After hours spent on Apple support calls, this video was the one that helped me sort out my music library. Thank you so much!!!

Thank you so much. Incredibly helpful with your clear explanation. I chaptered your guide with timestamps: 0:49 Method 1 - Internal Library / Don't Copy Files 3:40 Method 2 - Internal Library / External Media Folder (most will want this) 5:49 Method 3 - External Library / External Media Folder 7:54 One more thing - How to clear out Music Library

Best/most thorough explanation on KZfaq, thanks. Just subscribed..

Awesome video...thank you for breaking it down! I’ve spent hours with Apple support with no resolution and your video is all I needed!!

DUDE! You are a genius. THANK YOU!!!!! I have been trying to figure this out and just could not connect the dots. Much appreciation to you.

Excellent video: content; voice speed; explanation; resolution; camera window on bottom right! Subscribed

You've been a tremendous help with this video! Thats what I was after for few weeks with a big question mark hovering above my head. Thank you

Major thumbs-up! Have migrated to a new Mac laptop from an older (pre-Music) OS. The thought of losing access to thousands of Ripped CDs was disheartening! Your tutorial was very comprehensive and your examples and methodology were very easy to follow! Again, many thanks for helping to alleviate my anxiety!

I have been looking for the way to do this for soooo long. This is the by far the best description of how it is done. Thank you!

Excellent tutorial. Very clear and concise

Gary, super helpful tutorial as I had to remove music to make space on my MacBook. The detailed step by step instructions are tremendously appreciated. You are my Apple Genius Bar!!

Thank you again! Man I was making this harder than it really is. Thanks again it worked perfect on a Music backup drive on my Netgear Ready Share backup.

Thanks Gary, this is really clear and what I needed.

Wow!!! The best video out there about this subject. You should make official videos for Apple.

After a update I found my music files are in a iTunes library transfer folder. My complaint is that my playlists are no longer available. Do you have a way to retrieve that? Thank you!

Absolutely great! Thank so much for this clear & very helpful video!

I'm grateful for your clear instruction. I hope you're being compensated for this public service.

Glad I found your tutorial. This was very helpful.

Just a big thank you for this. It will help me out getting that set up on my new MacBook Pro

Excellent explanation, thanks for sharing your knowledge!

Good stuff, Gary. Method 1 works great for me. I have an external drive on my Mac mini and use an Apple TV in another room to play media. The problem I now have is that this doesn’t seem to work with movies and the TV app. The TV app creates another folder on ext drive called Home Movies but copies the original movie. So it duplicates the movie on the ext drive. What gives?

What a great explanation. Thanks

Super video❗️this is one of my major projects and I am going to have to watch this several time and decide which way I need to go. I have 54GB of music loaded on iTunes on my old dying Dell laptop. I just purchased a new external 500GB SSD that I hope put the music on but I don’t know what I am doing. I am hopping to copy the music on the SSD so that I can use it on my new iPad Pro and I do not intend on punching a new laptop or desktop computer❗️👍✅🤔

thanks for the last tip especially, holding down alt to open and start again. cheers

Great tutorial video - Maybe you can do a tutorial on how to keep your playlist and meta data when you move your iTunes/Apple music collection to an external harddrive. Thank you

Awesome video! Just what I needed to learn!!

Great video , thank you 🙏, it’s gonna take me a while , I need to move an 90Gb iTunes library 🤦🏻‍♂️

incredibly helpful video, thanks so much!!

Great Tutorial!

I found this so useful! I have all of my media (music and videos) on an external drive, and used Method #1 as you described. I have a question: I'm planning on getting a new iMac. Is there a shortcut to keeping all my media on my external hd, but cloning my Music (and Apple TV) media library organization? - I'm not sure if that makes any sense (i.e. my files stored on the external hard drive work great. But it took me days to load 1 TB of folder organization. Is there a simpler way than the drag and drop when setting up my new iMac?)

you`re a star ! thank you. 👍

Excellent tutorial .. Thanks Gary!

You can use method 2 or 3 to place your music in an external media server and/or a NAS. However, the NAS must be on and running and it will mount the drive/folder and the run the music. I did this with iTunes a few years ago. It works well as long as the NAS is running.

