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iTunes: Transferred Music Library and Lost Playlists?

H

Hrothgar

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 11, 2009
525
22
New York
I just moved my music library from my MBP to a new Mac Mini. I connected the computers by firewire cable and started the MBP in target mode. Then copied the iTunes Music folder into the iTunes Media folder on the Mini.

However, I seem to have lost my playlists. I understand that playlists are actually "tags" on the music files themselves -- there are no separate playlist files to copy over. Is there any way to get my playlists back? (I also lost the play counts and all of the tagging modifications I made seem to have reverted back to the original tags.)
 
Hrothgar said:
I just moved my music library from my MBP to a new Mac Mini. I connected the computers by firewire cable and started the MBP in target mode. Then copied the iTunes Music folder into the iTunes Media folder on the Mini.

However, I seem to have lost my playlists. I understand that playlists are actually "tags" on the music files themselves -- there are no separate playlist files to copy over. Is there any way to get my playlists back? (I also lost the play counts and all of the tagging modifications I made seem to have reverted back to the original tags.)
Click to expand...

Did you also copy the iTunes Library files? (the xml, itl and itdb files)
 
Hmmm. maybe not. I think just the music.

I guess I can still bring over the other files? There were a lot of files under iTunes music that I didn't understand.
 
Hrothgar said:
Hmmm. maybe not. I think just the music.

I guess I can still bring over the other files? There were a lot of files under iTunes music that I didn't understand.
Click to expand...

See this https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201610

The xml describes the library structure (and contains a little data), the others contain playlists, play counts etc. These are not in the mp3s. You should also copy the Album artwork folder. This contains any artwork thats not specifically embedded in the music file.

Copy the files across and you should your old playlists. However, you'll lose any updates such as play counts since the copy as I don't think there is a merge facility.
 
Thank you. and just replace any files of the same name?

(I did copy over the contents of the artwork folder. That seems to be working.)
 
Partron22 said:
There's a script for that: Move Track info (playcount etc) from one iTunes Library to another.
Click to expand...

What I meant by merge was to sum the play counts rather than replace. So the library on the old machine has n plays, library initially created on new machine has m (which are new plays in there period between the original copy and the replacement).

OP has now copied library from old machine overwriting that created on the new (but should have backup of new)

On a browse I think the script would just overwrite n with m whereas you might want n+m.
"tell application "iTunes" to set played count of track n to item 2 of tlst" so would need a big of hacking is you were bothered about the plays on the new machine.
 
ItWasNotMe said:
What I meant by merge was to sum the play counts rather than replace.
Click to expand...
Ahh, you're correct. I wrote the second script to replace playcounts rather than to sum them.

Since the script holds both the old playcount and the matching new track in memory at the same time, it shouldn't take more than adding a couple lines of code to add the two playcounts together and write that number to the library.
 
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