Songs downloaded from Apple Music don’t work after copying library to new Mac

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Level 1

4 points

Songs downloaded from Apple Music don’t work after copying library to new Mac

I’m trying to transfer my music library from my old MacBook to a newer iMac but 99% of downloaded Apple Music tracks don’t play, though a tiny amount still do. All personal local files play fine. Apple Music songs will work if streamed but if any are downloaded the songs just quickly skip or stay at 0:00.

I had migrated my entire Mac over before and everything seemed to work but I wanted to start fresh so I wiped and have just copied things over. Old Mac is on Monterey and the new on Ventura. The old Mac has been updated over time so music media files have been located under /music/iTunes/, no external drives or split type of thing.

First attempt I copied the .musiclibrary file from old Mac to the new one under the same /Music/Music/ folder. Copied the /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Apple Music/ and /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Music/ folders and put those in /Music/Music/Media/ on the new Mac (Essentially the new normal media layout). Made sure the music settings media storage was /Music/Music/Media/. Upon loading all the songs had correct file paths and no exclamation marks but only downloaded Apple Music songs wouldn’t play. However Cloud library wouldn’t sync and said my library was not recognised, turning sync off and on didn’t fix.

Then I tried the original file structure on the new mac. The .musiclibrary under /Music/Music and the Apple Music and Music folders under /Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ with media set to that. No change.

Decided I would consolidate files on the old Mac. Resulting in the exact same layout I had made on the new Mac but done by the system on the old Mac and probably set the file paths correctly which was evident by a library.xml export. Now only having to copy the /music/music/ folder to the new Mac. Again it said my library wasn’t recognised but this time after turning off and on cloud sync once it now properly syncs, new Apple Music songs get added, but still if they are downloaded they don’t play. Again all tracks show their correct file paths in their info. No exclamation marks. It just skips over them. Re-downloading tracks again changes nothing.

Tried:

Swapping media file locations back and forth and saying yes or no to moving/organising.

Deauthorising and authorising

Signing in and out of music

Turning on off the sync cloud library

Restarting Mac or closing music after making changes

Copying just the .musiclibrary file and downloading Apple Music songs again, still doesn’t play

Giving file access or read & write to music

Copying Data from com.apple.AMPArtworkAgent

Online/offline doesn't change anything

The only time downloaded Apple Music songs work is a brand new .musiclibrary file. If you download them and then replace the file with a copy from the old Mac it still plays. So something to do with the .musiclibrary from my old Mac which it doesn’t like.

Posted on Jan 21, 2025 9:33 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

275,532 points

Jan 22, 2025 9:05 AM in response to Bazzjay

Hi,

A cloned library, where everything is in the same place on the two systems, and the permissions are all correct, will usually work, or a least it has done with Apple Music AAC files in the past. That said, Apple Music contains DRM, Apple may choose to block attempts to copy content from one machine to another, and it might be more rigorous with the higher quality content that it can now download. You certainly cannot import locally stored AM content into an empty library. If it won't work then I'd just go with downloading all of the Apple Music content from source. You can select the existing content, right-click > Remove Download, and then right-click Download, either en masse or in suitably sized batches.

tt2

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Answer 2

Bazzjay Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 22, 2025 7:15 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks turingtest2,

Yes I thought technically it should work but it is Apple who likes to protect stuff and like you said DRM which is always a pain. As I guessed my old .musiclibrary file would have DRM linked to it but on top of that potentially linked only to my old Mac, even when I deleted and redownloaded songs from Apple it still wasn't happy. I decided to create a new .musiclibrary file, turn cloud sync on and redownload everything, a pain but it works. If I have to add any of my local things back I will just have to reimport it.

A note that using migration assistant had worked before, but requires system library files which is probably why it worked but would have brought 15 years of bloat.

Again thanks for your help, I always appreciate a legend like you who is keen to help everyone!

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