Does your iTunes keep crashing or freezing, preventing you from listening to your favorite music? Perhaps there is something wrong with the program library, which may have become corrupted. How do you say? Did you also have this suspicion but do not know how to solve the problem? Don’t worry: if you want, I’m here to give you a hand.
In my opinion, you could try to solve the malfunctions you are experiencing in iTunes by restoring the program library: an operation that requires no more than a few clicks and can be effectively put into practice both on Windows and on macOS, where, however, starting from macOS 10.15 Catalina, iTunes has been replaced by the Music application (and the TV and Podcast applications).
But now let’s not talk too much about it and let’s take action: if you want to know more about the topic and, above all, you want to find out how to recreate the iTunes library , read the instructions below and try to put them into practice. In this way, you will restore your iTunes library without losing any of your songs and multimedia contents. I wish you a good read and I wish you a big good luck for everything!
Index
- Preliminary operations
- How to create new iTunes library
- For more information
Preliminary operations
Before going into the detail of the guide and explaining how to recreate the iTunes library , there are some preliminary operations that I highly recommend you do.
First of all, if you are still able to start iTunes correctly, I suggest you download all the multimedia contents you have purchased with your account and consolidate your library : by doing so, you will be sure to enclose all the contents in the iTunes library. that you have personally added to the program, plus the ones you have purchased through the iTunes Store, enclosing them all in the same path.
To download the media content that you purchased with your Apple ID , open iTunes (or the Music application , if you are using macOS 10.15 Catalina or later) and, if necessary, log into the program: to do this, go to the Account> Login menu (at the top) and enter your Apple ID credentials .
Once this is done, choose the type of content to view (eg Music ), using the drop-down menu located at the top left, and go to the Account> Purchases menu (always at the top), to view the list of content purchased on the iTunes Store . Now, to download it to your computer, click on the cloud icon corresponding to each content.
Once you have downloaded all the items purchased from the iTunes Store, you are ready to perform the consolidation of the iTunes library , which consists of storing all the contents in the same location, in order to facilitate their backup and restore. Go, therefore, in the File menu > Library> Organize iTunes / Music library (at the top), check the Consolidate file box in the window that opens and click OK , to start consolidating the library.
Once this is done, you can create a backup of the folder with the iTunes library , which should be in the Music path on both Windows and macOS.
To know the exact location of the iTunes library (or the Music application) on your computer, start iTunes / Music, go to the Edit> Preferences menu (or iTunes> Preferences or Music> Preferences on macOS), select the Advanced tab in the window that opens and checks the path indicated in the box located under the heading iTunes Media folder location .
Once you have located the iTunes folder, make a backup by copying it , by simple copy-and-paste, to an external hard drive or a fairly large USB stick .
How to create new iTunes library
You are now ready to take action and find out, in practice, how to recreate your iTunes library . Depending on what your needs are, you can choose whether to create a new library and repopulate it with the content of your interest or to import an existing library that you had backed up.
In any case, the first step you need to take is to completely close iTunes (or the Music application, on macOS 10.15 Catalina and later) and restart the software by holding down the Shift key on your keyboard (which would be the one to capitalize once. ), which becomes the alt key if you are using a Mac.
If you did everything right, a window with three buttons should appear: Exit , to leave the iTunes library as it is and close the window; Choose a library , to import an existing library into iTunes and use it as a new library of the program, or Create Library , to create a new empty library and later populate it with your favorite contents.
If you previously had problems with iTunes and / or its library, I strongly recommend that you choose the Create library option and start from scratch: in this case, you will be asked to name the library and choose the folder in which to save it. To confirm everything, click on the Save button .
Now you have a “clean” library to start from, in which to add all the contents of your interest: to do this, just go to the File menu > Add file to library (or Add folder to library ), at the top, and select the files to import (e.g. backups of songs and other media files you previously saved).
If any of the steps are not clear to you, feel free to consult my guide on how to add songs to iTunes : inside you will find all the information you need.
If, on the other hand, you prefer to restore a previously saved library, make sure you have copied the iTunes folder related to it to the path where you want the new iTunes library to be saved (you can also rename the folder if you want), start iTunes / Music by holding down the Shift / alt key on the keyboard and clicking on the Choose a library button in the window that appears on the screen.
At this point, through the new window that is proposed to you, go to the path of the library to restore, double-click on the iTunes Library.itl file contained in it and, within a few seconds, the game should be done.
iTunes will use the selected library as the new default library: this means that it will automatically import all the contents of the latter and will add to it the new multimedia contents that you insert in the program. It was a lot easier than you thought, wasn’t it?
For more information
If, despite my directions, you still haven’t managed to recreate your iTunes library or, anyway, you still have doubts about this procedure, visit Apple’s official support page on how to backup and restore your iTunes library on PC .
In the unfortunate event that even this does not help you, you can try to contact Apple directly, putting into practice the instructions I gave you in my tutorial dedicated to the subject. Good luck!
