I am having difficulty importing my music library into Apple Music

Question

I am having difficulty importing my music library into Apple Music

I've just bought a new M2 Macbook Air and am having difficulty importing my music library into Apple Music. I was previously using a 2017 Macbook Air with (I believe) Big Sur, and when I made that upgrade, I was able to import my music library from an itl file. However, I can't seem to import either the "Music Library" file that I copied over nor any saved itl file into the Sonoma version of Apple Music.

All of my music is on the same external drive location, but there are thousands of duplicate files I had cleaned up in the library, as well as hundreds of playlists that would take a tremendous amount of time to recreate. Is there any way I can import this data?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Posted on Dec 23, 2024 2:48 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

275,010 points

Dec 24, 2024 8:25 AM in response to johnalexander9

See Move your iTunes/Music library to a new computer - Apple Community. Since Big Sur runs Music you shouldn't be converting a .itl file again at this stage. You don't import the .musiclibrary file, you choose it having opened Music with Option held down.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

275,010 points

Dec 25, 2024 12:24 PM in response to johnalexander9

Hours with the spinning wheel suggests something is not right. It should take a few minutes at most to update a library from one version of Music to a later one. Converting .itl to .musiclibrary on Monterey consistently hangs, but you're not doing that, so I don't know what the issue is. Do you have any third party security software? See Repair security permissions for iTunes/Music for Mac - Apple Community in case there is an issue there.

tt2

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Answer 3

Dec 25, 2024 8:32 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks. I've tried this with the correct .musiclibrary file, but it's spent hours with a spinning wheel and "Loading iTunes Purchases..." I'm assuming this is normal due to its size (as indicated earlier, it was 145k songs and hundreds of playlists) but I have absolutely no idea if it's working or not yet.

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