Awesome stuff from this channel. I was using method #2 on Mojave with iTunes and I was curious to see how it changed in the new "Music" app. My 2015 macbook pro is pretty much just a media player so I don't see myself upgrading from Mojave in the short term.

I'm still in Mojave; I assume Catalina works the same: I pretty much don't do anything inside of the iTunes program except a) play music, and b) construct playlists. Otherwise, I do everything else in finder. The libraries are FOLDERS - you can treat them as folders. I back up my libraries (I have numerous separate music libraries that total about 1.6T), by simply copying them to external disks. I open iTunes libraries by hitting the option key and then the dock icon. Another backup tip: iTunes tracks can be selected and then copied to external file folders, from which you can add those tracks to other libraries, either by opening iTunes and using File Add, or simply selecting them from the above-mentioned filed folders and dragging them into a newly-opened iTunes library. I've read and looked at a lot of instruction guides and I've never seen anybody discuss this approach. I really don't know why - I've been doing it this way for years and it's always been fast, easy, reliable. Why isn't this ever documented? iTunes libraries are FOLDERS. The contents are FILES.

Thanks so much for this video! Will albums purchased through apple music also transfer to the external drive to save space on my internal hard drive? When wanting to sync songs on my phone, will my phone recognize the new location of the songs?

Oh this too funny! I just searched for Beatles music & got blocked by that annoying Apple Music popup. This video was sooo helpful! I just purchased the songs I wanted on my macbook air & shared them with my iphone too. Thanks so much for the Itunes store browsing/purchasing tips. Your tutorial made this easy!!☺️

Great and helpful 👍

Thank you. That worked.

thanks for the video's. im trying to figure out if you can use these methods and apply these to drives on a cloud? I have tried for example just selecting my collections and dragging them to ituens and it works. I also use it as playlists for my rekordbox. However, am i asking to much of the system? does it matter?

Thank you 🙏

Great video. I have a question. I would like to transfer all the music, movies and TV series in an external harddrive. How do I go about it? Thank you for your help

excellent - thank you

THANK YOU SO MUCH

Thank you for this video. Further question, if the music is on an external hard drive only, do you lose the ability to sync playlists with your iPhone and iPad? Thanks

Amazing thank you

Will this move the playlists that are made as well? I’m a playlist making person and I have playlists from 2009 and I want to keep them when I start to utilize my HD as my main iTunes hub

You Rock Gary! This was an excellent, oops, “Another” Excellent tutorial. I appreciate your works.

Excellent/// very well explained

I have a question, for any of these options I need my external drive to be plug in to be able to play any file?

Thanks for the info! 🥳🤙 It took awhile as it seemed harder on Ventura. I didn’t have to make an extra folder, I just grabbed the folders of the Musician’s and dropped them into the space you had shown. Had to authorize my new computer, before they would play on my Apple TV. Too bad Apple can’t fix the artwork problem, too many albums, with no artwork?

Hi Gary, I have a sample tank application from ik multimedia in my older MacBook Pro but now I bought an iMac 2020. I downloaded again the sample tank app but when I open the sound library gone due to expired. How do i copy or transfer from my older MacBook Pro? Please advise me, thanks.

Terrific video.

Stellar tutorial!! I have a lot of playlists that I want to keep. I'm assuming the metadata for those playlists are stored in the "Music Library.musiclibrary" file so I want to make sure I don't recreate or write over this file-right? I think I would like to keep this data file on my internal and put all the music files on an external. SO....will changing the location of the music files make this musiclibrary file confused? ALSO...what if I also do a little reorganizing of the newly moved music files...will that confuse the musiclibrary file, specifically the playlist info?

Great vid. thanks...

Exactly what I was looking for... ;-)

Brilliant video - really well explained as I wanted to put my music on my NAS.

HUGE thank you!!! I spent hours on the phone yesterday with Apple and got nowhere. I moved my music to an external HD last year but now want to add NEW music. I have option #2. Thanks to your video, I figured out how to do that. Now I want this new music (all music that I own) on my phone. With Apple Music open pointing to my files on my HD, if I sync my phone, will the new sync to my phone?

