Messed up moving my iTunes library....

[Moosbrugger]

Yeah, it's "Music," not iTunes, but referring to the app as "music" when talking about "music" just gets me confused.  

I upgraded my 2014 Mac Mini to a new model (not the new Apple chip).  I didn't do enough research before moving my itunes library -- which is on an external drive -- and I ended up having iTunes download all the albums I had purchased from Apple onto my new hard drive.  Then, when I imported the files from my external drive, I ended up with duplicates of everything.

After playing a bit, I think I'm good -- with one version of my files on the external drive and no dupes.  However, in the process, I deleted the music library.musiclibrary file.  I thought this would cause iTunes to recreate the database -- but, of course, what it did was lose all of my metadata/tagging from my prior version.

I do have my old music library.musiclibrary file backedup.  If I just copy that into the Music folder on my new Mini, will that restore my old metadata?  Honestly, the only thing I really care about is Date Added.    Or should I just live with what I've got since it's working?

[kirkmc]

That’s the problem: iTunes/Music doesn’t create a library from the files in folders, those files have to be added to the app to create the library. So either copy the old library file, or drag the Media folder onto the app sidebar to make it read it’s contents.