Transfer iTunes Library to Apple Music.app for macOS 11 Big Sur
2 min readMay 22, 2021
I had all my iTunes library with all the ratings and playlists in my former macbook. Now with the new macbook air with macOS 11 Big Sur, I discovered there is no longer iTunes but Music.app. Instead of the known library files
iTunes Library Extras.itdb
iTunes Library Genius.itdb
iTunes Library.itl
iTunes Music Library.xml
There was instead a file named Music Library.musiclibrary. I could not only open Music.app and see all my previous music library ready to listen to :(
Does that mean that my former library was lost ? I managed to recover it by:
- opening Music.app while holding the option key down. I was prompted to choose betweeen starting a new library (“Create Library…”) and importing a former library (“Choose Library…”). I clicked on “Choose Library…” then navigated to choose the file “iTunes Library.itl”. It asked me a name for the library. I input “Music1”.
- Music.app took a few minutes to import all the list of songs, playlists and ratings. It has also created a new folder ~/Music/Music1 with a new file Music Library.musiclibrary. The list of songs shows on the interface, but currently it can not find the mp3 files yet.
- I copied my previous folder ~/Music/Music/ where I had all the music files organised by artist name then album name in ~/Music/Music1/Media.
- I restarted Music.app to allow the application to find these files locations.
What did not work for me:
- First I tried to import the music via the menu File > Import and select the Media folder where I had my music files organised. I could see the list of all music songs, but the playlists and ratings did not appear.
- Then I used the menu File > Library > Import Playlist to select the file iTunes Library.itl. It would return an error message.
- Then I used the menu File > Library > Import Playlist to select the file iTunes Music Library.xml. This managed to import the playlists but not the ratings.
