Do you have to sync Music library with Apple Music?

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Level 1

32 points

Do you have to sync Music library with Apple Music?

This might sound long-winded, but hopefully 1 or many.of you can help. I don't think the Apple agent understood what I was asking.

Do you NEED to enable library sync to iCloud when subscribed to Apple Music? Can I use it solely as a streaming service (like Spotify)?

I'm old school. I have a 500,000+ song Library on my Mac. It's 80% comprised of my 10,000+ CD collection that I ripped to MP3, all the metadata, manually added the correct artwork, etc., the rest is all purchased from iTunes. I create playlists and sync my music to my iPhone.

When I tried the free trial of Apple Music a few years ago, it made me upload everything to the cloud, and it changed everything on me. Band names were wrong, song titles were changed, tracklistings were wrong.

I'm starting to have some interest in trying Apple Music again, but don't want to mess up everything again.

Should I stick with where my loyalty lies? Or is this a case where going to another streaming service is my best bet?

Mac mini, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 19, 2021 9:44 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Jimzgoldfinch

Level 7

28,429 points

Oct 20, 2021 12:22 AM in response to Xtinktor

Hi,

You could consider using multiple libraries. Use multiple libraries in Music on Mac - Apple Support.

One library could be used for Apple Music where you can opt to add specific tracks that are not on Apple’s servers, the other for your music.

Jim

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Answer 2

tuong66

Level 1

70 points

Oct 20, 2021 4:51 PM in response to Xtinktor

I had exactly the same concern since I have a huge collection of CDs that I imported into Music as lossless alac files.

I ended up with the following solution.

I created two distinct user accounts on my Mac Mini.

With the first user account, I don’t configure an Apple Music account in Music, so that I can import only my local music and be sure that Music will not mess up my library with the online content.

With the second user account, I configured my Apple Music account and checked the Sync Library option. With this user, I use only Apple Music online content.

On both user accounts, I setup music sharing, giving different library names (“Music” and “Apple Music”) so that I can remotely control both libraries from the iTunes Remote app on my iPhone and iPad.

Of course, I log in both user accounts using fast user switching when booting the Mac, then leave my Mac always on as my music server.

With the first library containing my local music, I usually do lossless airplay to m’y airplay speakers and my AVR which supports airplay.

With the second library, containing albums from online Apple Music subscription, I play the Apple Music hi-res lossless files directly through HDMI, the HDMI port of my mac mini being connected to my AVR acting as a DAC - I set the Audio Midi Setup settings on 8 channels 24 bits 96Khz.

That allows me to launch both music types remotely.

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Do you have to sync Music library with Apple Music?

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