You are great as usual How can I do IPAD and Iphone backup files on external drive to save my internal drive space ?

Wonderful

Very helpful. I have music on internal and multiple external drives. I lost a load of tracks before when attempting to transfer files to the external drives. I'd love to bring everything together on one external drive if possible. Any advice?

Do these same tips work on the TV App? The reason is I have almost 6. GB of TV Shows.

Great video, I had doubts when i heard that i-tunes was discontinued after the first video about apple music I knew that it is practicly the same only it is split in 3 parts. The part of moving music libraries to an external drive was a real revelation, I was in real trouble about how to do it but after 10 minutes i realised is was very simple and I save about 800gb on a drive of 1tb so an imens gain.

Thanks Gary, I'm still a little petrified to do this. I have an 8TB drive ready to set up as my external music library and to hold music that I have on the MBP and a number of external drives too. I would have preferred to find some application that could find and store all of my music for me as I know that finding all of them will be tough. Thanks, as always, for the clear methodology.

1000 like for you!. Thank you so much.

... and you have good taste in music!

If you use method 3 (everything on external) can you use the external hard drive with any computer? ... And if you can use with any computer, is any information (such as album artwork) lost?

Thx for this video. I have a 4 TB external drive that I’ve been using with my Music library. It’s now full so I would like to transfer that library to a new 8TB drive. Which method should I be using in this scenario? This has been driving me crazy!😂

I always have a hard time with iTunes organizing my Music folder. Now being I just. bought my first Mac. Using the Mac Mini. M1...I need to learn how to navigate all these options and organize. my folders. So thank you for. the help....As. I knew. this was going to be headache. When it come time to setup iTunes and Movies..

Nice music taste, Gary 👍

Thank you! I am finally able to access all of my personally created music, and purchased music with none of it being on the internal hard drive. Would this work the same way for Photos?

Thank you for your great videos - wondering if you would do one on cleaning up a music library - getting rid of duplicates, etc.?

I actually use always method 1. But man, with every update, i always need to recreate all the maps that i've build within the Music app. I know you could save it and export it. But when going from iTunes to the Music app (when Apple changed everything), it didn't really accept that file anymore and so i needed to restart all over again. I personally like to have it all organized. But i don't know if there is a better, more simply way to do it? Anyway, i love your tutorials, they are always explained so well!

One more question. I'm running iTunes 12.4 and El Capitan (no judgement please). If I choose to move the Media folder to ext HD, would that have any effect on my Play List (s)?

Great presentation, thanks. I did step 2 and it worked! Saved a lot of space on my Macbook Pro HD. But ....... what about Podcasts? I have quite a large Podcast library that I move to my iphones and an old ipod. I don't understand how you manage those with Apple Music. Do I need something else on the Macbook Pro? Or do you treat the podcasts as "music" and put them in your Music folder.

I have been using method 2 to move music. My issue is that I'm moving it from a libary on an external drive back in thru music on a new (to me) computer and saving on the same drive. A lot of it moved, but now I've gotten to a point where no more will move. I'm not sure if the drive is full. I've deleted it from the other spot it was being stored on the same drive. Shouldn't there be more space as I've deleted? I'm not very techy....help?

Thanks! I finally got my music library working from an external drive. Leave it to Apple to take a simple to use app like iTunes and make it way more complicated to set up.

so helpful, better than Apple support

Does it work if I have Apple Music subscription, but also have part of my library as audio files? Or it works only without Apple Music?

What a classy explanation, can u plz help, to copy the Playlist as it is, in the same order, along with music library, sourced in external drive, so I plug my external drive to any blank mac or iPad and play my music….thanks in advance

I'm moving from iTunes on Windows to Music on Mac. My old iTunes folder is on an external NAS. Will any of these methods allow me to preserve my old iTunes playlists?

