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

I did that for a song. I found a duplicate that had a 1.m4a, moved it, deleted it from the library. Then I ran the duplicate pointing to the right version. There's no reason to keep the 1.m4a version I moved to my desktop. Doing this a few thousand times will get rid of the 1. duplicates.

I can wait to do that until I have resolved the /music/ /music/music/ issue though. That appears to be the big confusion for me.

I used the menu Music > Preferences > Files > Reset. That didn't take long, but I am not finding any change. There are albums in /music/ that are not in /music/music/ There is a /music/media which only contains an empty folder called "Automatically Add to Music.localized". There is not a /music/music/music media file.

My "Music Library.musiclibrary" is in /music/.

I then tried File > Library > Organize Library > Consolidate Files. I checked both "Consolidate files" and "Reorganize the files in the folder "Media", which has been greyed out in the past. This process took a couple of minutes.

Now it looks as though the albums from /music/music/ are now in /music/media/, although the first album that I looked at now has a 1.m4a duplicate that it didn't have before.

But none of the albums from /music/ are there.

I haven't checked them all yet, I suspect all of the remaining (!) are deleted songs. I'm willing to lose them. I'm thinking I should look at each album in /music/ and drag any songs that /music/music/ is missing over to there.

Yeah, I've tried most of those. Here's a screen print showing what I have:

Notice that I have copies of the songs that include blue stars and play counts. Those are the versions on Apple Music. But the (!) indicates that if I search for those songs, they won't be found. I can find the songs, but that is tedious with as many as I have. Very tedious. Also, I see that there are two versions of 1812 Overture in the "Sample Surround" folder. In this case, the one I want to keep is the original, but sometimes it isn't. It looks like I have hours and hours of work ahead of me to make sure the right version is pointing to the right song and others are deleted.

Yes, I have Apple Music.

It’s interesting that the exclamation marks disappeared after I rebooted.  Clicking on Library/Organize Library gave me the option to Consolidate Files, but not to Reorganize the files in Music.  Doing this got the exclamation marks back.

I went to a smaller playlist, right-clicked a song, and was not given an option to “Show in Finder”. I used a utility to find that song, and found it in music/Apple Music.  OK, I have a couple of hundred songs which I only have because of Apple Music, out of my 13,477 songs that my Music App shows.  

I suspect that maybe 5-6 thousand of those songs are duplicates with the exclamation marks.  I don’t see a way to sort my songs into exclamation mark order.

Changing thousands of songs one at a time won’t be an easy task.

I picked a song, “The 59th Street Bridge Song”.  The first copy had the double cloud icon, and it pointed to where it belong in the finder.  The second copy did not give me an option of finding it.  So I told it to remove download.  Then it had the download cloud icon.  I clicked on it.  I could show it in finder.

Funny thing is, the “show in finder” for these two copies of the song are confusing.  The newly downloaded song is in music\music\Simon & Garfunkel\Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits\ in a directory by itself.  Cloud status is “uploaded”.  So I deleted that downloaded song altogether.

Trouble is, the remaining version shows that I played it once, not 77 times.  It lost my meta-data.

Looking at various songs, I see cloud status of “Duplicate”, “Uploaded”, “Waiting”, “Matched”, & “Error”. Sorting by cloud status is not the same as sorting by exclamation mark.

So it’s looking that I need to go through my songs, select 5-6 thousands one-by-one that have exclamation points, and then delete those songs, starting over with meta-data?!?!  This looks like a candidate for Doug’s AppleScripts, except I really, really want to keep my meta-data with the copy of the song that I keep.

"List MIA" demo mode found 5846 files as unavailable/inaccessible. I picked one randomly. On my Music app, I see the version with a (!) is the version that has a play count. It appears that if I upgraded "List MIA", and ran it, I would lose that play-count (and maybe other meta data.

I haven't been able to find an e-mail for Doug. Maybe I need a different script.

I've been trying that for a few days, but it is a slow, slow process. Sometimes I end up with 2 entries pointing to the same song the same place, and sometimes I'm left with a song.mp3 and a song1.mp3. But I think those may go away when I consolidate the library again.

Doug's utility found 5846 files. So I just pointed a (!) song to the correct place and ran it again. It found the same number.

When I download a song from iCloud it doesn't go where I want.

For instance, I have a song that is duplicated. I looked at the one copy which is in:

/Users/HBrazee/Music/Compilations/Doo Wop's Golden Age (1957-1959)/3-15 16 Candles.m4a

I right-click the (!) one, remove the download, then download again. It gets downloaded here:

/Users/HBrazee/Music/Music/Compilations/Doo Wop's Golden Age (1957-1959)/3-15 16 Candles.m4a

There is just the one song in that folder, while the rest of the album is in the other location.

In my Music/Preferences/Files, I see my Music Media Location is /Macintosh HD/Users/HBrazee/Music

That other music folder messes me up.

When I try to Get Song Info with an (!) song, I get a pop-up asking me "The song “You're Nobody Until Somebody Loves You” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?". I didn't realize that if I cancelled, it would show the Get Info data anyway!

file:///Users/HBrazee/Music/Music/Ray Charles/The Essential Collection/14 What'd I Say 1.m4a

/Users/HBrazee/Music/Ray Charles/The Essential Collection/14 What'd I Say.m4a

Interesting that the (!) version included the prefix "file://" that is not in the other version.

Checking random songs, I see a bunch of non (!) duplicates in the same /music/ locations with both 1.m4a and .m4a versions.

I also have some duplicate artist folders that have songs split between them.

I have a "Music/Apple Music" folder and a "Music/Music" folder. I have folders for Nat King Cole and for Nat "King" Cole (I should be able to fix that easily). I think that some of the albums are split between Music and Music/Music.

I think you're saying none of my <[Album]Artist> folders should be in /music/ but they all should be in /music/music. Is that correct? (Odd). Should I merge the folders that are in the wrong place to the right place?

I have copied the Apple Script and saved it into my Applications file.

I have a question. Do I have to just select songs with broken links, or can I select a bunch of songs?

(It will be hard to select all of the songs with broken links as I don't see a way to sort them and there are thousands). The only way I can even see that some songs have broken links is to select them or to organize my library.

(I'm afraid my ignorance may have created most of my problem to begin with, so I'm being very careful now).

Interesting, I tried various files by selecting a song and copying he path to its song. Then I run the script and it processes 1 song but updates 0. I tried with a song with a 1.mp3 and its corresponding song, and I tried a song that is the same title as a (!) song, with the same result.

If I select the path of a (!) song, it wants me to "Select the media folder you wish to find missing tracks in". So I looked for where it thinks it is, and got a file not found result. I tried again where the song really is and selected its folder, but the file wasn't found. I'm guessing wrong about what I'm supposed to do, sorry.