You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

📰 Newsroom Update

Billie Eilish is Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2024. Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How to transfer owned iTunes music, mp3's, from old MacBooks to MacBook Air Catalina

An Apple tech couldn't figure this out after 90 minutes, so I kept thinking about it and came up with an old school answer. The new iTunes update recently deleted much of my old cd music on my MacBook Air Fortunately I still had my ancient MacBook. The new Catalina iTunes update evidently reconfigured the music so that old legal cd music and old reel to reel tapes converted into mp3s were unreadable. It did still remain on my iPad Air since I didn't back it up to my computer yet, but I needed to get it back to the MacBook Air. The Apple tech tried moving it up into the cloud, drop box, airdrop and into Apple Music, even tried TimeMachine, but nothing worked. I mentioned I still had my old MacBook, but the tech said that wasn't a help. The tech said, "It was impossible to do. There are no other options available." I said thanks and goodbye and knew there was always a way to do it. That's the beauty about owning an Apple, there is always a way to figure it out.


The steps: I finally did a hard connection through USB ports from my old Mac to my new Air and used file sharing, selecting "everyone read and write." (Old schools remember this as Apple Talk.) I went into the MUSIC folder, not iTunes, compressed it on my old Mac and then put it into my shared folder. I then went on my Air, decompressed it and imported it into iTunes. All my old mp3s and cd music magically appeared. An easy fix. Save your old computer for at least 6-8 months to make sure you don't lose old info. Apple needs to train its younger techs in some old school ways.

Posted on Jan 27, 2020 6:45 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 27, 2020 7:58 AM

If you found your own solution for a problem you had, just mark you post as "Solved" to make it easier for other users, having similar problems, to find an answer that might help them as well.


Similar questions

3 replies

How to transfer owned iTunes music, mp3's, from old MacBooks to MacBook Air Catalina

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.