The Mac Music app has broken my workflow

[Killahurts]

I got a new machine a few months ago for the studio. I'm recording a new record now, and I went to create a playlist in Music (formerly iTunes, and a very unfortunate choice for the new name, IMO). I wanted to add/manage songs that I'm working on in DP, into the playlist, so I can push them to my phone for referencing on the go. I used to just take the exported files and drag/drop them into the playlists. Now I can't do that. I have to import them into the Music library, then go hunt them down in there to put them on my playlist. I can't find a way around it, so I'm looking into other music management software.. maybe you guys have some suggestions?

I should be able to drag anything onto anything. This is a Mac for goodness sake!

[mhschmieder]

I thought I was the only one. This change caught me blind-sided and I have not yet found a workaround. Furthermore, as you pointed out, it is now much harder to find stuff in one's library, including recently added material, and classical music now requires a time-consuming sequence of various search terms in order to locate.

[mikehalloran]

Yes, everything's changed but it's all still there — somewhere. My play lists haven't changed. Search is now in the upper left instead of upper right like Mail and many other apps.

Some functions have been moved from the Music app however. Since they are not Music, that actually makes sense but things were working well the other way.

File exchange, backup and sync are found in Locations along with your volumes and servers. Plug a device in or if it's charging, it will show up in the lefthand column. Click to open and go from there.

No doubt, there's a tutorial or support doc somewhere but I'm too busy to look for it.

[Killahurts]

Some functions have been moved from the Music app however. Since they are not Music, that actually makes sense but things were working well the other way.

Well that's just it- they got rid of all that stuff to have a dedicated music app, but then we lost important functionality with actually managing our music. iTunes is still better, even with all that baggage.

Maybe it will be like FCPX was, and be back to full functionality in a few years, lol!

[pencilina]

I ran into this same issue a while back and found this $4 ios solution and I never worry about dealing with apple music apps anymore for listening to stuff I'm working on. It also has some cool NAS features and an FTP mode useful for all sorts of devices:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/liveplaye ... 1317614423

(there are actually two apps on the app store with the same name- I'm referring to the mobsoft one with the blue cloud icon)

It can be glitchy at times but works generally works really well.

[HCMarkus]

If you can sort by Date Imported (like in iTunes) that could ease your pain.

[monkey man]

Exactly what I was going to ask about, Sir Markus.

As long as one can still add the column via right-click, everything should be able to be sorted this way.

[mikehalloran]

same here, the Mac Music is a mess :/

I don't agree other than it's not intuitive — but neither were the two versions of iTunes before it. We learned then and will with this.

If you can sort by Date Imported (like in iTunes) that could ease your pain.

Yes you certainly can but few seem to know how. It's easy (again, not intuitive):

In the Music app on your Mac, click Songs under Library in the sidebar. Now ⌘j (or from the menu bar, click on View/Show View Options). Among the many View Options are various date fields.
https://support.apple.com/guide/music/p ... 258611/mac

You can also do this within your Smart Playlists
https://support.apple.com/guide/music/i ... 1/mac/11.0

You still have them sorted automatically by Today, This Week, This Month etc. in the Recently Added section — no changes there.

Well that's just it- they got rid of all that stuff to have a dedicated music app

That's exactly what Apple did.

It took me a little time to look in three places (Music, App Store, Locations) for what I used to find in one (old version of iTunes), then two (recent iTunes, App Store) but we all know that Apple never backtracks on stuff like this.

So, moving forward it is.