Changing music location and rebuilding music database

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Changing music location and rebuilding music database

I need to change the location where the Mac OS music app finds my music. I previously had my music on a remote drive in my home. I am living elsewhere for some time and have brought my music files along on a portable drive. In the music app preferences, under Files, I have changed the Music Media folder location to point to the music files on the portable drive. I also trashed the old Music database in ~/Music/Music/media. After restarting Music, it still seems to be reading some hidden copy of its old data base from somewhere, and it tries and fails to find the music files on the remote drive, to which of course it no longer can connect. I haven't found a way to make it start over and rebuild its database. Can someone help?

Posted on Nov 13, 2020 2:46 PM

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fredgoodman Author

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Nov 13, 2020 4:24 PM in response to fredgoodman

I figured this out. It's very non-intuitive. Delete the folder ~/Music/Music, containing the old database. In my case, this did not contain any actual media files that I would want to save Start Music.app while holding the option key. Select create a new database, choosing the standard location ~/Music. This creates a new folder ~/Music/Music containing an empty database. Then under preferences choose the location of the actual media files. Import the actual media files into the new data base.

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Changing music location and rebuilding music database

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