Apple has removed iTunes on macOS Catalina and replaced the music library part by a Music app. The iTunes ‘backend’ files like the Library.itl file to keep track of play counts, star ratings, and other metadata and a couple of .itdb database files to keep track of Genius playlists are no longer used. Moreover, album artwork is no longer kept, like the songs, in its own folder. If you store your music library on a (Synology) NAS you may run into issues since Music no longer creates automatically the .xml files where your playlists are recorded. You can manually export the library and playlists and store it in the music folder on the NAS, however SONOS is unable to read the content and extract the playlists. Other applications like VLC and Logitech Media Player (LMS) are still able to read these XML files, generated by the new Music app. It looks like Apple is drifting apart and is only focusing on its Apple Music streaming service. iPhone synchronisation within the Music app is missing (unless you subscribe to Apple Music) and done with Finder. Users like me, who want to listen to their locally (NAS) stored files without any need for an Internet connection will need to think about a plan B (i.e. no Apple Music).
Plan B for me is to use the ‘Export for iTunes‘ tool. This macOS Catalina compatible programme is able to read the Music app playlists and copies all files to the Synology NAS and exports the playlists to .m3u type playlists. SONOS version 10.6 software is able to read these playlists and to find all files on the NAS. You will find the content in the SONOS controller’s Imported Playlists. Once the playlists are displayed in the Imported Playlists, you can add them to the SONOS playlists. The ‘Export for iTunes‘ (Version 1.9.73 (1.9.733)) tool has many features to rename and convert your music files and allows you to copy the files in a new folder structure by artist, by album etc.
The main settings that do the job for me are:
ASCII encoding to make sure that SONOS can read all Artist and Song names with accents.
Windows path separator.
Recently I discovered Retroactive a tool that runs on macOS Big Sur and Monterey and installs iTunes versions.
