iTunes and Ventura, iTunes not allowing me to copy and paste music stored on external hard drive to an external folder; download arrow not working

You are running Ventura. The app is called Music. If content that should be stored locally becomes cloudy this usually indicates that your library has been corrupted and silently replaced with a new empty copy. This library will include all of your unhidden purchase history in the cloud, so the damage may not be immediately apparent if the bulk of your library is purchases. Ideally you would have a backup of your Music Library.musiclibrary database in Time Machine or similar such that you could restore the database to a point in time that predates the corruption. Or you can simply import all of your locally stored files to rebuild the library, but that still leaves you with lost ratings, play counts, playlists, date added details, etc.

If you don't have Time Machine set up already, I suggest you buy another external drive and get started. Take a look inside the Music Library.musiclibrary package. There may potentially be a recent .tmp file in there that holds a more complete version of your library. See Empty/corrupt iTunes/Music library after upgrade/crash - Apple Community for some background. In normal operation a single .tmp file flits in and out of existence as the library is updated.

tt2

I've not updated to Ventura yet but I've been completely unsuccessful using Monterey, as many have. I'm hoping Ventura will work.

My problem may be a little different. My current iTunes library is on an 5 Tb HD attached to a mini running Mojave. I back it up to another 5Tb drive using SD! It is NOT organized. My iTunes/iTunes Media directory has two key directories, Music and Pure Vinyl. Both are subdivided by artist/album/tune.

The tracks in Music are almost all CD or digital downloads, usually in the m4a format, which is Apple MPEG-4 audio. Most of the downloads are 96kHz.

When I decided Channel D might never update its software to run on the latest computers I converted all my Pure Vinyl tracks to 96kHz m4a files.

The iTunes .itl file properly references everything.

I gave up on Monterrey, so now, what should I try when I upgrade to Ventura? One question is do I have to ORGANIZE my library or can I leave it as is?

That's good to know. Now the next question is whether or not Ventura will work? Monterey doesn't.

Unfortunately I don't know anybody running anything prior to Monterey. I understand that does work.

As noted, .itl conversion to .musiclibrary should work on Ventura. It has in my testing and as reported by other users. If you're currently running Monterey and cannot convert the library then it is possible (media not required) in Catalina or Big Sur. I have a Mac mini running Catalina and have converted a number of libraries for people remotely. Email the .itl file, or a link to a copy in a cloud drive, and I will convert and return. You can find details in the bio of my profile here.

tt2

Thanks. I'm glad Ventura is known to work, but I'm still replacing my Pure Music bookmarks with m4a track files. So far I've completed about 1000 albums and have another 450 to go. At that point I have three options: 1) send my .itl file to you; 2) Upgrade Mojave to Big Sur on my mini; 3) Upgrade Monterey to Ventura on my MBP. Apple just released 13.2, which ought to be safe, and 13.3 may be available by the time I'm ready so I'll probably go that way.

When I started getting error messages like that my external HD was failing. I’m glad for your post as I need to get all my iTunes content off an old computer. Your post gives good directions! When I was struggling with the error messages I found a YouTube on repairing permissions. Might help you. It’s a quick process.

Glad to hear that you've got things working. And thanks for sharing that exFAT probably isn't an ideal location for Music's media library.

tt2

You can keep the media in its current layout. Music in Ventura should be able to convert the .itl database to the .musiclibrary format.

tt2

You're welcome.

tt2