Compare Music libraries and import songs from one library into another

Question

Compare Music libraries and import songs from one library into another

I have a Music library on an external disk drive which is different from (and somewhat larger than) my System Music library that is synched to the Cloud. How can I compare the contents of these two libraries and import into the larger, external, unsynched library those songs in the System library that are missing from the external one? I've read the Music Help instructions about using Family Sharing to import from one computer to another, but I haven't been able to make that work.

MacOS 13.2.1 on a 2019 MacBook Pro

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.2

Posted on Mar 1, 2023 6:13 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,329 points

Mar 2, 2023 4:15 AM in response to TylerTruthful

If you want a larger library that contains everything you enable Sync Library in each library you have and merge them all through the cloud. Calculating the set {Internal/Cloud}-{External} isn't something that can be easily achieved. There is probably a way to export each library as CSV data, create a unique ID for each track that is location independent but reflects similar metadata (e.g. remainder of location below the media folder), then compare the two sets of IDs looking for tracks that are uniquely part of {Internal/Cloud} but not in {External}. And they you're still left with the puzzle of how to turn this data into something you can import. All a bit of a faff. Depending on the sizes involved it might be easier to scan the media folders side by side and just copy over what you want from one to the other. Then reimport the media folder of the external library to grab all the new content.

tt2

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