Status: Dec 2020 - Confirmed that Big Sur uses the same Media file locations

1. Itunes Macos Big Sur Download
2. Download Itunes Free

Apple decided to abandon iTunes with its Catalina macOS release. In Catalina the iTunes media swiss army knife has been replaced with three seperate applications and some functions that are now 'hidden' in sharing.

Dec 01, 2019 Status: Dec 2020 - Confirmed that Big Sur uses the same Media file locations Apple decided to abandon iTunes with its Catalina macOS release. In Catalina the iTunes media swiss army knife has been replaced with three seperate applications and some functions that are now 'hidden' in sharing. Download Apple iTunes for Mac - iTunes is a free application for Mac and PC. It plays all your digital music and video. It syncs content to your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV. If you're using OS X El Capitan v10.11.5 or later and your App Store preferences or Software Update preferences are set to download new updates when available, macOS Big Sur will download conveniently in the background, making it even easier to upgrade. A notification will inform you when macOS Big Sur is ready to be installed. Click Install to.

The impact is that upgrading to Catalina changes quite a lot of macOS media handling. This is likely to be problematic, for many Mac users, as media content is one of the most valuable things on a well used Mac.

This note provides guideance as to where the various media files are stored and what you can do to make things managable.

With iTunes all your media was contained within:

• ~/Music/iTunes (by default)

Sitting under this you had:

• 'iTunes Music' or 'iTunes Media' - folder (depending on how old your library is) where your various media files were kept
• 'iTunes Music Library.xml' - the old library index file
• 'iTunes Library.itl' - the new library index file

If you have set iTunes to manage your library then all your media files will be sitting under this directory structure, including: Music, Movies, TV & Podcasts

This was nice as you could move the library by just copying/moving the entire directory structure and all was well.

This is no longer the case with Catalina.

With macOS Catalina what was once handled by one big iTunes application is now handled by three big applications and Books ;-) .

• Music - for your music content and music videos
• TV - for your Movies and TV content
• Podcasts - for your podcasts
• Books - for your books which was moved out of iTunes some time ago

Each of these has its own media storage location, but depending on how you started, the actual media content could still be held within your prior iTunes Library (above).

The default locations for media in this new world are:

• ~/Music/Music - for you music files
• ~/Movies/TV - for your movie and tv files
• ~/Library/Group Containers/243LU875E5.groups.com.apple.podcasts/Library/Cache - podcasts are now held in special container and not directly manageable
• ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books - iBooks were moved into a special container sometime ago, again to some surprise and have a habit of disappearing ...

The details for the various apps and storage locations are described in turn.

NOTE: These media file locations are also valid with 'Big Sur'

Music

• ~/Music/Music

Sitting within this you will have:

• Media - folder where media content files are kept
• 'Music Library.musiclibrary' - the new music library catalog file (replacement for 'iTunes Library.itl', but this is really a directory which contains a further set of files including Preferences.plist file)

NOTE: the plist file is a binary files, but you can see contents using the plutil command.

If you had an existing iTunes library then on starting the new Music app, you will be prompted to migrate your library Music. This will load the catalog and set the media location to the existing iTunes media location.

If you want re-consolidate your music and music videos under the new Music library then:

1. Ensure you have a Media directory in ~/Music/Music (i.e. ~/Music/Music/Media)
2. Change Media location via: Music - Preferences - Files to: /Users/<YOU>/Music/Music/Media . Then select - 'Keep Music folder organised' and 'Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library'. You will get prompted to copy files as per preferences, so select 'Yes'.
3. Now in Music - select: 'File - Library - Organise Library...' and when prompted select 'Yes'. It is only now that it will copy all the content from you existing iTunes media folder to the new location.

NOTE: There is a signficant bug in new Music App when it comes to keeping your iTunes cover art. There are many reports of intital migration resulting in lost cover art, and if you have very large iTunes libray then the cover art migration process can take more than a day to complete. I have found that even it you do manage to get the inital migration to Music to process the cover art successfully, if you move your library to different a machine then the cover art will get lost again and fixing is either a programming exercise or a laborious manual process.

See 'Music Cover Art' below for more information.

Music Cover Art

Music cover art is one of the problem areas in moving from iTuness to Music. In iTunes cover art is managed via a special catalog within the iTunes media library. There are a number of different levels of cover art that iTunes and Music manage:

• Indivdiual Media File - such as .mp4 or apple .m4a / .m4p variations. These can have cover art embedded into then using 'meta tags'
• Album - this is a collection of Individual Media Files within a directory/folder. Unlike an individual media files the director/folder does have directly embedded graphics, so instead the cover art graphic that is displayed must be managed as part of the overall library catalog. In the case of iTunes this cover art catalog/cache was held within the iTunes media directory. In Music the catalog is stored in seperate & fixed location.
• Artist - these are the small icon graphics that are displayed in middle panel if you view your library by Artist. Many moons ago these used to be based on Album cover art. Now they are created automatically by iTunes or Music app and there does not appeary to be a way to manually populate this data.

