ITunes Won’t Organise Songs into Albums

Hi there.

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for general background on moving the library and migrating to Apple Music. It should work much the same as iTunes as far as music is concerned. There are changes for audiobooks, podcasts, and video content.

That said I've seen a number of posts lately where Monterey fails to correctly convert an iTunes Library.itl database and just sits there with a spinning busy icon. There seem to be two possible workarounds, copy the .itl file to Big Sur or Catalina and convert it there (the media folder is not required) then move the database to Monterey and place it above the media folder, or if you have an iTunes Library.xml file you can import that into an empty Music library with File > Library > Import Playlist... as long as the media files are at the paths listed in the XML file. This method loses date added details.

If you don't have the XML file or access to Catalina or Big Sur I could convert the library for you. I've done a number over the last few weeks. You can send me a link to your .itl file on a cloud service such as iCloud Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. I would convert the library to the .musiclibrary format and post back a link in the same way. You'll find my email address in my profile here.

This issue seems to be fixed in Ventura, so another approach would be another upgrade, assuming suitable hardware.

tt2

If iTunes or Music shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

• For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
• For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes/Music between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.

* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.

Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.

One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2

Sorry, I thought your tracks weren't linking up as albums properly in iTunes, so the stuff about common album title and album artist should have been relevant, but I realize now the issue is that your conversion program isn't automatically adding content to iTunes. I'm not familiar with that software, but it might be possible to get it to save its output to the Automatically Add to iTunes folder inside your media folder. Might be best done when iTunes isn't running. Then iTunes should add the content to the library next time you run it.

tt2

Hello Turingtest2,

I am piggy backing onto this thread in the hope that you will see my itunes problem. I did post it in the forum but no one has responded to me. I followed your instructions from a response to the same issue someone else had but I am failing miserably. The only items from itunes that have moved over to Music is purchased items but all music I have downloaded from my CD's, playlists and movies did not.

I am unsure whether and how to change the name of the itunes files to move over to music. I am crossing my fingers hoping you will see this and can help me please. Below is a copy of the question I posted in the forum.

Hello,

since a Macbook Air and software upgrade to Monterey my itunes playlist doesn't show up in Music.

I followed instructions left here by a community member whereby I open Music with the option key > select choose > select itunes.itl and type in the save as ~/Music/Music and this is where I get stuck.

When I type in ~/Music/Music I am prompted to choose one of two file paths - users>my name music music or users>my name music audio music apps.

When I select music music it simply adds another '/' to the file name.

When I select music audio music apps it then gives me an array of options to choose, if I press one and enter it takes me back to the save option and renames it back to Music 1.

Clearly I have no idea what I am doing and nervous I will end up loosing my playlists altogether.

I did think of trying to find the itunes.itl file with finder and renaming it first but I can't find that option without doing the 'option and open music'

Could someone please explain what part I am doing wrong so that I can retrieve my playlists and put them in Music?

thanks so much in advance.