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Music File Management

My iTunes library is quite large and resides on an external hard drive. I have been using a MacBook Air to access the music files, but it is running Mojave and I need to keep it that way. So I upgraded an idle MacBook Pro to Catalina so I’d have all the latest macOS and Apple apps. I opened iTunes on the MacBook and found that it had about 600 songs on file, for right now all in the Cloud somewhere. (I don’t use iCloud all that much except for email, and the songs that are there are all in the files on the external drive.) I figured I could just connect the hard drive to the MacBook, repoint the source of the music in iTunes preferences, and iTunes would do whatever it needed to do to get everything cleaned up. So I changed the preferences to the hard drive location and nothing happened in the iTunes song list. I quit iTunes, moved all of the iTunes management files on the Mac to an untitled folder on the desktop, and restarted the computer. When I open iTunes I get the same 600 songs from the cloud even though the preferences say the program is looking to the hard drive. I need someone to help me walk thru what I need to do get this done. I need the MacBook Air for work and the music stuff is just in the way. I’ve owned Macs for 35 years and can’t recall ever having this happen before when I got a new computer or changed to a computer I wanted to use for music. Sorry for the length here.

MacBook, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jun 9, 2020 1:00 PM

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Posted on Jun 10, 2020 2:29 PM

Clicking on a .itl or .musiclibrary file will cause Music to open, but it doesn't necessarily open the file you clicked on. You have to use the hold-down-option when launching Music method and then the choose library button if you want to open a specific file. If you select a previous .itl file then Music will prompt for a location to save the converted .musiclibrary database.


tt2

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 10, 2020 2:29 PM in response to Mike Strohmeyer

Clicking on a .itl or .musiclibrary file will cause Music to open, but it doesn't necessarily open the file you clicked on. You have to use the hold-down-option when launching Music method and then the choose library button if you want to open a specific file. If you select a previous .itl file then Music will prompt for a location to save the converted .musiclibrary database.


tt2

Jun 9, 2020 6:56 PM in response to Mike Strohmeyer

On a Mac moving files around within the same volume often leaves them accessible, so you're probably still using the same library as you were before. iTunes shows unhidden past purchases that don't appear to be downloaded to your library with cloud links. Sometimes it gets this wrong and there are local and cloud copies of the same tracks. Signing out of the store and then back in again may resolve this. If the library has somehow become disconnected from locally stored files then updating the media folder in preferences doesn't fix anything, that tells iTunes where to put new files in future, but iTunes doesn't monitor the folder for content that is added, removed, or simply happens to be there when the location is changed.


See also Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash - Apple Community.


tt2

Jun 10, 2020 1:38 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for your response. I learned a couple of things but I’m still not there. Just to be clear, the iTunes window is only showing the songs that are in the cloud - 600 or so. None of the 20,000 plus songs in my real library are showing up and I’m trying to figure out how connect that data to iTunes. As I mentioned, I moved all the music files on the MacBook to an untitled folder on the desktop, restarted the computer, and tried to bring up iTunes by clicking on one of the iTunes files - not music, the ones that store the status of things - and it still doesn’t recognize my 20k library. Is there something I’m missing in my process?

Music File Management

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