Apple Music does not see music on external drive

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Level 1

4 points

Apple Music does not see music on external drive

We've had this problem since the switch from iTunes to Apple Music. We burned all of our CDs into iTunes on Windows about 18 years ago. Transitioned to an iMac - no problem with our iTunes library. Got a second Mac and put the music on an external USB drive to pass back and forth - again no problems. Upgraded the MacBook Pro OS to Catalina and BAM, Music broke. I pointed Music to the old iTunes folder and it recognized SOME of the music but not all. For the past few years I haven't done anything but make sure that Apple Music was pointed to the correct library on the external drive hoping that eventually it would fix itself. Now running Monterey (12.3.1) and tired of not having access to all the music.

Here is what we see:

Apple Music sees about half the music when View--All Music is selected. Folders are organized by artist and then Album. Some entire artists are missing. Some artists are there but Albums are missing. (Missing from Apple Music - They all exist on the hard drive)
Strangely, about half of those then disappear if I switch to View--Only Downloaded Music
I can click on any song from the hard drive and play it. It opens in Apple Music and then shows in the list of Artists/Albums but only with that song - not the whole album. It shows as having been "recently Added" without any Cover Art.
If I click on the iTunes store, it shows more of the music, most of which we burned from CDs rather than purchasing online, as "purchased" (but not all of it) with a little cloud which I assume means "Download".
I do have some old .itl library files from before this was broken and from earlier versions of MacOS.
All the old playlists have disappeared.
We do not subscribe to Apple Music, iTunes Match, or have any music in the cloud to the best of our knowledge. We've never subscribed to any of that although it is possible that during some upgrade a free trial of Apple Music was accidentally "accepted". To be honest, I don't remember although I do have a recollection of making a copy of the iTunes folder before the initial upgrade and then copying it back after I was sure that an Apple Music subscription was not active.

How do I fix this?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 12.3

Posted on Oct 6, 2022 11:32 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,494 points

Oct 8, 2022 8:24 AM in response to kbr_nc

Music will open the last database that it successfully opened unless it is unavailable in which case you should be prompted to choose or create a library. You can check file modification dates, but it is most likely that the active library file is the one in <External>/Music 1. This will be updated each time you use Music. If you want to tidy things up, first close Music, rename the folder Music 1 as Music, option-start-Music and open the library <External>/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary. With Music close again you should now be able to move and rename your media folder to <External>/Music/Media. Given this is a Mac and everything is staying on the same volume Music should update itself accordingly and everything should work. If not put the folder back and we can discuss further.

Fill in Album Artist to ensure that tracks with guest artists appear in the same folder as the rest of the album.

If iTunes shows multiple instances of an artist or an album then what generally works is to select all related tracks and use Get Info to add say a trailing X to each of the fields that the tracks should have in common:

For an album; Album, Album Artist, and Artist (if artist is the same for all tracks) *
For an artist; Album Artist (and Artist unless there are guest/featured artists listed which should not be changed)

Apply the change which merges things together, then remove the excess characters. Occasionally it may help to close and reopen iTunes between the two renaming operations. Part of a compilation should also be set consistently.

* If tracks are to be synced to a non-iOS device there should be a common Artist and/or the album should be set as a Compilation.

Use the songs view and display the fields Album, Sort Album, Album Artist, Sort Album Artist, Artist and Sort Artist side by side so you see whether or not it is appropriate to edit Artist and if sort values could be causing any further problems. See Grouping tracks into albums for more help if required.

One further tip for really stubborn duplicates. At one point I had three lots of Various Artists in the artists view of my iTunes Match library that wouldn't respond to the usual trailing X treatment. What I found worked was to add the trailing X to start with, but then with each group that iTunes wanted to keep separate start typing a value and let iTunes autocomplete from say Var... to Various Artists. Picking from the autocomplete lists seemed to work when pasting/editing the whole value didn't.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

274,494 points

Oct 7, 2022 11:43 AM in response to kbr_nc

See Move your iTunes library to a new computer - Apple Community for general background on moving the library and migrating to Apple Music. I should work much the same as iTunes as far as music is concerned. There are changes for audiobooks, podcasts, and video content.

That said I've seen a number of posts lately where Monterey fails to correctly convert an iTunes Library.itl database correctly and just sits there with a spinning busy icon. There seem to be two possible workarounds, copy the .itl file to Big Sur or Catalina and convert it there (the media folder is not required) then move the database to Monterey and place it in the same folder as the .itl file, or if you have an iTunes Library.xml file you can import that into an empty Music library with File > Library > Import Playlist... as long as the media files are at the paths listed in the XML file. This method loses date added details.

If you don't have the XML file or access to Catalina or Big Sur I could convert the library for you. I've done several over the last week or so. You can send me the .itl, or a link to it on a cloud service such as iCloud Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. I would convert the library to the .musiclibrary format and post it back to you. You'll find my email address in my profile here.

This all assumes the iTunes Library.itl file to be converted fully reflects the content of the media folder. You can always add the media folder to the library to pick up any orphaned content if there is a risk that it doesn't.

tt2

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Answer 3

kbr_nc Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 8, 2022 7:09 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank you. This was very helpful. For others struggling with this, what I had done wrong is point Music to the music media folder where the library file was stored and not the *.itl library file itself. At one point, I then accidentally clicked on the Music folder when exploring the import options. That imported everything but with strange duplicates, reorganization, lost playlists, and strange dates. Luckily, I had a backup folder which I copied over. Opening Music by holding the Option key done and selecting the .itl folder has everything seemingly restored. Two questions now:

I don't see any Music Library folder in the folder designated for my media. When a search for a file with this name, I find one in the /Music/Music folder on the laptop hard drive and one in a /Music 1 folder on the external drive which is the same drive the media files are in but a completely different root folder structure. How do I determine which Library file is the correct one and how do I ensure it is on the external drive and being pointed to correctly? Obviously things are working right now but I need to be able to maintain it!
Do you know of any good references for organizing media? I'd like to put back together some of the CDs that were inadvertantly split up some time ago so that I don't have 3 extra folders for one CD each with 1 track that has an extra artist singing along (for example) . Can I just consolidate the folders and uncheck the boxes related to keeping them organized?

Thanks so much for your help!

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Answer 4

kbr_nc Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 9, 2022 10:22 AM in response to turingtest2

You were correct. The current Library file is <External>/Music 1. I'm actually perfectly happy to leave it in a non-standard format as I figure it makes it less likely that Apple will overwrite it in a way I don't want during some upgrade down the road.

I haven't tried getting the tracks merged into the correct albums yet - will probably work on that next week. As I prepare to move this library to my NAS, I just keep getting deeper into the weeds. Many of the album covers which we painstakingly located and manually added years ago have been over-written with album covers that aren't correct. I've found some of the old album art in a Library/Container folder and assume that I'm just going to have manually add it all back again. Do you know of an easier way?

You've been super helpful, I really appreciate it.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

274,494 points

Oct 9, 2022 11:13 AM in response to kbr_nc

Unfortunately I think you're going to have to fix things one album at a time. If you start in the Songs view and use View > Show Column Browser you can step through your albums one album at a time in the browser, and keep a note of where you've got up to so you don't go over the same content time and again while looking for things to fix.

tt2

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Answer 6

kbr_nc Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 9, 2022 12:30 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks. I had started to come to the same conclusion. For every album cover I have to go re-find, I'm also going to keep my own folder with all of the self-downloaded cover art. My spouse did this the first time and I think it was so easy to just "drag and drop" the images from the web that they were never purposefully stored anywhere....and so who knows what random place Apple has put them. Definitely faster to just go look for them again.

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