One of the biggest changes that will come with macOS Catalina is the replacement of the iTunes app. The new Music app will take over management of your existing iTunes music library and it has pretty much all of the functions that iTunes had. Preview what it looks like and see what the Mac Music app can do. Catalina will be released in the fall.
You can also watch this video at YouTube.
Watch more videos about related subjects: iTunes (73 videos), Music (16 videos).
You can also watch this video at YouTube.
Watch more videos about related subjects: iTunes (73 videos), Music (16 videos).
Video Transcript
Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. So one of the biggest changes coming with macOS Catalina is the iTunes app is gone and in its place we've got the Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. Let's take a look at what the Music app looks like in Catalina.
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So I'm using a beta here of Catalina so things may change by the final version. If you look you'll see what looks like the iTunes app icon. The icon is pretty much the same but now it's the Music app. So we'll run that. The Music app has a nice clean look because you can tell right away it's missing some of the features of iTunes. It's basically just focused on music. So a lot of the different stuff like podcasting and to be able to rent movies and also being able to sync with your iOS devices, that's all gone and it's just focused on the music.
So the first section here has stuff for Apple Music. If you're an Apple Music subscriber, like I am on my regular account, then you can access the For You and Browse sections here. You've also got the Radio section and of course there's a couple of free radio stations that we can all listen to but the rest of it will be part of Apple Music. So that's the Apple Music section.
Then you've got your Library here. So you have similar things as to what we've seen in the past in iTunes. You've got Recently Added, you've got an Artist View which gives you a list of artists here and then you can scroll through them all and see all the different albums for each artist. You've got an Albums View. You've got a Songs view and this is highly customizable. You've got under View, Show View Options and you can decide what you see there. You can also, of course, Sort in different ways. You can click the Header field here to actually sort really quickly. So all very similar to what we're used to in iTunes.
You can also look by Genres instead of by artists or by composers as well. You also have the iTunes Store a big major part of this. So the term iTunes isn't completely going away. It's still being used for the music store. You can go and browse through the iTunes Music Store just as before. All of your previous purchases are still going to be there for you to download. You can buy new music on a song by song or album basis. You also have the same Genius functionality that we saw in previous versions of iTunes. So you can use that if you like that.
There's a lot of details here. For instance, we have this new view here for Up Next. So instead of it appearing as a drop down menu at the top you can now have this nice slide-in sidebar here so you can see what music is coming up next. Of course if you're looking at songs you can click on the three dots there and you can have it play Next, you can have it play Later so you can add to your Up Next and kind of create this playlist as you go along. It's nice to have it here on the side instead. You can also go to History and see what songs you've listened to that have gone through the list.
This here is the Lyrics. So if you start a song we should normally be able to see the lyrics here. That works with Apple Music. The playback button is up here including the ability to be able to shuffle and loop through the songs. In Preferences it looks a lot like iTunes. You have the ability to have automatic downloads and sync your music library. You can also Show or Not Show things like the iTunes Store though that seems to be always on here in the beta. Playback you can do cross fades and sound check and things like that.
For Files you can set where the Library is. So for Files you can set where your Media folder is located and whether or not things are kept organized. It's all the same as in iTunes. I'm kind of getting this feeling that the Music app really is iTunes with all of the other functions besides music removed. You have Copy the files to the Media Library so you could have files that are external just like before. You can store all your music on an external drive and turn this off and have them added to the Library that way.
Import Settings you could still, when you rip a CD, set it to all the different things you want. A lot of people are afraid things like that would be missing in the Music app but they're not. They are all here. You've also got the Mini Player. So you could bring up the Mini Player in a variety of ways. You've got the Mini Player window here and you could show Up Next and History and also the Lyrics there for that similar to before. You can just switch to the Mini Player so Music goes away and you just have the Mini Player and you close the Mini Player and it comes back. That's all as before.
Also the Visualizer is certainly still there with the regular and classic settings. You can turn that on just as you had in the iTunes app. A lot of people just assumed that would go away but it's definitely still there. You can add to Playlists. You can love and dislike a song. So if you like the old rating system you can turn that back on in Preferences. Star Ratings and now you see that it appears there and you can actually rate your songs. To create Playlists you can go to New Playlist. Playlist from selection. Then once you have a Playlist you can drag and drop songs into it. So I can go back to Songs here and I could drag a song into that Playlist. Now I could also create a Smart Playlist as before. You can set all this different criteria and it automatically updates. All that functionality is still there.
So what's missing? Well, in the beta there's a really important feature that's missing. That's the ability to have multiple iTunes' Libraries. However Apple has a note about this and specifically says this is something going on in the beta. So everybody kind of feels that this will be put back into the Music app before the release of Catalina.
