How do I transfer song information from Music app without hidden columns on Mac?

Question

Level 1

9 points

How do I transfer song information from Music app without hidden columns on Mac?

Until today these steps worked - Transfer song information to other applications

Go to the Music app on your Mac.

- Copy the information (in the columns that are visible) for one or more songs: Click Songs in the sidebar, select the songs, then choose Edit > Copy. In another app (for example, an email or text document), choose Edit > Paste.

NOW information from the raw file data comes in and columns that are not displayed - for instance the time instead of 3:18 is 03:18.452 and all kinds of hidden columns (location, track number etc are copies completely making this dysfunctional

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Mac mini, macOS 14.4

Posted on Apr 11, 2025 9:14 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

276,847 points

Apr 15, 2025 9:30 AM in response to Zaphple

I don't disagree. However Apple may not be revisiting Music on Sonoma to fix it as it is no longer the current version of macOS. It should be easy enough to make an area you can paste in the copied data from Music, and have another sheet pick out just the columns that you want to pass on to Wordpress. If you save that workbook then you don't have to repeat the effort next time you want to extract more data. Alternatively you could write an AppleScript that exports just the details that you want as a text file that can be copied directly into Wordpress, but that sounds like more effort.

FWIW the current version of Music in Sequoia only exports the visible fields.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

276,847 points

Apr 12, 2025 4:22 AM in response to Zaphple

Are you running Sonoma 14.x or Sequoia 15.x? This is perhaps unintended behaviour that might be fixed in the next release. In the meantime you might need to take the data into say a Numbers spreadsheet to clear out the excess data before copying and pasting to the intended destination.

tt2

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Answer 3

Zaphple Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 14, 2025 10:58 PM in response to turingtest2

I'm on Sonoma - precisely because of this kind of problem - I made the msitake of updating Numbers and my whole workflow is disrupted - it was app: Music > Numbers > Wordpress... now th efirst step makes the workflow ridiculous. Why would apple developers makje such a basic function error in updating Numbers? I was a software programmer/designer and QA person - this is just sloppy

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Answer 4

Zaphple Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 17, 2025 11:36 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for the help - the last time I upgraded it took weeks for me to re-establish workflow, so many things changed. I'm hoping to find time soon. I know how this works I wrote some of the code that many of you use for banking and yes some of your critical defence stuff... what annoys me about Apple OS S/w upgrades is the lack of the ability to keep & use of the old s/w for one to three generations of individual applications.

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Answer 5

Zaphple Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 22, 2025 12:10 PM in response to turingtest2

"FWIW the current version of Music in Sequoia only exports the visible fields."

So I've taken the steps to upgrade to Sequoia, relatively painless and much better than the past experiences.

However the copy of VISIBLE fields in music is not working - worse still the workaround you suggested isn't possible as it ONLY copies fields it deems relevant (critically it doesn't copy - even when displayed - fields like "grouping" or "comments" which is where music industry people put key information like label details that JOBS removed) As I said this was previously working. There are numerous other issues the "Time" (length of track) field is copied as 03:08.760 instead of 3:09 WHETHER it's visible or not... what a mess

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Answer 6

Zaphple Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 22, 2025 12:14 PM in response to Zaphple

New information: The failure is noticed when I paste into Numbers, however I just tried pasting into CotEditor and the dat is correct (the visible data only) - suggesting that the issue is with numbers ...

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Answer 7

Zaphple Author

Level 1

9 points

Apr 22, 2025 12:18 PM in response to Zaphple

Also working pasting into a table in pages...

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How do I transfer song information from Music app without hidden columns on Mac?