Taking your music with you: from iTunes and Apple Music to Strawberry and Navidrome

Your iTunes library may contain years of purchases, but iTunes doesn't run on Linux. This article explains how to transfer your purchased music to a self-hosted solution using Strawberry and Navidrome, and what you lose in the process.

Requirements

• A Linux system (tested on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, works on other distributions with minor adjustments)
• Access to your old iTunes library on macOS or Windows
• An external drive or network location for the transfer
• Navidrome 0.61.0 or newer (for the metadata plugin)
• Strawberry 1.2.0 or newer

What you can take with you — and what you can't

Only purchased music and files you added yourself are physically present on your system and therefore transferable. Streaming-only tracks from Apple Music don't exist locally and cannot be exported.

DRM-protected purchases from the pre-2009 iTunes Store are encrypted and won't play outside the Apple ecosystem. Check via reportaproblem.apple.com or your purchase history whether your files are DRM-free.

You also lose cloud integration: iCloud synchronization, Family Sharing, your listening history, and Apple Music's recommendation algorithms stay behind.

Step 1: Locate your music files

iTunes stores music in a folder structure under ~/Music/iTunes on macOS or C:\Users\[user]\Music\iTunes on Windows. If you've used iCloud Music Library, files must be downloaded locally before you can copy them.

Copy the entire iTunes folder to an external drive. It's tempting to grab only the audio files, but the folder structure also contains playlists and metadata you can use later.

Step 2: Copy the files to your Linux system

Connect the external drive to your Linux machine and copy the music folder to a location Navidrome can access:

mkdir -p /mnt/music
cp -r /media/usb/iTunes/Music/* /mnt/music/

This step costs you disk space. Expect about 100 MB per album in AAC format. Check with df -h that you have enough space before you begin.

Step 3: Install Navidrome

Navidrome is a self-hosted music server that makes your collection available via a web browser and Subsonic clients. It's a single binary you download and run:

cd /opt
wget https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome/releases/download/v0.61.0/navidrome_0.61.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
tar -xzf navidrome_0.61.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
useradd -r -s /bin/false navidrome
mkdir -p /var/lib/navidrome
chown navidrome:navidrome /var/lib/navidrome

You now have the server but no configuration yet. Create a configuration file that defines the music folder and database location:

cat > /var/lib/navidrome/navidrome.toml << 'EOF'
MusicFolder = "/mnt/music"
DataFolder = "/var/lib/navidrome"
LogLevel = "info"
EOF

Start Navidrome as a system service so it comes up on every boot:

cat > /etc/systemd/system/navidrome.service << 'EOF'
[Unit]
Description=Navidrome Music Server
After=network.target

[Service]
User=navidrome
Group=navidrome
WorkingDirectory=/var/lib/navidrome
ExecStart=/opt/navidrome --configfile /var/lib/navidrome/navidrome.toml
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable --now navidrome

The first time you open Navidrome at http://localhost:4533, it creates an admin account. The server scans your music folder and builds a database — with a large collection this takes a few minutes.

Step 4: Install Strawberry

Strawberry is a music player that plays locally but also supports Subsonic servers. It's the successor to Clementine and inspired by Amarok 1.4.

sudo apt install strawberry

On Ubuntu 24.04, Strawberry 1.2.0 is in the repositories. For other distributions, check the [download page](https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org/).

Step 5: Connect Strawberry to Navidrome

Open Strawberry and go to Tools → Settings → Subsonic. There you fill in:

• Server: http://localhost:4533
• Username: your Navidrome admin account
• Password: the password you set at the first Navidrome start

Strawberry now fetches your entire collection via the Subsonic protocol. You can browse by artist, album, and genre as if they were local files. The advantage of this setup: your music lives in one central place, and you can listen from any device on your network.

Local files and the Navidrome server can be combined into one library. Strawberry shows both sources in the same interface.

Step 6: Preserve metadata with the Apple Music plugin

Navidrome 0.61.0 and newer support a plugin that fetches metadata from Apple Music and iTunes endpoints — without an API key. Album covers, artist information, and biographies you once had via iTunes come back into your collection this way.

Activate the plugin in the Navidrome admin screen under Personal → External Metadata.

This plugin is a bonus. Without it, Navidrome works fine, but you'll miss covers and biographies that aren't stored in your local files.

Step 7: Transfer playlists

If you've exported playlists from iTunes as M3U files, you can import them directly into Strawberry. Go to Playlists → Import and select the M3U files.

Playlists that only exist in iCloud cannot be transferred. They are not stored as a file anywhere and Apple does not offer an export option.

Verification

Check whether Navidrome has scanned your music correctly:

curl http://localhost:4533/rest/ping -u gebruikersnaam:wachtwoord

A valid Subsonic ping response confirms that the server is running. Then open Strawberry and check whether your collection appears. Play a track from an album you once bought in iTunes — if sound comes out, the transfer was successful.

Common problems

Navidrome does not scan files

Check whether the MusicFolder in navidrome.toml is correct and whether the navidrome user has read permissions on the folder. chown -R navidrome:navidrome /mnt/muziek fixes this.

Strawberry cannot connect to Navidrome

Check whether Navidrome is running with systemctl status navidrome. Test the URL in a browser — if that works, check whether you entered http:// before the server URL in Strawberry. Without a protocol prefix, Strawberry tries HTTPS.

DRM files do not play

Old iTunes purchases with DRM cannot be played outside Apple software. Download them again via the Music app on Windows or macOS — if Apple offers them DRM-free, you will get that version. Otherwise, they are lost for Linux.

The transition from iTunes to a self-hosted solution is not an automatic process. You trade the convenience of a closed ecosystem for control over your own music. Self-hosting sounds wonderful, until something breaks at half past eleven on a Sunday evening. Then you are not a customer waiting for the helpdesk. Then you are the helpdesk.