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tiedyemargie

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 11, 2018
7
2
My music library is saved to an external drive.

The path where the music files are located is identified in the Music app under Music/Settings/Files

"Keep Media Music Folder" organized is selected

Issue: When adding music to the library from an external thumb drive, the music app is not actually saving the new music to the external drive. Instead, it is saving the album and track information and still trying to find the new music on the thumb drive.

Example of new track: /USB DISK/Luck and Strange Boxed Set Disc 1/1-01 Black Cat.m4a

Where I would like the new track to be saved: /Music/iTunes/Margie/Library/Music/Music/David Gilmour/Luck and Strange Boxed Set Disc 1/1-01 Black Cat.m4a

I’ve had the music library on an external drive for many years and it didn’t used to do this. I think the new music needs to be ‘imported’ into my music library; however, the option to import isn’t there.

I could manually move the album to the external drive and identify where it has been moved to using "The song “Black Cat” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?”; however, I have 10 albums that need to be added to my library and identifying one track and a time will be very time consuming.

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thank you!


Macbook Pro 2019
macOS: Sequoia 15.3.2
Processor 8-Core Intel Core i9
 
Screenshot 2025-03-24 at 19.20.50.png


Do you have this ticked?
 
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View attachment 2495384

Do you have this ticked?
No, “Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library” is not selected.

I did have that selected previously. The reason it was de-selected is that whenever I would play a track that was purchased from Amazon, the music app would move it from the external drive to the Macbook pro and I didn’t want it to do that.

If I select “Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library” will it add them to the external drive when they are added to the library or the Macbook Pro?
 
No, “Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library” is not selected.

I did have that selected previously. The reason it was de-selected is that whenever I would play a track that was purchased from Amazon, the music app would move it from the external drive to the Macbook pro and I didn’t want it to do that.

If I select “Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to library” will it add them to the external drive when they are added to the library or the Macbook Pro?

If your Music Media folder is on the external drive (and that's where the Music Media folder Location is pointing to), then yes.
 
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