Thank you for this excellent video. I just purchased an external drive and I'm in the process of organizing things. May I ask a follow up question about iTunes Match? In an effort to save hard drive space, I have been an iTunes match customer for probably 7-8 years now. When I add music to my library, I often times will click "Remove Download" so the native file is not stored on my iMac's hard drive. However, I notice that sometimes when I do this, the song's file size will say "Stream", which sounds like what I want... but other times, when I click "Remove Download" a song's file size may display as "4.3 MB" or something similar. When I check my Music folder, the song is not stored on the hard drive. This has confused me. I have close to 9000 songs, but probably 95% of them are stored in iCloud/iTunes match... so my music library should not be 30 GB. I simply don't have that many songs actually located in folders in the iTunes-iTunes Media-Music folder on my iMac. Is there a place on my iMac that is story a cache of music files to help them stream faster? I'm not very knowledgeable in this area, and I've yet to find an official explanation from Apple, despite much effort. Thanks for your channel!

Great video thanks! I have 3 multiple library folders on my Mac and not sure which one is the one that is reference In my current go current library with all my playlists etc. I need to delete some files on my Mac but do not want to delete the wrong library files. Is there a way to check which library I am using as my main? Also all my music song files are on external drive and I do copy my songs to my media folder on my Mac.. thx

I am still sitting on the fence moving my iTunes folder to an ext HD. Altho, I'm leaning toward the Option to move the Itunes folder to the Ext HD. would like to ask you if it is necesesary to Consolidate the Itunes Media folder before moving iTunes to an ext HD? There a several discussions online and they all pointed to Consolidate before moving the iTunes folder. I'd rather not. Please tell me your comments. thanks

Now, on 2021, an MP3 file can show the album cover either in the iPod or in the computer? Before, it was possible only with AAC (m4a) or Apple Loss Less.

thanks so much for yet another brilliant and useful video. Question though for you Gary, how do these methods work when you have an Apple Music subscription and have an old library (ripped CD's, iTunes purchases etc) now mixed in with the Apple Music downloads? Seeing as the AM songs are only yours for as long as you're paying the subscription. Many thanks in advance for yours or anyones help.

Great video to start from scratch but how do you do the same thing while keeping playlists and such from an older iTunes setup? thanks

Great video, I did it and it works. How about a video on adding the external hard drive to a WiFi network, as you mentioned. Thank you I am now a subscriber.

Thank you for this @macmostvideo! Question: if I have all my music & playlists on my hard drive now and I use option 2 will I have to rebuild my playlists, or will they carry over when I move all my music to the external HD?

Gary Do you have to perform the same steps for Movies and TV Shows within those respective applications, or does setting up the library for Music also sets it up for TV and Movies (as it was in iTunes prior to Apple dropping that application)?

About “My Music” folder. Yes, you explain it, but it would be better if it‘s visually illustrated if it is an external or internal drive drive, so we can see a notorious difference between the three drives. Also, these new organization of files does not use the word “iTunes” anymore, right? to name files for example. Before they called “iTunes Library.itl” or the folder of the Album Artwork; all has been simplified? Could you make a video talking about the changes? Do you have a video about “iTunes Match”?

Thanks for the great video - Can the same methods be used to store photos?

Hi could you please tell me if and how to move my my music from my KZfaq music sd card to a SSD? Thanks for your help.

If id buy or get more new music, how can I organize that In a good way with the old music?

Will this work for movies, audiobooks and ebooks?

What if you want to keep your playlists and track info?

Can you tell me how to burn a playlist to a CD in Catalina Apple Music so that it is a data CD sorted into Artist and Album Folders? Itunes would do this. Apple Music throws everything onto the disc at the root level.

Great instructions ! I have not upgraded to Catalina yet - Q: Is there something about Cat (loss of iTunes) that makes these instructions - wanting an external music drive - preferable ? Or, upon the Cat upgrade, does my music simply end up in the 'new' internal music library and life goes on..? If not, what's the downside? Am I missing something? Thnx (and just use the external HD as my safe back up)

I hope you can help me, I am trying to work with this music app, and I hate it! I tried to get a song today, it took awhile, but once I got it, my iPod only is showing 3-4 playlists, the ones I never use,. I don’t know what to do? I use to be able to go into my 32 playlists and rearrange my songs now I can’t, I guess I have to start all over and add new playlists, but what is that going to do with my iPod, confuses it? I’m so upset about them changing my iTunes,..

Do you provide services to fix music and photo Libraries that are spread around a Mac and external drive?