Apple Music How to migrate large iTunes library to Apple Music while maintaining star ratings.

[darngooddesign]

I'm planning on getting a new MBA tomorrow, but for financial reasons I'm looking at getting a 512gb refurb. The main thing which normally forces me into the 1TB option is a 300GB library of ripped and purchased music which I always store locally and internally. I'm planning on signing up for the family music plan so I have a two questions.

1. I realize that I will have to manually add some of my ripped music because it won't be available, but how do I get Apple Music to closely match my library?

2. I use smart albums based on star ratings to organize what gets synced over to my iPhone and iPad, how do I get Apple Music to retain my star ratings on albums which would be streamed?

 

[Phil77354]

It looks like you posted this almost a week ago, so this may be too late to be of use, but I'll offer my thoughts and then perhaps you can let us know what you ended up doing.

My first comment would be - are you not backing up your computer to an external drive (using Time Machine or something equivalent)? If you aren't, I would sure suggest that you begin doing that, particularly when you have such a large music library that is stored on your laptop.

My experience with Apple Music is that it is transparent in dealing with my own library, and I don't worry about what may or may not also be in their own available library for matching. The vast majority of my music library is ripped from my owned CDs, very little beyond that.

When you are synch'd with Apple Music then my experience is that all of your personalization, including how you rate albums, is maintained. You're implying that Apple Music does not retain those ratings? That doesn't sound right to me.

 

[drcharlie]

I have spent decades curating my library. I'm paranoid about losing my ratings. In the old days, I used all of the star ratings (0 unrated, 1 don't listen to, 3 good, 4 very good, 5 favorite). Eventually, I switch to a binary system of dislike/love. What I do is I use Apple's Love/Dislike. I also give Love 5 stars and Dislike 1 star. Finally, I give Love a "5" in the Comments field and Dislike a "1" in the Comment field. As long as the Comment field is populated with either 1 or 5 in the file itself, you can always make a Smart Playlist that only calls up the songs where Comment = 5 or Comment = 1. Even if somehow the heart or broken heart (Love) field info gets corrupted, one could fix it by a Smart Playlist sorting on the Comment Field (or the stars field, for that matter).

 

[darngooddesign]

I have spent decades curating my library. I'm paranoid about losing my...

Same here so I have backups should the transition to Apple Music screw something up.

Has anyone noticed AM changing your custom song or album names on either the computer where the music is stored locally or a device where you are just streaming like an iPad, after clicking on sync your music library? What about with Apple Lossless replacing lower res music files with iTunes Match which is part of AM?

 

[darngooddesign]

Here is what I've done so far.

Over the years I have have been optimizing my library by liking 6 songs per album and 12 songs per compilation, with half and half of three and five stars; this was the only way I could manage to have some of everything I like on my iPhone or iPad without having to go above 256GB, this will also allow me to download the lossless versions of my music without running out of drive space on my MBP. I backed up total music folder, deleted all tracks without star ratings bringing my library from 238GB to 130GB, and turned on Sync Library. Its currently chugging through the 20k or so tracks.