So some of you might be wondering how you sync music to an iPhone, an iPad or an older iPod. If you want to do that you can still do it. It's not in the Music app though like it was in iTunes. Instead it's in the Finder. I'm going to look at that in a future episode. All in all I think this is a huge improvement. It makes more sense have a dedicated music app, have all of your local music, have Apple Music, everything there in one app just like it is in iOS and leave behind the bloated iTunes app that has all sorts of different things.
I'm looking forward for the future podcast you mentioned. iTunes is by far, the most buggy software that I use, but a lot of that is with synchronizing my devices. I remember when iTunes dropped iDevice app support. Apple did not clean up the apps on my Mac, and it did not replace the feature that allowed me to arrange my apps from my mac. I really miss that feature. Will my current iTunes settings automatically get copied to Music?
Howard: Not sure which settings you mean, specifically, but things like playlists and such will move over to the Music app.
Will the music videos I purchased appear with the songs I purchased. I did not see any music videos in your video. Also can I still mix songs and music videos in my playlist
Very good early look at the new Music App Gary. I appreciate your efforts on this video.
I've always loved the iTunes App, despite some people's negative reviews of being too bloated. I've never purchased Apple Music (other than a free 90 day trial version) because I have over 8,000 songs in my library. I have subscribed for years to the "iTunes Music Match" service. Where I can stream all of my music in Apple quality.
Do we know if this function will join the Music App as well?
Thank You
Will all detailed PLAYLISTS automatically/accurately transfer over to Music in Catalina? I spent a 100 hours creating Playlists, TAGS to other favorite Playlists ('Focus Music,' 'Dinner Music', '100 favorite break-up songs',), stars ratings and I don't know how this flow over to the new Music. Advice?
One thing I have not seen is what happens to Macs that are not on Catalina. I have a Mac Mini (2011) that's stuck at High Sierra and is my primary desktop computer. I have extensive iTunes libraries and I use iTunes to feed media to my iOS devices. Will iTunes continue to run on HS (or earlier) and/or will the new Music app work on these earlier machines?
Thanks.
Adam: I see iTunes Match available at the bottom of the iTunes Store in the Music App, yes.
Gregory: All of my playlists came over naturally in Catalina. As a matter of fact, I have devices running Catalina (Music) and Mojave (iTunes) and they both show the same playlists and stay in sync.
Tony: macOS Mojave and earlier have iTunes and you would continue to use iTunes there. The Music app is part of Catalina so you will only see it on Catalina.
Denise: The Music app does handle music videos, yes. I just didn't have any stored on the demo account to show.
Why are my playlists empty, they were made by my own uploaded music ?
Robin: I'm need more information to be able to help you there. Are you using the Music app in Catalina? Are you using Apple Music? Are you signed in to your Apple Music account or iCloud account? What have you done to troubleshoot? If these were your "own uploaded music" then are how are you syncing them to your iPhone? Did you try other options?
Gary. You are the best. Thank you so much for answering my question so quickly. I appreciate it. I have learned so much from the courses I have purchased from you.
Great info - thanks! I am looking forward to this new version. My iTunes library is presently messed up with duplicates, partial albums, bad labels, and similar issues - this new release will motivate me to undertake the unpleasant cleanup task...
what about the "sync Photo albums", sync Ring Tones, etc, features that I use a lot, where are they going ?
Paris: iOS device syncing takes place in the Finder. See https://macmost.com/frequently-asked-questions-about-macos-catalina.html
Gary, Your dedication to contributing to the Apple Fans has inspired me since your first launching the excellent MacMost. Thank you so much! Gregory
Does the 'date added' column remain the same values as the iTunes library or is it updated on import?
My iTunes library is all sorted by date added with newest at the top of playlists.
Ross: It remains the same. There is no "import." Music just picks up the same media library from iTunes.
In iTunes on Mac and iOS you can only create folders for your own playlists, but not Apple playlists that you add to your library. Will the new Apple Music allow us to create folders for Apple playlists?
Lee: No. I'm thinking that it has to do with the nature of those playlists (shared, updatable by someone else) and how folders allow you to view all the songs in all of the playlists in that folder.
Is the browser gone? The way you could see columns on top of the songs?
Mathew: Do you mean the old Column Browser feature? I know that was in iTunes a while back, but not sure when they removed it -- or maybe it was in iTunes until the end. But there is no such function in Music. You can go to Artist view and then you see Artists on the left, and pick one and then you get albums on the right with songs in order for each album. Genres works in the same way.
try COMMAND-B for column view
Column-View was til the end of iTunes available. Back then it was triggerd with COMMAND-B.
Great intro to Music in Catalina. I upgraded yesterday. But I really miss the Browser viewer mentioned by Mathew yesterday. I get the Artist view and all, but I have a very large collection (all ripped CDs, no bootlegs), and consequently I have artists with a lot of albums. The Artist view sorts the albums alphabetically, and to get to an album with a title in the latter half of the alphabet takes a ridiculous amount of scrolling. That's where the old Browser view came in very handy.
