Importing CDs onto iMac

400 CDs will certainly use a lot more than 8 GB of storage on your Mac. You should be able to import a few at time and then upload them to iCloud if you subscribe to Apple Music or iTunes Match which requires a monthly (or yearly) fee. For more info, see:

Import songs from CDs into Music on Mac - Apple Support

and make sure you see the 'Need help?' section in:

Turn on Sync Library with Apple Music - Apple Support

When you rip a CD, it does not matter if the songs are in the Store or not. Just rip according to this procedure:

Import songs from CDs into Music on Mac - Apple Support

Music works the same way as iTunes.

Starplot,

When you connect your phone to the computer via USB, it will show up in Finder, not in Music. You do not need a subscription. See details in here:

Use the Finder to sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod with your computer - Apple Support

I have a bunch of old CDs that aren't even in the iTunes store. How do I get them onto my phone now without iTunes? I don't need a subscription to Apple Music. Things were working so well before I upgraded to Catalina. Now album artwork is lost, or wrong, and I just added some "new" old CDs to my Mac that I can't get onto my phone.

Yes. THAT part of it does. But Music does not see my iPhone like iTunes did, so you cannot add anything new from a CD to your phone unless you pay for either Apple Music or iTunes Match. You can rip CDs all you want and add them to the computer, just like before, but Apple completely ruined the way I used iTunes for the last decade plus when they did this. If the PC version of iTunes still works, I'm going to have to move everything off of my Mac to a PC just for this reason. Just like the newer version of GarageBand, they have removed functionality from a perfectly good application and made it something I cannot use like I did previously.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. It still baffles me why splitting iTunes functions up into pieces was a good idea. I know iTunes had its detractors, but I had learned to like it the way it was. Now I can get back to digitizing vinyl records. :)

Hi Starplot,

Glad it helped. Good luck with that digitization project. :-)

Ed.