Uploading my own songs to Apple Music

[smoledman]

Let's say the itunes library location is at:

/Users/[user name]/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media

and I add to library from an external hard drive where I keep my "master collection".

I know that the songs will get copied from external master location to iTunes media library location and than uploaded. However what happens when I add new songs to the "master collection"? Would I have to remember to manually add them to iTunes every friggen time? Apple doesn't seem to care about these type of users who have mixed music collections.

 

[Julien]

Your tread title asked about uploading music to AM. However you question seems to be about automatically adding tracks to your local Library from an external HD called 'Master Collection'. To iTunes your Library is your 'Master Collection' and your external HD is just a 'backup'. If you add music to a 'backup' HD named 'Master Collection' iTunes doesn't know since it only actively monitors the iTunes Library.

 

[skiltrip]

I do what you do with Apple Music.

I tried doing the master iTunes library sync with iCloud Music Library and it was the typical mess. Wrong artwork, mismatched live versions of songs, etc.

So I created a new empty library.

The main idea was to eliminate redundancy. I see no reason to upload my own albums that are already on Apple Music.

You are right that if you have you master library open and add albums to it, your secondary library knows nothing about that activity. But that's a good thing. You want them isolated. I know I do, and was the point of making that second library.

I just keep my secondary library open in iTunes, open Finder, navigate to my master library's music directory, and drag in the audio files I want to add to the secondary library.

I've been thrilled since doing this. My Apple Music library is nice and tidy and organized now with significantly less errors and issues.

 

[swandy]

I do what you do with Apple Music.

I tried doing the master iTunes library sync with iCloud Music Library and it was the typical mess. Wrong artwork, mismatched live versions of songs, etc.

So I created a new empty library.

The main idea was to eliminate redundancy. I see no reason to upload my own albums that are already on Apple Music.

You are right that if you have you master library open and add albums to it, your secondary library knows nothing about that activity. But that's a good thing. You want them isolated. I know I do, and was the point of making that second library.

I just keep my secondary library open in iTunes, open Finder, navigate to my master library's music directory, and drag in the audio files I want to add to the secondary library.

I've been thrilled since doing this. My Apple Music library is nice and tidy and organized now with significantly less errors and issues.

So, if I understand correctly, what you have done is basically duplicated your "master" library with Apple Music listings and only added those albums from your existing library that you wanted but did not exist for one reason or another in Apple Music. Interesting idea as I have a lot of live albums (both official releases and from other sources) that were badly mis-matched.
However, if you don't mind me asking, how large was your original library? Mine is over 50,000 tracks and just the idea of finding all those albums manually - meaning the ones that are in Apple Music - gives me a headache just thinking about the task. Thanks.

 

[smoledman]

My "master collection" is simply a bunch of files on an external hard drive. It's not in iTunes. I figured out there is no other option except manually add the new songs to iTunes from time to time. There is no automatic monitoring of a 2nd location since Apple really just wants you to buy all your music from iTunes. My music is sourced from CD rips, Amazon music, iTunes and some others.

 

[skiltrip]

So, if I understand correctly, what you have done is basically duplicated your "master" library with Apple Music listings and only added those albums from your existing library that you wanted but did not exist for one reason or another in Apple Music. Interesting idea as I have a lot of live albums (both official releases and from other sources) that were badly mis-matched.
However, if you don't mind me asking, how large was your original library? Mine is over 50,000 tracks and just the idea of finding all those albums manually - meaning the ones that are in Apple Music - gives me a headache just thinking about the task. Thanks.

You got it exactly. My personal library is large, though not 50k large I don't think. I think I have about 23-35k. Don't worry about adding albums all at once manually. Add them as you think of them. When you feel like listening to ABC, search for it, hit the little plus symbol and then play it. There's no rush to get it all added. It's all there in Apple Music anyway. It only helps when you're looking to browse your own collection, which you probably aren't doing anyway with 50k songs.

I've actually enjoyed brainstorming about the music I wanted on there first. It actually made me realize how much music that I own that I don't truly love, and haven't felt the need to add it right away.

 

[Tech198]

Would I have to remember to manually add them to iTunes every friggen time?

Not really. The only way i know is whatever songs you add to the "Automatically add to iTunes" folder will automatically be imported on opening of iTunes.

Your still gonna have to copy files into this folder anyway, so just copy all your music (not the files, but the folder structure album/artists) into the "Automatically add to iTunes"

This way when u copy/add new music from master to this location, it will auto import upon opening of iTunes. and since "keep folders organized" is checked, it will automatically move this to to the artists/album