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Itunes match wants to download everything again after MacBook rebuild

I've recently rebuilt my Macbook Pro and I'm now trying to get my Music library working correctly.


All my music media is stored on a NAS (/media/itunes) mapped on a NFS share. I have pointed the music media location to this. The Music app (1.0.3.1) sees all my music (56,000 tracks) but each track has the download icon next to it and the file status is cloud . If I click on the download icon it re-downloads the track into the same folder and adds a 1 to the name tag. So I now have a duplicate file.


Is there a way for Apple Music app to see that all my music is already downloaded and available and match it correctly with the cloud.


I have also noticed that musiclibrary file is now 26.8MB but was over 900MB before the MacBook was rebuilt.


Things I have tried.


Updating Icloud Library

Updating Genius

Resetting the music media folder and then re-applying

Recovering the musiclibrary file from a Time Capsule Backup



BTW. My other IOS devices appear to be OK.

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Mar 11, 2020 2:53 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Mar 11, 2020 7:33 AM

mng70 wrote:

I have pointed the music media location to this.


Changing the media folder location tells the application where to put new downloads in future. It does not cause any discovery of content already in that location. Ideally you would have backed up the Music database before your rebuild, then restored it before running Music for the first time. It should have worked exactly as before. Assuming it is too late to recover a backup of the database at this stage sign out of iCloud Music Library (turn off Sync Library), import the media that is in your media folder, then turn on Sync Library once more. Your locally stored content should get matched up with the iCloud Music Library so you don't have to download everything.


The appearance of an additional Music folder between the named media folder and the artist folders is a legacy from iTunes where between iTunes 9 and 12 the default structure gave each type of media its own subfolder within the media folder. Prior to that artist folders would appear one level higher, mixed in with folders for Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, etc.


tt2

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 11, 2020 7:33 AM in response to mng70

mng70 wrote:

I have pointed the music media location to this.


Changing the media folder location tells the application where to put new downloads in future. It does not cause any discovery of content already in that location. Ideally you would have backed up the Music database before your rebuild, then restored it before running Music for the first time. It should have worked exactly as before. Assuming it is too late to recover a backup of the database at this stage sign out of iCloud Music Library (turn off Sync Library), import the media that is in your media folder, then turn on Sync Library once more. Your locally stored content should get matched up with the iCloud Music Library so you don't have to download everything.


The appearance of an additional Music folder between the named media folder and the artist folders is a legacy from iTunes where between iTunes 9 and 12 the default structure gave each type of media its own subfolder within the media folder. Prior to that artist folders would appear one level higher, mixed in with folders for Podcasts, Movies, TV Shows, etc.


tt2

Mar 11, 2020 6:31 AM in response to mng70

It appears that Music and ICloud is looking at media folder "/media/itunes/music" and not "/media/itunes" as defined in the preferences.


This means it isn't seeing my existing files. I have set music media selection to where my files exist but it always saves to a music sub-folder. I've also tried un-checking the two check boxes below.


Any ideas?


Itunes match wants to download everything again after MacBook rebuild

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