Music mystery

[Barrygou]

I have all of my music on an old Mac that is still running iTunes 12.8.3.1 For convenience because the Mac has a built in CD burner and I record a lot of my old physical CD's on to the Mac and on to my iPhone. I have a new Mac running Music 1.2.4.3 Eventually, I would like to get all of my recordings on to the new Mac but every time I USB connect my iPhone all of the music on the iPhone is immediately erased. I never liked or trusted iCloud or iTunes Match because I sure don't want to sit around for days recording CD's.

 

[ferrarr]

If both of your Macs are on the same home network, you can share the music using Family Share. Then you can move your music on to the newer Mac as you please.

Set up media sharing on Mac

On your Mac, change the name of your media library, set up Home Sharing, and share your media with other users on the same network.

support.apple.com

 

[Slydude]

Probably the easiest way to get your music onto the new Mac is to use an external drive. Here's the method that I've used in the past to do that. Free up space on your Mac by moving your music to an external drive

I skipped step 6 and did not move the library to the second Mac. It's stored on the hard drive. If you move the music to the second computer, keep the hard drive around as a backup.

Media sharing is also a good idea.

Edit: Fixed link.

 

[Barrygou]

Slydude - Thanks. Then what would be the procedure to move the Music from the external hard drive to the second Mac? And would it be moved to the Music app?

 

[Barrygou]

Disregard. I see Step 6 about moving it. When it's done copying on to the external HD I'll give this a go. Thanks again

 

[Slydude]

Slydude - And would it be moved to the Music app?

Yes. Following step 6 should move everything to the Music App.

Under the new structure the content handled by iTunes has now been split among several apps (Podcasts, Apple TV, etc). Content that's appropriate for these apps appear in the relevant apps --usually under a Library tab. This is accomplished based upon how the media is tagged (e.g. Podcasts go to that app if they have been tagged as podcasts).

 

[BondAMR]

Hello, I need to bring this topic back up again, and I want to add my question to it - I have 3 MBP's (2012/2011 - 13, 15, 17) each running small 128 GB SSD's and I use external 1 or 2 TB SSD's for my data storage and backups and interchange them between all laptops.

My goal is to have my iTunes on all 3 laptops connect and recognize the external iTunes and be able to interchange the external on any of the laptops I'm using at the time. So I won't be running the computers simultaneously and connecting to the iTunes external at the same time (although I now wonder if that would work?) but using the external iTunes separately. Also, I don't use iTunes for anything else but music so syncing an iPhone or other iTunes media isn't a concern.

Would any changes or additions to iTunes be shown across all laptops if I made the changes into one of them? Would the iTunes Libraries remain in the local default Music folders for 3 Libraries total in 3 laptops or do I point each local Music folder to 1 Library located on the external drive? And if so, would they sync up if I made changes into one of them? I'm running Sierra and iTunes 10.0 across all platforms, thank you.

 

[ferrarr]

I remember I used to use multiple computers, with multiple Apple ID's and at the time I was able to share music libraries between both machine. This meant both Macs had to be logged in to the user account.

You can see if the information you need are in the iTunes User Guide,

Welcome to iTunes on Mac

Learn to use iTunes on Mac to listen to all the music in your collection, discover new artists, and add more songs to your library.

support.apple.com

 

[BondAMR]

Hello ferrarr, thanks for responding. From what I have been reading up on so far, I can hit the option key when starting iTunes on my using laptop which would redirect to my chosen library located on my external SSD and I could do that each time I transfer the SSD to a new machine. Would that be correct?

But would the iTunes on the using machine show all the artists and album covers and all the metadata in the sound file, everything from the external HD? And I think I can do this without the need of logging into an Apple ID yes? I actually don't log into my Apple ID on my laptops, just in my iPhone to download apps.

 

[MacBiter]

You can share iTunes library with other users - this always meant on the same computer, but I wonder if it would work across multiple Macs? In any case, you don't need to have the app on the external - just the iTunes folder from the user Music folder. Each time you first launch iTunes on a laptop use its preferences tp point to the iTunes Music sub-folder on the external (this only has to be done once for each).

