Music/iTunes no longer connects to my local library.

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1BirchView Author

Level 1

23 points

Music/iTunes no longer connects to my local library.

It only shows one song i purchased form Apple music several years ago.

I do not use the cloud nor Apple music. 98% is music loaded locally on my iMac.

I had started Music app (1.1.6.37) using the <option> key to create a new test library.

But when I tried going back to my original library , it had none of my songs.

Preferences | files shows ../Music/iTunes/iTunes Media file, which seems correct

I also disable the Apple music

Finder shows that location has 62G of music and i can see some of the songs.

Trying to choose a library does not seem to work. Using <option> and "Choose Library" option

- if I select iTunes/iTunes Media then select the (red) Choose option, it just goes further into the structure

and I see nothing suitable to select, so have to quit

- if i select Music/Music Library.musiclibrary it starts up but only with the one song

However the preferences | files still shows ../Music/iTunes/iTunes Media so not sure if it is reliable

Tried going into Time machine to reload the Music folder, but did not change anything

Tried copying Music folder from a recent backup, but again no change

So it seems as if something is preventing Music from seeing its library (whatever it is)

MacOS 11.6.2, music 1.1.6.37, on Late 2014 iMac

iMac 27″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Dec 20, 2021 11:27 AM

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Answer 1

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1BirchView Author

Level 1

23 points

Dec 22, 2021 11:46 AM in response to turingtest2

Finally I have gotten most of the music back.

The short answer is delete the music/music files, <option> start music app, then chose the iTunes Library.itl file

This seems to initiate a repopulating process. Choosing Itunes/iTunesMedia did nothing, showing only the 1 recent purchase.

The actual process was messier. The info in the " Empty/corrupt iTunes/M...." reference did not work for me. I finally restarted the mac in a bootable backup (Catalina) of a month ago, was was able to see all of the songs. So I copied the entire Itunes folder, restarted the mac, trashed the current music folder, and copied in the old structure from the thumb drive. I assumed that would work.

So chose the iTunes Library.itl to rebuild. It created the Music folders with 90% of the music, but did not have songs from prior 18 months.

I then looked at the xml files and noticed one had references to no longer existing user, and the other had references to no longer existing external hard drive. But all of those songs had been rebuilt so must have been in the database structure already. I then edited both files and pointed it to my current user. And repeated the process, but same result - no songs from prior 18 months. So I am not sure what the xml files do once the music has been loaded.

Finally rebooted back into the Catalina backup and copy/moved the recent songs into the thumbdrive. Rebooted back tp 11.2 and imported the missing songs. For some reason a few of then songs did not copy across but whatever.

So I shall not try to create another test music library

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