How To Move Your Music Library to an External Drive on a Mac

I don't have a Media folder in Music. All my media is in a folder named iTunes. Do I move it the same way you mentioned? Are there any other adjustments I need to make to your process. Well written video. Thanks

Thank you for helping me transfer my music to an external drive. Can you or anyone in the comment section explain to me the significance for moving the old media folder to the trash and then emptying it? I moved it to the trash first, but I decided to recover it and keep it on my desktop. Not sure why, but I kept it there but it does not have my old music in it (for example, if I download an album, it will be the only album for that particular artist, as if it's updating the entire media folder; all of this is happening without the external drive, once the external drive is plugged in, I can access all my old music).

This is actually NOT moving the Music library, you're only moving the Media file in this example which is a MUCH smaller file. For example, my Media file is only 2.86 GB whereas my Music file, which contains the Media file, which does have all the ripped music is 549.54 GB in size. In your example, the music itself will stay where it is and only the Media file will move. You have to move the ENTIRE Music file which is located in the Users file in the user's name file. Once done, you can then relocate the path to it from within the Music app to your external drive.

Are these files now useable to burn and transferable between computers and programs? not just iTunes? I'm trying to upload my collection to digital

Its worked great thank you for the help. However it hasn't organised the music into the original playlists I have made on the iTunes application. is there a way to do this please?

This video was a great help, thank you. The only thing that slowed me down doing this was finding the right folder. Mine was labeled iTunes Media.

I can’t find my extrnal hard drive …. Don’t know where I can find

Excellent video. short and to the point but very throw. Thank You very well done!!!!

I appreciate you sharing your knowledge. It helped me a lot! 🫡💯

helpful thankyou

Concise and clear. A great help.

Great video thank you , what I would like to do is keep my music on my current laptop and transfer the files to the external hard drive for safe keeping how can that be done?

Good tutorial. My question is this: If I download all my music on my Mac to the external hard drive, will it also download all my music from my iPhone and iPad? I don't want to do this. I think sync-ing is an issue, and I also have everything backed up in the iCloud. Help!

Hi. I have a MacBook Pro (Ventura) and have transferred my entire music library to my external HD. Do you know how I can add individual new albums to the existing HD file? For some reason I'm finding this very hard to do! Thanks so much

Very helpful and easy to follow. Thank you!

Thanks so much! Clear, simple, concise. Question: when I want to see these music files in my iMovie audio selection...do I connect my external drive, start up Music, then iMovie and the selections will appear in iMovie? Thanks!

yeah now itunes can't find any song even though i changed the path ...smh

thanx a lot, u saved me a lot of GBs, i was like why my mac looks full....

Thank you so much for this perfectly explained procedure.
You just saved 350 GB on my 1TB SSD internal HD!

How can I add new music that I added to itunes to my external hard drive? I don't always have the hard drive connected i use it as a back up for my itunes.

Very helpful and straight to the point. Thank you, this will help once I received my new mac with a much smaller hard drive than my current computer.

That was a perfect example! Thank you ❤

Wow! Your video gave me exactly what I needed without scrambling my brain with too many options. I thank you. (subscribed) :o)

I don't see the media folder

awesome well done

Hi, do you have a video to convert Apple Music not ITunes from my windows pc to a usb. That would be awesome. Or any ideas or remarks. Thank you.

terrific tutorial - clear concise and straightforward - thanks!

Media doesn’t come up for me

My music is already on an external hd, but space is now limited. Can I use this method to move the music to another external drive. Also, I keep extra files such as covers and scanned cd booklets within the music folders. Will these transfer too?

Don’t have a music folder. Yet another useless tutorial

Thanks for the easy explanation. I did everything as you suggested. However, I'm still missing something. When I click on an album or a song I get a pop-up that says:  

'The song “Right On Time” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?' 

Then it gives me the option to 'cancel' or 'Locate.' If I click on locate it I can find the file on my external hard drive and the link is then established. However, it appears I will have to to do this for every single song in the library which is over 15gb in size. 

Any suggestions on what I'm missing? According to your instructions that link should be establish automatically but for some reason in my case it didn't. Thanks.

Would the same rules / steps apply for Dropbox?

Could you comment on which library file (not media, the actual library database file named Music Library.musiclibrary) the application is now pointing to? Does it point to a file on your external drive or the original one on the Mac's internal HD?

THANK YOU! I watched several videos and this was the best one. Finally got it 😊

Nope - it is still reading from the Media folder on my local drive.

Hi and thank you for such a complicated, yet simple put by an expert.
I would like however to do the opposite, to transfer from my apple usb SuperDrive (music on dvd) to my 2021 MacBook Air, please assist.
Thank You.

How do you play the music that is now on your hard drive?

There is a method where you can create a new folder on the external hdd and just reroute the itunes destination folder to the external hdd. Also another method is that you have to press the cmd key on the apple music/itunes app to change the destination folder. I would assume all of these method works. Or is there really a distinction?

Do you know what the last step (Answering "Yes" to "Do you like to move and rename files...") is accomplishing? Is it needed if the media was "organized" initially? My 3TB library of about 300,000 songs took about 6 hrs to move to an external drive, and this last step is taking in excess of 15hrs. (Still in progress) Just wondering what would have happened if I said "No". Thanks, -Renard

Will my library play on a different Mac if plug in my hard drive into it?

anyone else not see a media folder?

If I go to finder and click on music I don't have a 'media' file.
Instead I have a list of folders including 
Garage Band, 
Audio music apps, 
iTunes and 
Music. 
The Music folder contains Music Library file, and Previous Music Libraries folder. 
The iTunes folder contains folders and files including a folder named iTunes Media. This folder has more than just music in it, it has all the things that iTunes used to have including a Movies folder and Music.
In preferences in Music it says the media folder location is /Macintosh HD/Users/S*******/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media so presumably I could do what you did but instead of going into 'Media' which I don't have, move the Music folder in iTunes and then in the Music app change the media folder to the external drive? 
Or would I be better off trying to work out why I don't have a 'media' file first? Feels like my updates haven't entirely reconfigured everything into the new system of Music, and Podcasts as separate apps

Is this method used for moving the library to a different partition on the Mac's HD?

Good explanation, but what if you had installed Itunes before with a lot of playlists ? How are they imported in the new Music app ??Copy Itunes folder and your instructions for Media Library ? Or are the playlists included in this file ??

THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR THIS!!!

Helped a lot thanks

This is the only tutorial that worked. No one else says to move the old media folder to the trash first, and that seems to have made the difference.

Thanks for the video. I have so much music to to move to the hard drive and this was very informative! Ive been bumbling around until I found this.

Ok I was able to drag a cd to the right folder finally but it goes to the end of my alphabetical list after Z. I’ll change the location back to my Mac to see if that makes a difference and switch back when I’m done.