You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Importing CDs onto iMac

Hi. I have approximately 400 music CDs I'd like to import to my iMac. My goal is to get rid of the CDs but have access to my music on iCloud so I can access using my iPhone 13, iPad Pro or iMac. It appears downloading will use most of my storage (8GB). Question #1 is am I doing the right thing by importing to my iMac?


Second question is, once I've imported the music to my iMac, how do I move it to iCloud and will it no longer be on my iMac where it takes up so much space?


Thanks!


JL


Posted on Dec 16, 2021 5:03 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 16, 2021 6:00 PM

400 CDs will certainly use a lot more than 8 GB of storage on your Mac. You should be able to import a few at time and then upload them to iCloud if you subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match which requires a monthly (or yearly) fee. For more info, see:

Import songs from CDs into Music on Mac - Apple Support

and make sure you see the 'Need help?' section in:

Turn on Sync Library with Apple Music - Apple Support



8 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 16, 2021 6:00 PM in response to jmose

400 CDs will certainly use a lot more than 8 GB of storage on your Mac. You should be able to import a few at time and then upload them to iCloud if you subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match which requires a monthly (or yearly) fee. For more info, see:

Import songs from CDs into Music on Mac - Apple Support

and make sure you see the 'Need help?' section in:

Turn on Sync Library with Apple Music - Apple Support



Dec 17, 2021 2:34 PM in response to javaliga

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated. I've imported approximately 40 CDs at this time. Now I need to learn how to upload them tot he cloud. Is that included in one of the links you shared? Also, should I be concerned should the Cloud ever fail, for whatever reason, am I in jeopardy of losing my music? If yes, should I download the music onto a hard drive prior to deleting from my Music library? Any other suggestions are greatly appreciated as I'm operating outside my knowledge base here.

Dec 28, 2021 2:32 PM in response to javaliga

I have a bunch of old CDs that aren't even in the iTunes store. How do I get them onto my phone now without iTunes? I don't need a subscription to Apple Music. Things were working so well before I upgraded to Catalina. Now album artwork is lost, or wrong, and I just added some "new" old CDs to my Mac that I can't get onto my phone.

Dec 28, 2021 8:01 PM in response to ed2345

Yes. THAT part of it does. But Music does not see my iPhone like iTunes did, so you cannot add anything new from a CD to your phone unless you pay for either Apple Music or iTunes Match. You can rip CDs all you want and add them to the computer, just like before, but Apple completely ruined the way I used iTunes for the last decade plus when they did this. If the PC version of iTunes still works, I'm going to have to move everything off of my Mac to a PC just for this reason. Just like the newer version of GarageBand, they have removed functionality from a perfectly good application and made it something I cannot use like I did previously.

Importing CDs onto iMac

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.