Moving/upgrading iTunes music & library

[cleo]

I recently bought a MBP, and I'm having some trouble setting up iTunes. Every other time I'd gotten a new Mac, I'd copied my entire Music folder to the new one without much attention paid to where the Library path officially pointed to; as a result, I had music all over the place:

~/Music/
~/Music/iTunes/
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/

and so on. So today I hooked my MBP up to my old mini using Target Disk Mode, and I methodically "Add[ed] to Library" all of my music, so that it all now resides in one place on the MBP.

The problem is the actual Library.xml file. Without moving the one that was being used on the mini, I don't have my ratings, playlists, etc. (Ratings being most important... it's a 30GB music collection, and nearly everything is rated.) But when I tried to export/import the library, it was looking for files in places they no longer exist, on account of my restructuring. So... what do I do? Is there a way to reorganize my music on the old machine, keeping the .xml intact, and then move everything? What would you recommend?

 

[Mechcozmo]

So... what do I do? Is there a way to reorganize my music on the old machine, keeping the .xml intact, and then move everything? What would you recommend?

Tell iTunes to consolidate the Library. Here's a hint on how to do so: Linkety

 

[swiftaw]

Ok, here's what you should do.

On your old machine, consolidate your library so that iTunes moves all the music to the proper locations.

Then, copy your entire music folder over to your new machine, and then launch iTunes.

 

[cleo]

Brilliant! Thanks!