Can I transfer CD audio to MacBook without using Apple Music?

Note that it would be a very bad idea to move files from inside the Music library, as opposed to copying them. The Music application is designed to assume that it is in control of the organization of that library – and that all requests to change it must go through the Music user interface.

If you move a file within the database behind Music's back, using the Finder, then you' have just poked a hole in the library that might confuse Music the next time it goes to look at. the library.

olly179 wrote:

Can I then move it Audio files from Apple Music to my files on my Mac if so how can I do this

When you import songs from a CD into the Music App, the song files are saved to your Music Library on your Mac. The default location of the Music Libary is the /Music folder in your user home folder.

Inside the Music folder is another Music folder and inside that is the Media folder (/Music/Music/Media). Songs are generally organized by album there. You can copy files (songs) from this folder to any other location on yout Mac, to an external drive, to a flash drive, to Dropbox or OneDrive, etc. just the same as you could do with any other file.

Alternatively you can just drag songs (or even an entire playlist) directly from the Music app to any folder on your Mac or to a flash drive, etc. This copies the song files, it does not move them.

Import songs from CDs into Music on Mac - Apple Support

After you get them into your Mac's Music database, if you want to put them onto an iPhone or iPad, see:

Intro to syncing your Mac and your devices - Apple Support

Sync content between your Mac and iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

If you need to put them onto a USB flash drive for a car player, you can drag them from the Music window to the Finder, rename them if desired, and copy them onto the USB flash drive. However, note that the Finder is in the habit of adding ._*.* metadata files (e.g., ._SONG1.MP3) that can fool other systems and cause them to choke.

There's a way to get rid of those – and you can use Script Editor to create an "drag and drop" application where you simply drag your USB flash drive's icon onto the cleaner application's icon, before ejecting the flash drive, to get rid of the files most likely to be troublesome.

If this is a standard CD-Audio disc, you would need to use Apple's Music app – or a third-party application with similar digital audio extraction capabilities – to get the music into an electronic form suitable for storing in your Music library, loading onto your iPhone, or loading onto some other portable personal music player.

You do not need to have an Apple Music subscription to use the Music application. The Music application has several functions:

• It acts as a user interface to the Apple Music subscription service, should you choose to use that service.
• It acts as a user interface to the iTunes Store, should you choose to purchase downloadable music from the iTunes Store. (Apple now hides the iTunes Store sidebar item by default, but you can turn it on in Settings.)
• It provides tools for working with your own purchased music from other sources (like your CDs).

I use Music to import music from my own CDs. When I was running High Sierra, I used iTunes. I haven't kept up with third-party alternatives. E.g., the commercial applications Roxio Toast 20 Titanium and Toast 20 Pro might come with their own implementation of digital audio extraction tools.

Here are the details on how to use Script Editor to create a "drag and drop" cleaner application (so you don't have to go into Terminal and type shell commands every time you update a USB flash drive containing music or photos that you want to play on a non-Apple device).

It is important to leave a space between the -m and the closing " on the set shellCommand line. If you leave out the space, you're telling it to try to run a shell command where the "-m" flag, and the name of the drive to clean, get run together. The system won't like that and the command won't work.

If you type in everything correctly (no syntax errors), Script Editor will format the script like this once you do the Save/Export. (It's highlighting the structure of the script.)

Good advice!