Apple Music library not updating with added tunes on M2 Ultra desktop

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Level 2

190 points

Apple Music library not updating with added tunes on M2 Ultra desktop

(Sequoia on an M2 Ultra desktop/128GB RAM)

In short: my "Music Library.musiclibrary" file doesn't increase in size when adding tunes to my Apple Music.

A bit more detail: a number of times, I've either done the "drag and drop" of a folder of tunes or File > "Add to Library of the same folder. After a lengthy time, the tunes show up in the Apple Music window and even after I've waited for all of the "Determining Gapless Playback" to stop, the "...musiclibrary" file doesn't increase from 52KB (permissions are "read" and "write."). The tunes are on an external drive and, as I said, are reading and showing up in the Apple Music window. Closing the app only or rebooting the computer makes all of the tunes disappear because there's no record of them in ".musiclibrary."

I think my answer to all of this is to add smaller batches, but I'm curious if Apple Music is just overwhelmed by the quantity for some reason and won't register what it's getting.

Any ideas? Thanks!

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Moving large libraries

Mac Studio, macOS 15.0

Posted on Jun 28, 2025 02:10 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

277,729 points

Jun 29, 2025 04:01 AM in response to Rod Stasick

It seems as if Music can sometimes get connected to a secondary cache of the library that doesn't update correctly. Try holding down option when launching Music and use the Choose Library option to explicitly reselect your desired library, normally at ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary where ~ is your user's home folder. It may also help to close music, then reopen, this time holding down both option+cmd which should open the app in its safe mode and may do some useful housekeeping. Now try adding some content and see if the changes hold if you close and then reopen Music.

tt2

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Answer 2

Rod Stasick Author

Level 2

190 points

Jun 29, 2025 08:18 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for your answer. I tried yesterday (and tried again this morning) your suggestion, but it seems that it would be the right answer if I had the opposite problem - which would be if my ".musiclibrary" showed a few hundred MBs of growth, but there were no tunes showing in the Apple Music window. Having to choose a library (which has nothing in it), it tries to show tunes that aren't there. What I have is the opposite of that: .musiclibrary only shows 52KB while the Apple Music window shows 602,569 tunes.

I'm a novice when it comes to this stuff, but it seems to me that when I drag-and-drop large batches - especially from external volumes - Apple Music may defer certain database updates or fail to trigger them properly (maybe to avoid beachballing the UI or maybe sandboxing issues?). It might appear that tracks are imported, but .musiclibrary remains tiny because the database doesn’t commit full metadata or indexing.

Your idea about option+cmd might work and I appreciate your answer there. I still may just try "Add to Library" (to be safe) and just add smaller amounts - "A" to "I" for instance. I tried a very small amount yesterday (2895 tracks) and I had the .musiclibrary increase from 52KB to 2MB.

Again, thanks for your answer. I was just curious if I was doing something incorrectly with the large amount of tunes.

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Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

277,729 points

Jun 29, 2025 10:53 AM in response to Rod Stasick

If the Apple Music interface shows 600k+ tunes then I don't believe that can be coming from a 52Kb database. Perhaps your active database is stored elsewhere? I'm currently connected to around 13k items with a .musiclibrary package that is 142Mb. 😕

Importing a very large number of tracks in one hit is likely to cause issues. Was this previously an iTunes library? If so converting that by option-starting-Music and selecting the .itl should yield better results.

tt2

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Answer 4

Jun 29, 2025 11:22 AM in response to turingtest2

Hi Steve,

I don’t think that the size of the database is contained in .musiclibrary. When I look at the library package file, this shows that Genius file accounts for the bulk of .musiclibrary file. The size of my Apple Music streaming library is similar in size to library that contains my downloaded matched music. I have a library which contains mainly lossless music but the the.music library file is smaller as is the Genius file.

Jim

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Answer 5

Rod Stasick Author

Level 2

190 points

Jun 29, 2025 02:22 PM in response to turingtest2

"If the Apple Music interface shows 600k+ tunes then I don't believe that can be coming from a 52Kb database."

Yes, this is the main subject of what I've been saying in my two posts.

... and, yes, this was part of an iTunes Library, but the ".itl" method and plenty of others haven't worked.

It's taken months to get to the point where I'm at now. This is why I resisted for a very long time in getting a new machine because the Mac Tower with bays was a dream machine where I had no problems for around 15 years, but this new setup is proving to be a nightmare. It's coming up on 7 months trying to get this new machine to work as easily as my past one. It'll happen - it may take a full year.

Also, to Jim, the .musiclibrary file package is essentially a container that holds stuff like "Library.musicdb" - which holds metadata like track info, play counts, tags, artwork, etc. It's the thing that grows the most, so the size of your database absolutely is reflected in .musiclibrary through its different components (primarily: Library.musicdb). Maybe you're thinking of Apple Music streaming libraries which, being cloud-based, rely less on local database sizes.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of transferring a smaller first batch with the hope that over the next few weeks I'll be able to have everything (2+ million tracks) showing in Apple Music as it did in iTunes before. In a few hours, I should be able to see if a smaller amount is small enough to move the needle - finding the "Goldilocks" zone is what I'm doing now.

OK, thanks for the info. I'm guessing that it's too large at any one time for it to handle.

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