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best way to back up Music

Now that we no longer have iTunes, what is the best way to manually back up Music and all artwork, etc.


I will use Time Machine, but I want another back up

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Oct 20, 2019 8:10 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 22, 2019 2:18 AM

Assuming your library is neatly organized within one folder you can take a one-off snapshot of the library by copying the whole folder to another drive. Efficiently backing up only recent changes would require folder syncing software. In Catalina backing up your media has become more complicated as the single iTunes library has been replaced by separate libraries for Music, TV, Podcasts, and Books, with last two living in hidden locations within ~/Library. The Music artwork cache is also now in a hidden folder so typically wouldn't be captured in a simple backup.


tt2

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 22, 2019 2:18 AM in response to megabytes

Assuming your library is neatly organized within one folder you can take a one-off snapshot of the library by copying the whole folder to another drive. Efficiently backing up only recent changes would require folder syncing software. In Catalina backing up your media has become more complicated as the single iTunes library has been replaced by separate libraries for Music, TV, Podcasts, and Books, with last two living in hidden locations within ~/Library. The Music artwork cache is also now in a hidden folder so typically wouldn't be captured in a simple backup.


tt2

Oct 20, 2019 1:31 PM in response to megabytes

Time Machine will back up the same way it did before iTunes was removed. The source data, your local music files and artwork etc.. is in the same place it was before. The only difference is the app that "plays" the music is not the same as the app that "manages" the music.


Use another external USB drive to mirror your Time Machine drive.

best way to back up Music

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