Music migration to MacMini - Cleanup questions

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Level 2

237 points

Music migration to MacMini - Cleanup questions

Hi for context - just moved my music library from iMac (BigSur 11.7) to M4 MacMini (Sequoia 15.1.1). Didn't use Migration Asst, copied from backup drive. Launched the musiclibrary, Updated Cloud Library and ran Get Album Artwork as a lot of art went missing for some reason. Everything looks fine so far with one issue on HLS Media files (see below). My folder structure is outdated I think, my music is in /<home>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music folder, with Apple Music and Music directories and a bunch of other junk (Podcasts, Movies etc); the musiclibrary file is in /<home>/Music and the Media subdirectory there is empty.

Questions:

HLS Media files from Apple Music downloads won't play, Music just does nothing. If I remove the download then it plays from the cloud OK. I can just remove downloads on anything like this case by case (and see Q2 - these files are huge) to resolve this, but wondering what the issue is
Is there a smart way to optimize/cull Apple Music downloads en masse or based on # plays - I have grown to 135GB of downloaded Apple Music vs. 80GB local music I "own" (purchased/imported) - and that 135GB is included in my local and cloud backups. The main reason to download is to listen on phone without wifi to avoid issues with cellular data. I had automatic downloads enabled on the iMac, so far have turned this off on MacMini. Wondering about dumping a lot of this and figure out what I really need downloaded.
I believe all this data should be under the Media folder but not sure the structure, and the Organize Library/Consolidation function should take care of reorganizing this cleanly in the latest structure. But when I run it, it shows a brief dialog box and seems to do nothing. What to do - anywhere I can look to see what it did or why it did nothing and unblock it, or move the data into the right structure manually?

Mac mini (M4)

Posted on Nov 26, 2024 6:08 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

276,119 points

Nov 28, 2024 6:39 AM in response to ringspa

See also Managing your Mac media libraries - Apple Community.

tt2

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Answer 2

ringspa Author

Level 2

237 points

Nov 28, 2024 6:13 AM in response to ringspa

Made some progress so I'll answer myself in case this helps others

See a bunch of posts about changes to handling HLS Media who knows but seems this version of OS/Apple Music doesn't like HLS Media files downloaded from older versions. Music just goes nuts when it hits one and skips forward to the next thing it can play. Went to Songs view in Music, selected View/Only Downloaded Music, added the "Kind" attribute to the view, sorted on that, selected all the HLS Media files and right clicked, Remove Download.
Apple Music got nicely cleaned up when I did a consolidation...
This needs a combination of changing the folder location and then running the consolidation, so

Settings / Files / "Reset" music media folder location. I have the two things under it checked. This didn't do much on its own I assume that just takes effect for new stuff.
File / Library / Organize Library. That copied all the Apple Music, Music and a few videos classified as Movies for whatever reason under the Media folder. The Music folder was 1-1 vs. old version other than a few anomalies where I had some dupe files that got swapped around or some renaming/capitalization (I use GoodSync to do all my backups and it has the option to analyze differences between folders). The Apple Music went from 115GB to 50GB!! The old Apple Music folder had a lot of stuff I don't recognize. I can only think at some point I downloaded some of those apple playlists by mistake and got a bunch of junk which never cleaned itself up.

I have now managed to delete by iTunes folder!!! Bye Bye iTunes!

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