Backing up iTunes

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Lex_Ley Author

Level 1

8 points

Backing up iTunes

Can I copy my iTunes folder from my mac into iCloud, if there's enough space, rather than an external hard drive?

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jan 29, 2023 4:09 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Jan 29, 2023 5:05 PM in response to Lex_Ley

No. iTunes cannot play content offloaded into iCloud Drive. You can potentially use iTunes Match or Apple Music and then remove local downloads once content has been matched or uploaded, but you should still backup the whole library to an external drive before you go down that route, just in case you accidentally delete something from the cloud that then cannot be recovered.

tt2

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Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,119 points

Jan 30, 2023 10:59 AM in response to Lex_Ley

Ok, understood. Obviously I don't know how big your library is. A standard account gets 5Gb cloud storage. See Manage your iCloud storage - Apple Support if you want to look at increasing that. I try to keep at least three copies of my library, in my case it is two different computers and an external drive.

tt2

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Answer 3

Lex_Ley Author

Level 1

8 points

Jan 30, 2023 4:49 AM in response to turingtest2

Thank you for your reply. It's not that I want to play the music from the backup, I just want a copy somewhere in case my laptop dies or the external hard drive gets damaged. I had an external hard drive but it stopped working so I thought instead of buying a new one it would be easier to use the cloud. I know there's iTunes Match but I tried this once and it replaced some of my tracks with different versions, which was annoying.

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