In Music the cover art directory appears to be maintained seperately in:

• ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.APMArtworkAgent/Data/Documents

This container based catalog is obviously not in the same directory tree as ~/Music/Music .

The consequence of this is that if you move your Music directory to another machine, then you will be leaving behind the cover art catalog.

Apple answer to this problem is that any moving of media data from one Mac to another should be done via the Migration Assistant, which is aware of all the various files and locations.

Itunes Macos Big Sur Download

NOTE: Big Sur appears to have address some of the cover art bugs. See my Big Sur update.

TV

• ~/Movies/TV

Sitting within this you will have:

• Media - folder where media content files are kept
• 'TV Library.tvlibrary' - the TV/movie library catalog (again like Music this is a directory which contains the various library catalog files)

The migration from iTunes to Catalina TV is equivalent to that for Music. The migration to TV library occurs when you first run TV app. This generates a new catalog and media files will be left in iTunes folder.

If you want to consolidate into new ~/Movies/TV directory then you will need to follow simillar step to Music above:

1. Ensure you have Media directory in ~/Movies/TV (ie ~/Movies/TV/Media)
2. Change Media location via: TV - Preferences - Files to: /Users/<YOU>/Movies/TV/Media . Select - 'Keep Media folder organised' and 'Copy files to Media folder when adding to library'. You will get prompted to copy files as per preferences, select 'Yes'.
3. Now in TV - select: 'File - Library - Organise Library...' and when prompted select 'Yes'. It is only now that it will copy all the content from you existing iTunes media folder.

NOTE: The Movie / TV content migration seems to work and be less problematic than music one. One reason is that there is no Cover Art. A problem I have seen is that if you have downloaded movies from the iTunes Store, then these now appear twice in your Movie library, one for the downloaded copy and a second one for the iTunes store cloud version. If you delete the downloaded version from your library and then re-download the file, this fixes the problem. If you have a large number of Movies then this will result in a lot of very large downloads.

Podcasts

Be aware that the Podcasts app, will want to automatically delete played podcasts and if you have old podcast that are no longer available then this will result in lost podcasts. So ensure you change your Preferences to stop auto deletion of played podcasts.

I have sucessfully moved Podcasts from one machine to another by copying the entire directory tree and contents:

Why bother and some good things & bad things

All this moving media content around is a nuisance, so why bother. The reason is that media files take up lot of storage space and many people move them to external storage for both more storage, but also to provide greater data security. Having a large media store on a single disk has high risk of failure, in fact it is guaranteed to fail eventually.

With iTunes this was pretty easy to do as you could simply move/copy the entire iTunes directory to an alternate location and then restart iTunes holding the 'Option' key and select the new location.

When you have the catalog and media content in different directories and music and music and movies managed seperately this is not possible. So the easiest way is to accept the Catalina change and move to two seperate consolidated directories.

Having seperate library for Music and Movies means you have some additional flexibility in the files location.

I have also found that when consolidating under the new directories that the new APFS file system must be using some type of hard linking as my 700GB existing media library, did not grow to double the size on consolidation.

Once I had consolidated my content into each of the seperate directories, Movie and Podcasts appear to be readily movable, but music is problematic due Cover art bugs. On consolidating to new location I was able to remove the old iTunes directory, to help recover disk space.

This blog posting was driven by desperation, as recently our family media Mac mini running Catalina crashed and I had to go to some substantial lengths to get back all the media content on it.

The recovery process meant peeling off the details of changes that have occured to iTunes and its storage solution. The documentation for Catalina was very limited and less detailed than what was previously available on iTunes.

To validate and test this I have used a combination of repaired Mac, a KVM virtual machine based on Time Machine backup of dead Mac and a MacBook Pro laptop, so process of recovery of Catalina based media required quite a lot time, 3 Macs and lots of storage to test various alternate recovery techniques.

References & Links:

Reading and Modifying OS X plists - very old blog on plists tools

Move or Manage the Music, Apple TV and Podcasts Libraries - Rocket Yard (MacSales) partial information on how to manage Catalina media libraries

What happened to iTunes ? - Apple's answers to the surprise they gave us ...

Big Sur - does this change things, fix things or it is the same. I have done some initial testing and documented finding in my 'Big Sur' update

Low Res Image (based on Arcade Fire - Funeral) - via SoundCloud - Out of Tune

Apple showcased its new operating system in June of 2020. macOS Big Sur no longer continues the classic OS X series (macOS 10...and forth) and this promises some solid changes. Putting all the hype aside, we’ll explain how you can test the new macOS and be the first among your friends who’s conquered the Big Sur.

