Music from iMac to Macbook Air

[mnilan]

Folks:
I see no iTunes forums or discussions and iTunes help is anything but helpful...

I am going on a trip with my MacBook Air. My iMac will stay at home and will be shut down. How do I get my music from my iMac to my MacBook Air? Can I reinitialize my MacBook to the same iTunes account? Anybody got a 50 GB dumb drive I can borrow? I can't figure out how to get access to my music from the MacBook Air...

Thanks.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

If you don't have an external storage device, as it seems, even for backup purposes, you could use file sharing and copy the iTunes Music folder onto your MBA:
Mac 101: File Sharing

 

[MrHyde85]

iTunes match? Would be a good bet for having the music on demand and streaming. I use it that way for my macbook pro as my library is stored on my Mini.

 

[mnilan]

If you don't have an external storage device, as it seems, even for backup purposes, you could use file sharing and copy the iTunes Music folder onto your MBA:
Mac 101: File Sharing

simsaladimbamba:
Thanks for the link. Turning on the sharing allows me to see the iMac iTunes file on my MacBook but I can't copy it. When I drag the iTunes file from the iMac, it turns into an alias file that is empty...

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iTunes match? Would be a good bet for having the music on demand and streaming. I use it that way for my macbook pro as my library is stored on my Mini.

Mr Hyde:
I have some serious questions about iTunes Match at this point. I agree that ideally one would think this would be the solution. However, it is not clear what happens with full resolution files, i.e., ALAC files that are higher resolution than iTunes Match can handle. Someday iTunes Match may be the solution but as far as I can tell, today is not the day... Thanks for the suggestion however.
Mike

 

[GGJstudios]

I am going on a trip with my MacBook Air. My iMac will stay at home and will be shut down. How do I get my music from my iMac to my MacBook Air? Can I reinitialize my MacBook to the same iTunes account? Anybody got a 50 GB dumb drive I can borrow? I can't figure out how to get access to my music from the MacBook Air...

There are a few approaches. One is to activate Home Sharing and transfer what music you want, although that may be slower. It depends on how much music is involved. Another is to use file sharing, as simsaladimbamba suggested.

Understanding Home Sharing
iTunes: Setting up Home Sharing on your computer

 

[mnilan]

Folks:
I am sharing. The "iTunes Music" file seems to be the largest and will take about 2 hours over my 802.11n wireless network. I am just going to copy the "Album Artwork" and all the iTunes files over and see what happens.

Thanks for helping guys.
Mike

 

[mnilan]

Not yet...

Well, after hours of copying, I get this error message when trying to play a song:

"The song _____________ could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"

Options are "Cancel" and "Locate."

Locate goes back to the old version (128 kbps) file instead of the ALAC file I spent hours copying over...

Any insight or advice?
Thanks,
Mike

 

[KylePowers]

I'd just go to Music -> iTunes -> iTunes Media -> Music and copy all those files onto the MBA, then add them into iTunes to start a new library. This is probably the most noobish way to go about it though... and would be the first thing I'd try haha

If I were going to do that, I'd enable File Sharing on the MBA, go into Finder on the iMac, look to the left where it says Shared, click on the MBA, connect using login credentials, navigate to the MBA's Music folder (or wherever you'd want to save the music), and just copy+paste

It's a lot of data to transfer wirelessly though. Probably would be easier if you used an external hard drive or ethernet cord (assuming you had a USB to ethernet adapter for your MBA)... or even a Thunderbolt cable would probably work best.

 

[mnilan]

I'd just go to Music -> iTunes -> iTunes Media -> Music and copy all those files onto the MBA, then add them into iTunes to start a new library. This is probably the most noobish way to go about it though... and would be the first thing I'd try haha

If I were going to do that, I'd enable File Sharing on the MBA, go into Finder on the iMac, look to the left where it says Shared, click on the MBA, connect using login credentials, navigate to the MBA's Music folder (or wherever you'd want to save the music), and just copy+paste

It's a lot of data to transfer wirelessly though. Probably would be easier if you used an external hard drive or ethernet cord (assuming you had a USB to ethernet adapter for your MBA)... or even a Thunderbolt cable would probably work best.

Kyle:
This is what I did. And the result is described in the message above yours...
Mike