Library
Recently my brother moved from a PC to a Mac and needed to move his sizeable iTunes collection with him, taking all the play counts, ratings and so forth. There are software tools that will make this easy for you and searching online I found a few guides as well, but none of them seemed to be as straightforward as you would think. So instead after a little experimentation I present this, my how to move itunes library between computers guide. This has been tested both from PC to Mac as well as from Mac to PC.
Basically the key to this is simply the iTunes Music Library.xml file, which you can find by simply searching your computer (I could try and describe where it is, but it’s going to depend on your setup). Alternatively you can create a new XML file by choosing the File/Export Library option from within iTunes. This XML file contains details on every track within your library, including it’s location on your computer. Open it up in a text editor to take a look and you’ll easily be able to spot the detail about each track, including the path to the file. Without doubt the simplest way to move your library between computers is simply to copy all your music from one machine to another and then search and replace this file to replace the old path to your music with your new one.
For example, I had to replace /Users/richard/Music/ with d:/music/. This can be done easily from within a text editor on either platform, although be warned that this is can be a big file depending on the size of your library and something like Notepad may choke a bit. Once you’ve done this, simply goto the File/Import option within iTunes on your new machine and select the file to import, and watch how all your song information fills back in again. And since the file contained all the correct path information, they’ll all be ready to play.
