grtz,
Chevy (Holland)

As a note; my ipod Touch recognized this as the original syncing library, which made this move much easier.

What did work was copying the entire music folder from the old comp to the new comp (with an external drive transfer cable), and then copying both the library.xml and the library Itunes library.itl files as well. It’s worth noting that I had the same platform, same itunes, same directory on both computers though.

As already mentioned, there is a much easier way now. Simply copy the whole iTunes folder from one computer to another, (if your mp3s are located elsewhere, copy them over to their new location as well.). Make sure the old mp3 location is not available to the new iTunes install anymore (dismount external drive, network drive, etc.). Finally try to play one of your files. iTunes will not be able to play it but will ask you if you’d like to locate it. Navigate to the file. iTunes will then ask if you’d like to locate more files in that location, say yes and wait for a VERY LONG TIME as your whole database is updated to the new location. Easy and effective!

I now have to click on the song, locate it, then “find files” for the rest, which can take forever when you have 35 GB of data, waiting for each album art to refresh.

Does anyone have a solution to this? Both my iTunes folder are named just iTunes, no different while my laptop, all the media files are located on the D drive while my parents’ PC, they’re all on the iTunes Media folder. Does this have to do with it? Before that update in June, this never was a problem so something obviously changed since!

But as has been said, it’s actually far easier (& better) to just move the files first, then try to play one and let iTunes find it – and then let it automatically find the rest (although that can take a while if you have a large library, and there’s no visual feedback it’s happening until it completes).

Another tip – if you store your iTunes folder (the one containing the ITL and XML files) in your Windows ‘My Music’ folder, and keep all your external files there too, then you can just move the entire folder and iTunes automatically finds the library. This is because it’s a ‘special’ folder, so if the location changes, programs automatically find it in the new location. It may still need to find the tracks again though (as above).

I don’t use iTunes to manage my media files (all audio – a large CD collection, ripped to MP3). For whatever reason, iTunes wouln’t use the .xml file to rebuild the .itl database – it created a blank one (with no music in it) instead.

The fix (from Googling around more), and once I had all the MP3 places on a local drive on my new machine) was to edit the xml file so that each file location of the .MP3 files was correct. Each song entry has an element something like this:
Locationfile://localhost/D:/Music/5%20Man%20Electrical%20Band-%20I’m%20A%20Stranger%20Here.mp3

Once all the file locations are correct, you can then use:
File->LIbrary->Import Playlist
naming the xml file as the playlist.
iTunes will crunch away for a considerable length of time, but eventually, it’ll put your song list, including ratings and play numbers, into the music library.

I was just about to give up on being able to keep ratings and play numbers (after all, I could have imported all the MP3s from scratch) when I found this trick. YMMV.

Thanks a lot !!!!

If your music files are stored in the default location—the “iTunes Music” folder inside the “iTunes” folder in your user account’s Music folder—it’s silly easy to do. (If your music files are stored elsewhere it’s still easy; just needs an extra step or two. If that’s the case, post again with the location of your music files.)
1) Make a copy of the PC’s “iTunes Library.itl” file (located in the “iTunes” folder)
2) On the Mac, quit iTunes. Rename the Mac’s “iTunes Library” file to “XiTunes Library”; now copy in the PC’s “iTunes Library.itl” file.
3) That’s it—the Mac’s library is now the same as the PC’s. When you’re satisfied with the results, trash the “XiTune Library” file. (If you like, the Mac’s “iTunes Library.itl” can be renamed to “iTunes Library”.)

Your Howto saved me hours!

Worked Perfectly

Thanks!

Tried the directions at the top first and every time iTunes was launched it showed a blank library, it didn’t even prompt to rebuild the library using the new paths in the XML file with the corrupted ITL File, it simply rebuilt the library files in the C: location even though I pointed them to my X: before quitting iTunes and starting the move process. Had to use Frogo’s directions.

Version was 10.3.1.55 BTW

I started off following the instructions, thought tweaking a bit while I went along. I moved my entire iTunes Music folder over onto my eternal hard drive, and then moved it over from there onto my new MacBook Pro, replacing the current iTunes Music folder completely (as there was nothing in it, it didn’t matter, of course).

At this point, I followed the instructions in this tutorial and copied the “iTunes Music Library.xml” from my old computer onto my new one, replacing the current file. I corrupted the “iTunes Library” file as instructed. I did NOT have to do any find and replace, I realized, because, as a creature of habit, I have the same username/login on my new computer as my old one – even if I did find and replace, it would end up exactly the same, as the file path on my new computer is exactly as that on my old. So I then opened up iTunes and let it do its thing.

As expected, everything was in the right Date Added order, but the dates were all today and I was still unsatisfied, because like some of the other commenters, timeframe is important to me when browsing my music library. I read through the comments and got an idea….. Since my username is the same, and the file path is the same, why couldn’t I simply copy the “iTunes Library” (not the .xml, the other one) over from my old computer to my new one? Shouldn’t everything then be exactly the same?

So I shut down iTunes, and did exactly that. I copied the “iTunes Library” file from the old computer to the new one, replacing the current file, and what do you know? – IT WORKED!!!! Everything is in perfect order, original Date Added dates, like an exact clone. So, it turns out that if you are moving from a Mac to a Mac and use the same username on your new machine as your old, you CAN transfer everything and maintain every single last bit of data.

I am amazed and SO HAPPY!!!!! Thank you to the OP and commenters for getting me to this conclusion. How cool is it that this tutorial is still relevant and super useful 5 years later?!

iTunes 10.2.1.1
XP PC
Old path, D:MP3 (my songs are stored here)
New path, M:MP3

Part 1: Copy songs to new location
1) Copy folder D:MP3 to M:MP3
2) To make sure iTunes using new location, I rename old path to D:MP3a so iTunes can’t find it
3) Open iTunes and play a song. iTunes can’t find it and prompt you to locate the song. Locate this song in new path.
4) Then iTunes asks you “Would you like iTunes to use the location of “Song_name_you_play” to find other missing files in your library?” Click “Find Files”. It takes a while to update xml path.
5) You might see this “iTunes was able to find x of y missing files. Files that could not be found are marked with a ”!””

Library, C:Documents and SettingsUser_nameMy DocumentsMy MusiciTunes

Part 2: Copy library to new location
1) Back up iTunes library folder
2) Close iTunes
3) Copy whole My MusiciTunes folder to new location. Retain folder structure
4) To make sure iTunes using new library location, I rename old path to My MusiciTunesx so iTunes can’t find it
5) Windows: Shift + iTunes to open. iTunes can’t find library folder and prompts you to locate library
6) Locate new iTunes folder which has new path in xml from Part 1

That’s it