So, how to download macOS Big Sur update?

macOS Big Sur was released on November 13, 2020 after a series of beta versions. But it doesn't mean the Final version is free from errors. Some security holes will like be found and patched in due time.
A few ideas before you install Big Sur download

• If possible, install on a separate drive/partition.
• Make sure you have at least 30-50 GB of free space.
• Make a bootable Catalina install so you can always go back.
  

1. Clean up your drive and back it up

A clean new install is always a safe choice. It’s often recommended that you free your startup drive from outdated cache files and debris from old apps. You can clean your Mac to make sure that these redundant items don’t stand in the way of your fresh new macOS.

To clean your hard drive without fuss, run a cleaning utility.
For example, you can run CleanMyMac X — this tool is notarized by Apple and is safe.
Download the free version of CleanMyMac X here
Launch it and follow the prompts on the screen.

This step ensures your Mac is free from unseen junk — you can expect to remove a few gigabytes of garbage. The app also checks your drive for viruses as a bonus.

Now, back up your hard drive

Now that your hard drive is sparkling clean, you can prepare the backup option. New macOS releases are prone to crashes, so you’ll need a “save” you can always go back to should things go wrong.

Click on Launchpad > Time Machine

2. Go to Software Updates

Since its public release, macOS Big Sur can be downloaded in a usual way from the Mac App Store. But it's even easier to find it in your Software Updates window in System Preferences.
Go to the System Preferences > Software Updates...
If you see macOS Big Sur there, click Upgrade Now

3. Download Big Sur installer package

You will need to allow this download, after which you’ll be ready to run the macOS Big Sur Installation app. It will appear in your Applications.

Go to your Applications and find the file called 'Install macOS Big Sur'

A few more clicks and checkboxes down the road and you’ll be installing the macOS itself.

macOS Big Sur download takes up around 12 GB of hard disk space.

Compatibility questions

Some Mac models will be left out with this release. This mostly relates to Macs made around 2012. Here is the list of Big-Sur compatible computers:

MacBook (12-inch) — from 2015 and newer.
Mac mini, iMac — from 2014 onwards.
MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro — from 2013 onwards.
iMac Pro — all models.

Cautions and troubleshooting

Free space

Download Itunes Free

As stated above, having enough free space on your drive is crucial. The new Big Sur macOS will be automatically downloading lots of patches, plugins, and other things. So it’s always a question, how much storage you will end up needing.
To free up tons of space without much fuss, grab a free copy of CleanMyMac X by MacPaw. You will probably like this app for Mac maintenance.
Activation Lock

The whole issue with iCloud, iTunes passwords and needing to reset them is every Mac user’s headache. Protect yourself before you download macOS Big Sur installer: Double-check your actual password for Apple services. Or, as another idea, turn off the Activation Lock before Big Sur installation. This requires that you sign in to iCloud.com > Find my Mac and remove your device from your Account.

Installation freeze-ups

macOS Big Sur is still a baby, so, quite often, it will freeze during the installation. For this reason, some people never install new macOS versions until all bugs have been fixed. Don’t abrupt the process and stay patient. Also, ensure that your internet connection is stable during that time. But you have prepared the backup, just in case, right?

What’s there to see in Big Sur

You have probably watched the snippets of Big Sur during WWDC keynote. It’s impressive enough in terms of added features, although admittedly, not as revolutionary as its counterpart, iOS 14. If you decided to follow the above steps and download Big Sur, here’s what you can expect.

The looks
The macOS interface received a much-needed facelift. Windows and toolbars feel larger, and they are more rounded. Many folks agree that the Dark Mode looks much better on Big Sur compared to Catalina. The new Finder looks so weightless and thin!

Control Center

The Control Center is praised by many. A quick pane to manage settings like sound and brightness right at your fingertips is convenient. And while you’re doing all this, you can skip music tracks. By the way, if you ever used CleanMyMac X and its Assistant, you’ll find the new Control Center strikingly familiar. Might there be a coincidence?

Download the free version of this software here. This app is truly a Mac gem that is above any other Mac fixer in terms of design and thoughtfulness of each feature.

Safari update

Craig Federighi boldly states that we’ll see “the biggest Safari update in its history.” There is an instant one-click translator, refreshed tabs, and something for your passwords too. Safari will check your entered passwords for potential password leaks that had happened in the past. In macOS Big Sur Safari takes a hit on Chrome, promising much faster speeds. Luckily, you can prove this on your own Mac when you download macOS Big Sur installer.

Conclusion

We’ve just told you how to install macOS Big Sur on your Mac. This brand new operating system promises a bunch of revolutionary tools for your computer. Just imagine, a floating Dock! Or, notification panel you can customize.
It might also be useful to clean up your drive before you attempt the update. You can use our favorite cleaner, CleanMyMac X, or do it manually. That’s all for today — stay safe and healthy!