Recover playlists for Apple music after os upgrade

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Recover playlists for Apple music after os upgrade

Ive lost my playlists in Apple Music/Itunes after upgrading my iMac to Monterey. My iPhone still has my playlists, but Im afraid to sync the iPhone, or I might lose those playlists too. Ive now purchased a new MacBook Air M1, and have imported the Library successfully, all the songs are there, but still with no playlists. I don't use a subscription, as these songs are all backups of cds that I have owned in the past. I had a big collection of 70s and 80s albums, but now have no playlists to enjoy them. There was about 200 playlists, so its too big to manually recreate. I have not done a Time Machine backup for 7 years, oops, lesson learned too late. Is there any way to recover my old playlists from the iPhone and export those lists to the MacBook? Or does the xml Library file still hold the playlists somewhere and I haven't found them?

MacBook Air (2020 or later)

Posted on May 17, 2022 12:28 PM

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Answer 1

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Andrewk4 Author

Level 1

22 points

May 18, 2022 12:44 AM in response to turingtest2

Great guess. I had iTunes on a non standard drive, and was booting from it. I had problems when I upgraded the OS on the external drive only. I should have upgraded the iMacs own OS first, before upgrading the external drive. Luckily, the iMac had a backup iTunes library from 12 months ago, and I have imported that successfully to my MacBook Air. All my playlists are back! You rock man !!! and I love your reference to Alan Turing! creator of the binary code.......

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

May 17, 2022 12:34 PM in response to Andrewk4

What did you upgrade from? Depending on exactly what has happened you might simply need to press and hold down option as you launch Music, then browse to an open your old iTunes Library.itl file. See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash - Apple Community for more, including options for recovering content and playlists from a device if it comes to that. Assuming you can restore your library on the iMac see Move your iTunes/Music library to a new computer - Apple Community for advice on moving/copying it to the new machine.

tt2

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

May 17, 2022 3:38 PM in response to Andrewk4

So Music to Music. Check for alternate Music Library.musiclibrary files. It is possible you were using a library in a non-standard location and after the upgraded Music has switched to the default one. Alternatively Music may have fallen over when it tried to upgrade the Catalina library and reset to a blank library. Check for a Previous Music Libraries folder, or hidden .tmp files inside the .musiclibrary package.

tt2

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Answer 4

Andrewk4 Author

Level 1

22 points

May 17, 2022 3:27 PM in response to turingtest2

I upgraded my iMac late 2015 , from Catalina to Monterey. I skipped Big Sur. I will read up on your other tips tonight and get back to you, thank you so much.

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Recover playlists for Apple music after os upgrade

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