Hi! This might be a dumb question, but when syncing music to my iPod in the Music app under Albums there is no option to see what artist that album is by. So I want to sync only selected music to my iPod and I have some albums that are all named the exact same thing, but are by different artists and unless I am missing something, there is no way to tell which album is by which artist. I would have to just sync that artist, but then I would have all albums by that artist, which I don't want...
Anna: Perhaps consider making a playlist then instead?
It appears that all support for organizing the hundreds of CDs (especially boxed sets like all 104 symphonies of Haydn: 1 album, >100 works) that I imported is gone. iTunes for years permitted arbitrary groupings of tracks via a little used mp3 tag. Recent versions kind of introduced support for classical music concept of works and movements, but implementation was clumsy, and transitioning harder. All that seems to be gone now, even the clumsy work/movement.
Just tried to make a personal imovie of photo's and I can't use any songs from apple music, not even the ones I originally purchased through itunes because itunes doesn't seem to exist any more in Catalina. Will one of those Apple music convertors work? Any recommendations? Thanks
Judith: I just tried it and I was definitely able to use the iTunes purchased music and music I had ripped from CDs years ago. The trick is you need to download the song first. So go to the Music app, find the song, Control+click it and Download. Once a copy is stored locally you can use it in iMovie.
I cannot get Music to import new MP3 files. Is this a known issue? Can't find any mention on any forum.
Marco: What are you trying? When I drag and drop an mp3 file into the Music app into the Library section it works for me.
Gary,
I am really struggling with the new music app. It's a breeze to add music onto any of my devices but it looks impossible to edit, delete or playback from the device whilst connected to Mac. Help!!!
Many thanks.
Maish.
Gary,
I did neglect to mention that I have selected "Manually Manage......" in preferences. From a different post of yours I now know how to delete songs or multiple songs from my devices. I still have no idea on how to edit or playback a song while my device is connected to Music. Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Maish: Not sure what you mean by "edit or playback." Edit in what way? If you want to play the song on your Mac, just go to the Library and find the song there.
I like to make playlists of podcasts for extensive driving. I have a lot of saved playlists (music and podcasts). With the new app, unless I have missed something, they have taken away the ability to make a playlist of podcast episodes from different shows. Now I can only use older iPods and iTunes as the podcasts playlists won’t transfer to the podcast app on newer iOS devices. As popular as podcasts have become, I am surprised that more people don’t want to make podcast playlists.
I had several playlist in iTunes but only one has come across to the music app. I have the same playlists on my ipod touch but can't see them or add new songs. I can drag songs across in the music app window but the ipod can't see them. How do I recover my playlists
Malcolm: Perhaps there is an item in those playlists that won't work. I can't guess what that could be, but just an idea.
Interest thought Gary. Guess there's no way to find out. To clarify it's only the playlists that's missing I'm sure the music is all there. Is it possible to recreate the lists from the ipod touch. Cheers
Hello Gary - In the "old days" when for instance an iPod was connected to the Mac it was possible to double click on a song in the iPod library it would play back on iTunes. Sadly this does not happen now with the new Music app. In "old" iTunes it was possible to right click on a song or batch of songs and edit information whilst the device was connected to the computer.I find this impossible to do in the new app. My iPods are 320Gb, iPhone 250 Gb songs not on Mac library nor iCloud
Maish: No, I don't believe you can do that in the Music app. But you can play the song from your Music library instead of your iPod (without even having the iPod connected). Why do you have music on your iPod but not on your Mac? Whatever the reason, doing it that way simply won't work anymore.
My music library is too vast to store on my Mac. I keep multiple external hard drives of store bought CDs as well as music purchased from the iTunes library. I like to connect a iPod or iPhone to the computer on occasion and listen whilst the device is charging etc. I hope that my "problem" is better understood? Thank you for your time.Appreciated.
Thanks for your answer. No it does not work anymore and I'm sad about that. I cannot understand why not though. All best and many thanks for the great service that you provide. All best.
Maish: If you have the the media on external drives, then there is no need to have them on your Mac too. Just set the Music app to NOT "Copy Files to Music Media Folder" and those files remain on the external drives.
where do the playlists created on an external device like iphone or ipod appear when connected to the new music app ?
If you created the playlists on the device and you are syncing manually, then that doesn't work anymore. You'll need to sync the regular way, creating the playlists on your Mac, or using iCloud.
How do I change album rating in Music? When one song gets rated, the whole album gets rated. I used a macro before.
Stephen: I don't see a way to rate an album in Music, only songs. You select a song and use Command+i where you can rate it. Or, view by Song and then use Command+j to add the rating column and click on that. Both these methods change a single song, but I don't see a way to rate an album.