Easiest Way to Transfer Complete iTunes Content to New Computer?

[puma1552]

In the past, if I bought a new computer or had to do a clean install/reformat, I always used a paid third party application (Senuti) to transfer all my music/playlists/artwork onto the reformatted computer from an old iPod classic. It worked well, but I inevitably had to do some manual fixing/cleanup afterwards, and go find some artwork that got lost.

Is this still necessary, or can I just go to Users/Music and grab that entire iTunes folder, copy it to an external and then transfer it to the new computer (like how you would go to Users/Pictures and grab the Photos Library to transfer all your photos over)?

 

[HDFan]

I always used a paid third party application (Senuti) to transfer all my music/playlists/artwork onto the reformatted computer from an old iPod classic.

Is this still necessary, or can I just go to Users/Music and grab that entire iTunes folder, copy it to an external and then transfer it to the new computer

Not sure how the iPod copy figures into this, but if you have a working iTunes library with your database files (.itb, itl, xml) and iTunes Media folder (set as your iTunes media folder location in iTunes Preferences/Advanced/iTunes Media folder location) in your ~/Music directory you should be able to just copy over that Music directory.

 

[puma1552]

Not sure how the iPod copy figures into this, but if you have a working iTunes library with your database files (.itb, itl, xml) and iTunes Media folder (set as your iTunes media folder location in iTunes Preferences/Advanced/iTunes Media folder location) in your ~/Music directory you should be able to just copy over that Music directory.

Yeah, so per iTunes I do have my iTunes Media folder location set to /Users/Aaron/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media

So you're saying then I should be able to just copy the bolded iTunes folder above like I planned and that will grab everything right? Or are you saying just take the iTunes Media folder? It looks like if I do the latter I won't get the artwork or anything, since there are other subfolders in the bolded iTunes folder, similar to/at the same folder level as the iTunes Media folder.

 

[HDFan]

Simplest: copy over the whole Music folder. You could just copy the iTunes folder.

 

[fisherking]

copy the bolded folder over, as suggested. if need be, you can hold 'option' while opening itunes, and point it to the correct folder (really, only if there any issues; you can also point it in preferences>advanced).

i had to do this once, sometime in the last 100 years or so of my mac life...

 

[puma1552]

Thanks guys, I'll just copy the whole iTunes folder in that case.

 

[Big Ron]

A word of warning though, I ended up with a lot of duplicated ITunes entries for the same songs, I had to manually delete each one. It wasn't as if there was two versions of the song in the folder, just ITunes had doubled over some entries.