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Recently I had to copy my music library on Big Sur to Windows10. It seems iTunes on Win10 only supports the import of .itl and .xml so it doesn't go well:

  1. Big Sur uses a .musiclibrary instead of .itl, so I can't export/import the library via .itl file;
  2. I've exported .xml on Big Sur and imported it on Win10. iTunes on Win10 says “some songs in the playlist were not imported because they could not be found”. Then nearly all songs got imported but all of them CAN'T be played, they all have a radio icon on the left.

And their "Kind" are Internet Audio Stream or MPEG Audio Stream instead of MPEG Audio File enter image description here

I can open WindowsExplorer and just double click the mp3 file to play any song on this drive using iTunes, so it's not the drive/file access problem.

And I've tried to rename the folder name to broke the link, but suprisingly I can still open the property window without seeing any warning

  1. I've tried to open home sharing on Big Sur and access it on Win10, but the amount of songs are 1000 less than in the .xml and the "Import" button is greyed out;
  2. iCloud? Any 3rd-party backup software that supports both Big Sur and Win10?

Just wonder if anyone can help me with this. Thanks in advance!

zjs820
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  • Windows uses backslash… but I'm sure since the 'broken itl trick stopped working, that might be the least of your issues. iTunes no longer imports to the itl from the xml, the xml is merely a 'backup' for 3rd party apps that still need it. Have a quick look at these old answers for how it used to work… https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/230208/85275 https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/293768/85275 & https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/163601/85275 I haven't done this in a long time, but the 'post 12.3 method' might still work. – Tetsujin Jun 17 '21 at 11:53
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    @Tetsujin Thanks for sharing! I've overcome the import .xml step now, please see my updated question. – zjs820 Jun 17 '21 at 14:19
  • Did you fix your paths? /MacHD/Users/Me/Music/ becomes C:\Users\me\Music You can't just copy the locations, they don't map. – Tetsujin Jun 17 '21 at 15:09
  • @Tetsujin Oh my, I missed your first comment, how can I replace all "/"s with backslash, but only in file locations? – zjs820 Jun 17 '21 at 16:07
  • Search & replace in something like BBEdit; it's in one of those links, I think [old links may use Text Wrangler - same app different name, freeware for simple version] – Tetsujin Jun 17 '21 at 16:09
  • @Tetsujin I've replaced some of them perfectly and they still have that icon and can't be played, but a progress bar starts to pop up endlessly. I can see in "Song Info"-"File" tab-"Kind" it's "MPEG Audio Stream" or "Internet Audio Stream" instead of "MPEG Audio File", I guess "Audio Stream" is what the radio icon means. – zjs820 Jun 18 '21 at 06:30
  • Sorry, some of the new structures are outside my experience. I used to do this a lot, but probably back in El Capitan/Win7 days when I had 2 iTunes instances both reliant on the same physical remote data repository [one Mac, one Win, with the actual music on a server], so I got it down pretty tight. It's all changed a lot since then & I don't have easy access to Big Sur or a PC I can properly test it against, I'm afraid. Kind should be MPEG [or AAC] Audio File, which I just checked is also the value in the xml file. – Tetsujin Jun 18 '21 at 06:33

1 Answers1

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Here's what finally worked:

  1. Press Alt + open iTunes, select the old backup .itl before upgrading from Mojave to Big Sur half a year ago. So I can have all missing entries;
  2. Copy all music that I have to local drive (I just don't know why iTunes doesn't recognize .xml with directories of external drive);
  3. Export .xml from Music in Big Sur, replace all directories with new ones on local drive, then import to iTunes in Win10;
  4. Use DeDuper (http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/scripts.asp by Steve MacGuire) to remove all duplicate entries.

If you have no missing files at all, you can also use the home sharing to import.

zjs820
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