iTunes library transfer

I recently switched to mac, and I needed to transfer my iTunes library from windows. I wanted to keep everything but the os it was running on. I did not want to move all the music manually and then create playlists, work with new play counts, ratings, and so on.

I googled around but could not find anything useful, so I thought I could map the mac as an extra drive in windows, after that, consolidate the music library to that drive, then copy the "iTunes Music Library.xml" and "iTunes Music Library.itl" files to the mac and edit them to update the location of the songs.

Right now, iTunes on the mac looks just as i wanted it (see screenshot above). It's like looking at my old windows-itunes, it updates my ipod (without the need to even update or restore the firmware, or format the drive), it's perfect. And the process was kinda what I had figured.

This is what i did to put all my music in the new iMac:

• Connected the iMac to Gina (toshiba laptop)


• Mapped the mac to a drive in windows (easy, just right click on the network folder and click on "map as drive..")


• Opened up iTunes and changed the itunes music folder location to the mapped drive (user:music:itunes:itunes music)


• Consolidated the library (this copies all the music to the new itunes music folder

I had the music on the iMac. But i wanted to have the same playlists, playcounts, ratings, etc, aswell. So:

• I copied the "iTunes Music Library.xml" and ".itl" files from windows

And then opened up the xml file, and started replacing each song's location from z://documents..(windows) to user:itunes..(mac), but i have almost 6000 songs, and after a few minutes I cancelled everything. It would take me forever to finish replacing every location for every file.
Note: I had deleted the "iTunes Music Library.xml" and ".itl" original files from the mac, and had replaced them with the windows counterparts, even though the location of the songs was wrong for the mac in the ".xml" library i had just copied.
And the music was copied to the iTunes Music folder on the mac. The folder iTunes created for music. The default folder.

Then I opened iTunes to see what could be done to import the music with all the info. And to my suprise, iTunes was "updating the libray" and after a few minutes, all my music was there, with playlists, playcounts, ratings etc. Everything had been read from the library files i copied from the windows machine.
That is awesome. I really thought it wouldn't be as easy. OS X is blowing me away.

And another thing which impressed me, after this, I plugged my iPod photo (which had a bunch of music i had copied back on the windows laptop) and iTunes on the mac recognized it, mounted it and added an album I had just ripped. No need to format the iPod or anything.

Mac = Ease of use.

Comments

[Andrew]

For the most part, good job for switching to Mac as I just did 2 months ago! Isn't it great?!? lol. Cheers with doing the transferring with iTunes and have fun with your iMac!

[Matt]

Ok so what about trying to transfer ur itunes library from 1 windows to another windows computer that already has the itunes program downloaded??? any help thanks matthewsdabomb@hotmail.com

[Josue Salazar]

Hi Matt,

I have done this easily. But you need to have the two computers connected.

In your old computer, in iTunes, change your itunes Music Folder to the Music Folder on the other computer, then just copy/paste the Itunes.itl and itunes.xml files to the new computer that by now has all the music on the music folder and then open itunes.