Music app corrupts files on NAS after metadata edits

Thanks.

I guess I should have added "if only metadata is changed" to my last question. I guess the answer is that while Music holds all metadata in the database (in the .itl as I understand), it also tries to include consistent metadata tags in the sound files (providing some deliberate redundancy).

In terms of my file system, I am using a NAS by QNAP and it is case sensitive (unlike MacOS, which has lead to some other issues with tracks disappearing off the Music/MacOS radar just because I changed the casing on the artists name). I don't think international characters are causing the issue - I have a fair amount of French accents and German umlauts in my database, but the corruption is not restricted to these tracks.

Regarding the read-only filesystem... call me old school, but I keep adding tracks (not just streaming), so cannot see how that would work for me.

I think you're absolutely right to suggest that everything works best on a local drive.

With photo or video editing you will typically move final products to an ultimate storage solution - and my guess is you won't be terribly restricted in the ability to view files from there (am thinking Lightroom for instance). That is different with audio - and in my case, my library (much of it on fairly low compression settings) is simply too large to store on my local drive. Plus the rest of the family would like the ability to stream from non-Apple devices around the house, even when I have taken my MacBook away.

So I'm afraid, I don't think Apple has thought this through well - or maybe Music was never intended to be the kind of Swiss Army knife for audio storage and play-back that I have chosen it to try and make. I feel I'm kind of stuck with it at this stage, though - and I do value the ability to sync parts of my library to my phone all within the Apple ecosystem.