How To Transfer iTunes Library to New Mac SUPER EASY including playlists, play count, ratings

You're awesome 🎉

can you re-record this help video and make it slower and more focused?

This video is outdated. No more iTunes but now we have the “Music” app. The iTunes “store” we still have but not the app itself. Now I think it’s just a matter of either just signing into your Apple account & all of your stuff will already be in the music app on a new Mac waiting for download. It should be THAT easy. Maybe like a new iPhone/iPad you have to put your device next to your Mac & it will automatically transfer it that way, I don’t know if that applies to the new line of MacBooks.  

Simply put suffice it to say all of your stuff, music/books,videos/movies will be in Apples iCloud & on a new Mac, a MAC not a pc all you have to do is just sign into your Apple ID & VIOLA! It’s ALL there for you waiting. No external hard drive, no drag and drop, no hooking up cable to another computer, nada.

Me thinks you should revise this video as I think a LOT has changed! For the BETTER! Peace

Wow! From my 2008 Apple to a 2022 MacBook Air M2 this actually worked! I'm in shock. Thank you!!!!

Thank you! It Worked :)

Thank you! I finally have all my music in my 18 month old computer!!!😆 Very easy.

Nice video by the way how can I save my cue points in my VIRTUALDJ folder?
😊 Thanks

i want to transfer itunes library including playlist into the new music app

No matter how many times I did this did not work

Thank you for an actual simple video for normal people

Thank you, awesome tutorial, really appreciate you posting this, made things real easy for transferring my library!! cheers K

Thanks

Another one that’s out of date. It’s now called music not iTunes and the folders are all different names. And this don’t work for 2022 running Monterey folders are all different names.

Instead of using an external drive to make this transfer, is it possible to migrate iTunes from an old Mac to the music app on my new Mac by booting the old Mac in target disk mode and just dragging/dropping in the same way you’ve described here?

This shit really pisses me off. I tried to transfer an old iPod to my new Mac mini and kept getting "this song not authorized on this computer" for song and when I tried to sync it deleted everything on the iPod.

I thought the whole point of Macs was ease of use? On my old Macs you could just transfer a library over with a couple of clicks!

Now I have to dig up my old iMac and bring it back to life long enough to get the 5,000+songs I have on it and try to figure out a way to transfer them to my new Mac. This is so aggravating. This is literally all the music I have bought over my entire life and all I want to do is put it on my computer so I can listen to it yet I keep having to jump through hoops.

How is Apple able to take a song I purchased and say I can't play it on my new computer? It's the same account!

Disclaimer, I won't be original : You're the best, man

Perfect 👌🏻

Thank you so much!! Saved me hours or maybe even days of transferring thousands of songs!

Does this still work on the new 2021 macs?

Thank you for this great tutorial!! I have a MacBook Pro and just updated from Mojave to Big Sur. I backed everything up in Time Machine. I have a huge iTunes library and several iTunes playlists. Do you have a tutorial on how to migrate my iTunes to the iTunes replacement "Music" in Big Sur? I would sincerely appreciate your help.

Brilliant

First off yo has too to the thing them do to som mo and the you is

Any missing artwork that didn’t transfer? Can you just drag and drop the music folder right on the music icon on the new Mac?

I have an old iTunes playlist/library on an iMac and I want to transfer it to a MacBook Pro. Regarding your first step - making sure external hard drive or USB is connected to the new Mac - how do I connect my old iMac to my new MacBook Pro? And once that is done, how do I transfer the playlist from iMac to MBP?

The songs didn’t populated in itunes or Serato Dj Pro. I don't know what is wrong.

How do I know which Itunes to delete?

You said to go into your external hard drive on the new mac and copy the itunes folder into the music folder on the mac. I noticed that you drag and drop the itunes folder into the music folder of the new mac. Do I drag and drop? Or Copy and Paste the itunes folder into the music folder? Thanks.

I didn't see those five itunes files when I clicked on my external drive. I saw a bunch of music folders. I double clicked on one of the folders and there were several songs inside.

How can I keep the iTunes folder on an external disk. Thanks

Thx so much ur da goat 💜

Worked🔥

Too complicated. Or i’m too old and dense. Can I call you?

Worked for music and podcasts, but TV and Movies are still missing. Anyone have any suggestions?

I know the videos is old... had high hopes... doesnt work anymore..

YOU ROCK!!!!!!!

Hi. I have a challenge for you. I´m transfering my music from my Macbook Pro Music App (macOS Catalina) to my old Macbook iTunes (macOS Sierra). Metadata file in Catalina is ".musiclibrary " and in Sierra is " .itl ". How can you help me? When I did the way you explain, Rating and other metadata details are not transferred. Thanks!

This didn’t work for me😢😢😢 what did I do wrong?

Hmmmm, you forgot that unless you consolidate your library you could have stray music files and other folders in an email, or desktop, somewhere on your computer where played it on iTunes. BUT the file is not necessarily contained within the file structure that you are copying here from iTunes. UNLESS you "organize" and "consolidate" You must select library /organize library, then consolidate...

This is actually the core step that builds the structure that IS the standardized heirarchy within the iTunes database and library that must be intact if your trick is to work . If you or DON’T do the step then your thing won’t work, I mean it will work but you could leave files behind that you wanted to copy over.

Also, on the Mac, I’m not sure why you’re not launching iTunes pressing shift at the same time and then having it force you to select the library and then double down open up the one that you copied over, that way you know for sure that the library is connected to the library but you just copied. just dragging and dropping files is dangerous behavior. The referential symbolic etc link system that files use on Apple is not the same as windows (we tend to think about them like they are. But, like “desktops” , its primarily a concept we think of as the same. But in software of course they’re very different. and because of that it’s easy to bugger up a mac too by just "assuming" drag and drop will simply copy of the entire file structure and integrity from one drive to another. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Hello. When you do this will it always bring over voice memos that are in my iTunes from backing up my iPhone?

I needed to clean up my iTunes library MANUALLY. I deleted the entire iTunes folder under my user account and re-imported everything AGAIN. My lib was buggy and behaved strangely. With a clean iTunes version and re-imports from scratch. The folders are now again ORGANISED. Before it was a file structure MESS. I stick to OS X High Sierra.

So, I have thousands of songs & Albums all on external hard drives (5 in total) connected to my iMac and not on the iMac itself , will this method work the same?

So helpful! Thank you!

I have been trying your video on my Mac but when dragging over iTunes library I’m getting a no permit sign come up. Any idea why. Thanks

Thanks! very simple and it worked perfectly!

Thank You so Much.... excellent / My CD player died in my Macbook and had no way to burn anything, got a refurbed Macbook Pro and dumped it all over!

I know how to copy and paste, but mac does not do that. At least mine won't let me, how do I fix that? this video is from 2016, wonder if you will answer me, hahaha

When I open the MUSIC folder it doesn't show an ITUNES folder. It just shows the music artists folders.

I also appreciate you not taking for ever to get to the point. I've watched videos where the guy spent 5 minutes just unpacking the new laptop and explaining the warping and cover of the laptop. Then explaining why he has a new one and what he does with it. After 10 min ( fast forwarding) he still wasn't to the point. Thanks for being brief and to the point!

Brilliantly done! Well and simply explained! Thank you soooooo much!