Moving my Music collection to new computer.

[Newtons Apple]

Both new and old computer are running Windows via BootCamp.

Long ago I took all my CD's and fed them one at a time in my iMac to get them all recorded.

Have a new iMac now and do not want to have to go through this all over again. Some of the CD's are not even available anymore. I know Apple is unforgiving when it comes to stolen music and will not allow music downloaded by other means to be copied or duplicated.

How do I get around this?

 

[Shirasaki]

Well... you may need to move your entire iTunes library folder to your new computer, if that is the case. And to be fair, I never record my music via iTunes so I am not sure about that “can not duplicate” thing.

 

[willentrekin]

Something like iTunes Match or Amazon Music? I pay $25 for the former and I think I maintain a cloud-based library of every file I've had in my music library, regardless of its source.

I say "I think" mainly because it appears that way but I mainly find myself listening to Apple Music and Spotify recently, anyway, so mileage most likely varies. I've never found I've "lost" a file, though. To be fair, I also have a hard drive with the whole library but I barely use it.

That might be another option: buy a huge (in memory, not in size) hard drive you can plug into your router?

Might be redundant, but I feel like there's no such thing when it comes to backing up data. The more redundant the better.

 

[iGobbleoff]

Copy library to externa hard drive
Plug drive into new computer
Copy to the new computer OR point iTunes on the new computer to the hard drive

 

[Newtons Apple]

So Apple does not care if I copy music from one computer to another even if I did not have the original CD's?

 

[mattguy10]

So Apple does not care if I copy music from one computer to another even if I did not have the original CD's?

No. You should be just fine. Give it a go