How to copy iTunes library to a new machine

It became necessary for me to copy (well, move, really) my iTunes library to a new Mac. I googled a bit and found some advice essentially boiling down to this: copy the files and import them to iTunes in the new Mac. This means you lose playlists, play counts, stars, podcast subscriptions and other stuff. That doesn't sound nice.

The starting situation for me was that my music files were on an external disk and the library was in my $HOME/Music/iTunes folder.

After trying it a couple times, this is how I did it:

1. Shut down iTunes on the old Mac.
   
2. Copied $HOME/Music/iTunes folder my old Mac to the same folder in the new Mac.
   
3. Made a new empty folder called "iTunes Music" inside the above folder in the new Mac.
   
4. Copied all the music from the external disk of the old Mac to the above folder.
   

That's it. I suspect if my music files had been under my iTunes folder in my home directory instead of an external disk, I could probably have copied it all in one go.