Music playlists

Press and hold down option as you launch Music, select choose library, browse to and open the .itl file from your previous computer, choose a location to save the converted Music Library.musiclibrary file. If your music is in the same location as it was previously it should all just work. Otherwise read on...

The "missing file" issue with exclamation marks happens if the file is no longer where iTunes or Music expects to find it. Possible causes are that you or some third party tool has moved, renamed or deleted the file, one of its parent folders, the drive it lives on has had a name change, or you've moved a non-portable library to a different path (see Make a split library portable for details). It is also possible that iTunes or Music have changed from expecting the files to be in the pre-iTunes 9 layout to post-iTunes 9 layout, or vice-versa, and so is looking in slightly the wrong place, or that you've been too aggressive when deleting duplicates at some point.

Select a track with an exclamation mark, use Cmd-I to get Song Info, then click No when asked to try to locate the track. Look on the file tab for the location the library thinks the file should be. Now take a look around your hard drives. Hopefully you can locate the track in question. If a section of your library has simply been moved, a folder renamed, or a drive label has changed, it should be possible to reverse the actions. If the difference between the two paths is an additional Music folder in one path then this is a layout issue. I can explain further if that is the case. If everything is where it is supposed to be try Repair security permissions for iTunes for Mac - Apple Community.

In some cases the library may be able to repair itself if you go through the same steps with Get Info, or when playing a track, but this time click Locate and browse to the lost track. It may then offer to attempt to automatically fix other broken links. Although it says something like "use the same location" I think it expects to find the tracks in the same artist & album layout they were in previously, with one systematic change to the path.

If you want me to try to provide specific advice please post back the following details:

1. The location of the media folder under iTunes|Music > Preferences > Advanced
2. The location of a sample missing track shown under Song Info > File > Location that begins file://
3. The true path to the file whose details you gave in 2

See also FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community.

tt2

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for general background. Neither iTunes nor Music automatically eliminate tracks that cannot be found, so if you delete the underlying files you get broken links in the library. And any playlist memberships that were imported from the .itl files would be attached to the tracks with broken links rather than the new imports. Once you restored the media folder as it was before and converted the .itl file perhaps you can give me the three bits of information asked for at the end of my first post and I may be able to guide you best as to what to do next.

tt2

Did you just convert the .itl, or did you import anything after that?

See Duplicate songs in iTunes/Music - Apple Community.

tt2

You're welcome. 🙂

And don't worry, everything after the first paragraph was copied and pasted from a previous answer.

tt2