So my wife and I just got a powerful new laptop and plan to phase out the clunky old desktop as soon as we get all our stuff migrated.
I connected the external drive with all our music on it, downloaded iTunes and signed in, hoping against hope that our playlists would be intact as part of our account. Alas, no such luck; it’s a blank slate. We have many playlists that have taken years to construct. Do we have to manually re-create them all on the new machine, or is there a way to copy the info over?
If you want not only your content but also your playlists to exist on your new computer, you will want to transfer a copy of all your playlists from your old computer. To do this, choose File > Library > Export Library on your old computer. Save the XML file that is created to your desktop.
Send the playlists file to yourself as an e-mail attachment, use an external drive, or use file sharing to move the playlists file to your new computer. Once the file is on your new computer, open iTunes and choose File > Library > Import Playlist. The import process will remove any items from the playlists that you didn’t share via Home Sharing.