending on what version of OS X you used.

I would assume it could be imported to Apple Music App.

Import iTunes library into clean installa… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

 

[Quackington]

Not sure how old the iTunes library is it may need to be upgraded depending on what version of OS X you used.

I would assume it could be imported to Apple Music App.

Import iTunes library into clean installa… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Thanks very much for this. I’ll try it, hopefully this weekend and will let you know how I get on.

 

[Quackington]

Not sure how old the iTunes library is it may need to be upgraded depending on what version of OS X you used.

I would assume it could be imported to Apple Music App.

Import iTunes library into clean installa… - Apple Community

discussions.apple.com

Hi there,

Apologies for the delay, I finally got around to this.

I first tried to follow the instruction in the second/third post in the link you share, from Snowdog 2021:

Had the same problem, but finally resolved with Apple Tech Support. The key was in how you open the MUSIC app. Hold down the OPTION key while opening the MUSIC app. You will see a dialog box. Pick the option "Choose Library". Now, navigate to your ITL file (not XML) for the old iTunes database you want to import and double click it. The MUSIC app will then ask you to Save this as a new Music Library. Give it a different name than your other library(s). Pick a location etc. Once that is done, you still have one final step - to change the default directory of your actual music files. Go to MUSIC preferences, select Files directory, and change it to where your actual audio files are. MUSIC app will then ask you to organize, click YES. This took 2 hours to do on my iTunes database (153,263 songs, library size 8.4 TB). I was originally on Sierra 10.12.6 using iTunes 12.8.2.3.

...but when I tried to choose the .ITL file, it said something like 'this is invalid'.

I then followed the instructions in the first response by the person that asked the original question, using File > Library > Import playlist to choose my iTunes library XML file. It took a just a minute or two and it imported all of my songs and playlists, which is great news. The thing is, a lot of my song cover art is missing, even though on my old Mac, I had the art for all the songs I own. I can't imagine having to individually source cover art for everything that's missing, because that'd take ages, but I bet everything is still in my old iTunes media folder. The thing is, it's a tree structure maze of folders.

Is there a quick way I can download the cover art? I tried to use the option in music: file > library > get album artwork but it just returns an error saying it can't find the artwork for lots of songs ("information for X could not be found").

Finally it seems (after I did the import of my XML file), I now have 7GB of music in my iTunes back-up folder and the same in the Music folder. I'm not sure if it completely duplicated everything and I can delete the contents of my iTunes folder to save space - do you know if this is the case? I'm happy to keep both for now if there's any way I can get the artwork easily from the old folder into Apple Music.

Thanks.