Can I change the location of a song in Catalina Music?

With those two songs what do you see for them for the location under Get Info > File tab? The full and exact path if you can. Replace your user name with <User> if needed. You could potentially right-click and remove download for the first song, then right-click and add to library for the second one. That might assimilate the accessible track into the cloud library while preserving the play count.

tt2

Sort the Song list as Album by Artist, then select all of the tracks by artists that begin with A and run the script again. Where you have both variations such as this:

and there are broken links the script will always pick the second track first so there is a risk that you may end up with two entries in the database connected to the same physical file (something I call a logical duplicate). Depending on how long it takes to do artists beginning with A, and how many failures that throws up, you might want to proceed one letter or time or go for the whole library.

I suggest we leave the niceties of deduping until after the broken links are resolved however if you want a brief grounding take a look at Duplicate songs in iTunes - Apple Community. Consolidating the library into the default media path of /Users/HBrazee/Music/Music/Media would remove the logical duplicates (each entry gets consolidated independently while the original file is left in place), which should make it safe to eliminate content that iCloud Library has already flagged as duplicates, deleting the underlying files at the same time, so as to clean up the resulting media folder and leave you the tracks with ratings and play counts. Turning keep orgainzed off and then on again will tidy up any trailing digits in the files that remain.

See Handling grey stars - Apple Community for more on what those are about and how you can eliminate them if desired. Definitely lower down on the priorities right now.

tt2

Hello Howard,

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities! I understand that you'd like to correct the location where certain songs are stored on your Mac running macOS Catalina. The path for some music files also point to a copy of the song, instead of the original file. I would be happy to help with next steps to correct this.

The "Change where imported files are stored" section in the resource below will walk you through how to change the location for the songs. You may also want to follow the additional steps to consolidate your files in the Music folder after:

Change where your music files are stored on Mac - Apple Support

To find and remove duplicates of a song, follow these steps:

Find items and duplicates in Music on Mac - Apple Support

Cheers!

Hi, you've got a couple of things going on here, broken links to tracks, duplicates in the library, and in the media folder. I assume from the icons that you've also got an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription. One way of fixing the tracks that show with an exclamation mark is to right-click and use the remove download option. You can then either reimport your locally stored copy or download from the cloud. Doing this should preserve your play counts and ratings. Once every locally stored file is connected to the library you should have some that are marked as duplicates - see Identify cloud status icons in your music library on your Mac or PC - Apple Support. You should be able to sort by status and delete the duplicates along with their underlying files in the media folder. Finally turning keep organized off and on again should rename any files in your media folder that have a trailing 1 in their file name. Test the process with a single album's worth of tracks (remove downloads for broken links, import local files, eliminate maked duplicates, etc.) Assuming that behaves as I've described repeat with the rest of the library.

See also https://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php - List MIA's, Super Remove Dead Tracks, Media Folder Files Not Added and similar scripts might prove useful when cleaning up the library. As always, start with a backup.

tt2

See FixLinks - an AppleScript to repair broken links in Music - Apple Community for the script. I've tested it by adding some tracks into an empty test library, copying the contents of the media folder to a higher folder, deleting what is in the media folder and emptying the trash, then selecting the tracks in Music, running the script, and pointing it at my higher level folder where the artist and compilations folders are. It should correctly predict the locations for a variety of media kinds, deals with missing artist or album values, and should make the same character substitutions that Music and iTunes do for

/ ? < > \ : * | " to underscore. MPEG-4 video can be linked if stored with either .mp4 or .m4v file extension and tracks with a trailing " 1" in the filename can be linked.

Test with a small sample to begin with, then try the rest if successful. If it fails to locate some of your broken content please supply some examples of the true path and the failed guess.

tt2

howardfromlafayette wrote:

I was wondering why you had me select my music.

The script processes selected tracks. Running against the whole library may not be prudent.

Could you put the URL of FixLinks in a comment in the code (and in your reply)?

Done, the updated script is at https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002671

My wife wants me to go shopping right now. I cancelled the script after pressing OK 50 times for not found. I'll try again when I get back (or maybe try your newest version). (I saw that many of the rejections were in /music/compilations). Then I should run it again selecting /music/music?

Yes. Unless I can add in the code to do that automatically before you get back from the shops.

tt2

howardfromlafayette wrote:

Sorry for being so dense..

So do I test it with

/Users/HBrazee/Music/Amanda Palmer/Amanda Palmer Goes Down Under

Then later run it with /Users/HBrazee/Music/ ?

My mistake for not being clearer, and making an error in my suggested start point. As a test you would select the Amanda Palmer tracks in Music, then point the script at /Users/HBrazee/Music/ (I put an extra /Music in). It isn't as clever as my Windows version which has a variable depth search and partial matching. This script is going to look at:

<Target Folder>/<[Album]Artist>/<Album>/[D-]<Name>[ 1].<Ext>

Here I've deliberately renamed a file so it cannot be found. My target folder is /Users/steve/Music/FixLinks, and it is looking in the right folder for the track, but I added a trailing 3 which the script cannot check for so it failed to find it.

True path: /Users/steve/Music/FixLinks/a-ha/Take On Me/01 Take On Me 3.mp3 - if I restore the original filename it would be successful. As I say if you start in /Users/HBrazee/Music/ you should get a high degree of success based on the paths you've shared so far. I can refine the script once I know where it fails.

tt2

The exclamation marks are only shown once the library has had cause to notice that tracks aren't at their expected locations. This is a trick for revealing dead links which I assume still works in Music.

Lost & Found Playlists

Create a playlist called Found, select everything in Music and drag it into the Found playlist. Create a smart playlist called Lost matching only Music items and the rule Playlist is not Found. Your lost tracks will be in this playlist.

I've got Windows scripts for fixing broken links and safely deduping but I can't directly port those to OS X. If you look at Get Info (Cmd+I) for a broken track without trying to fix it and then look at the File tab you should be able to work out where Music thinks that track ought to be. Perhaps it is possibly for you to move things to where they should be. If you can show me the broken path and the real location I might have some insight.

tt2