To keep the library itself in common - if you want that - you'd either have to share the external library with each Mac or, if that's not possible, hold the option key each time you launch iTunes and point to the external library.

 

[Slydude]

As usual the guys have provided some excellent suggestions for sharing the iTunes/Music library on multiple Macs by keeping the library on an external drive. I used to do this and IIRC all of the metadata, playlist counts, etc. are preserved as long as you're talking about the same user account each machine.I don't do that anymore because I decided to pop for an Apple Music subscription which does the same thing and I can access my music on almost any device that I can use to log into my account.

If you have your library on an external drive iTunes/Music does the following:
1. Once you go into preferences/settings and tell the program where the library is iTunes/Music looks in that location every time it launches. If you want to temporarily change the location/use a different library hold down the Option key during launch.
2. If you don't have the external drive attached when you launch iTunes/Music it looks in the default location on your boot drive. If you ever forget to attach the external drive before launching iTunes/Music, the easiest thing to do is to close the app for a moment, attach the drive, then relaunch the app.

If you want to have several different libraries then you can do as you said and ho9ld down the Option key while launching the app to choose the library you want to use. I used to forget to do this I think I created a launcher script that did this for me.

As someone who also has vision issues I agree with you that both of these programs could be improved significantly in that regard. Apple has made many accessibility improvements over the years but these programs seem to lag behind.

Here's a page that outlines the current state of this issue on Apple products. Near the bottom of the page is a link where IIRC you can send relevant comments to Apple.

Accessibility Support - Official Apple Support

Find information about Apple's built-in accessibility tools and technologies that help people with disabilities get the most from their Apple products.

support.apple.com

 

[BondAMR]

ok all good info, my last question do I keep the Music folder on my local user completely blank and the whole iTunes folder is on the external that it has everything; Album Artwork folder, iTunes Media folder (ofcourse) the iTunes Music Library.xml and .itdb the itl file... it's all on the external? I may do some trial-and-error and report back with my findings.

 

[Slydude]

The main portion of the iTunes media folder, including the music files, music videos etc., is stored on the external hard drive. I believe the Album Artwork folder is also stored there. IIRC the iTunes Music Library.xml, .itdb, and the itl file are all stored inside the music folder on your boot folder. These files are essentially database files that take up comparatively little space. This allows one set of music files on the external drive to be used by all user accounts on that drive without having to store the same music tracks multiple times.

Here's a video that explain the basics of how to do this. I can't seem to find that article that I usually refer to explain this issue.

One of the things that I usually do is to go into the Music preferences and tell the program to consolidate the music files (tracks) in one location during import. If you don't do this you could have tracks scattered in lots of different places depending upon where they were when you imported the files.

 

[MacBiter]

ok all good info, my last question do I keep the Music folder on my local user completely blank and the whole iTunes folder is on the external that it has everything; Album Artwork folder, iTunes Media folder (ofcourse) the iTunes Music Library.xml and .itdb the itl file... it's all on the external? I may do some trial-and-error and report back with my findings.

If you want the library and the music itself to be in common for each Mac, then simply move the iTunes folder from where it is currently in the main user's Music folder, to the external - everything is in there including the databases you mentioned. As for the user's Music folder - no, it doesn't have to be blank, but just don't put anything to do with iTunes in there.

 

[BondAMR]

hey it worked! very cool I just did the option key and pointed to the outside external library file and all the music files with album covers all internal sound file metadata came up and everything.

I didn't know you could do that until now - wanting to swap a currently used and edited iTunes inventory without having 3 of them and manually editing all of them across the board is what my first thought was.

 

[BondAMR]

I have another question, unrelated, not sure to repost a new thread on it or not. I'm trying to transfer a folder full of bookmarks html's but it gets hung up and stalls during the transfer.

My fans go up to maximum, I check my Activity Monitor and FileAccessDaemon eats up much memory showing 2 - 3 GB's. I double-click on it to Force Quit the FileAccessDaemon and then the transfer goes through immediately with no lag time.

I have to do this for deleting the Bookmarks html to trash as well, then again in trash. I have to do this each and every time to move and delete Bookmarks html's and its a very slow and tedious process. How can I stop this from happeneing? Thank you.