When you used to have to move your Apple Music Library, you would need to set the new location in Preferences, and then select the option to “Consolidate Library” Which would move your music to the new location. This may no longer be required.
The other point though is that I’d be surprised if the Apple Music location dialogue would accept anything which the Mac didn’t consider to be Local. e.g. a locally attached drive (or something which the OS considers to be a locally attached drive). Between network latency and reliability of connection, it would introduce potential problems.
I digitized our entire CD collection and loaded it onto a NAS along with whatever mp3s I’d purchased along the way. (Only a very few were from iTunes, however.) Instead of trying to make it work with Apple Music, I installed a media server. (I use Roon, but there are plenty of alternatives like Plex or Jellyfin.) I eventually retired the NAS (way to fiddly for my needs) and moved the collection to a big external SSD, but I still use Roon. (Qobuz is our streaming service, not Apple Music.) One thing to note: in addition to playing music on my Mac or mobile devices, we also play it through our HiFi system, which we really wouldn’t have been able to do via Apple Music.
TLDR: If the music on your hard drive isn’t DRM protected, you may find it easier to manage a big collection on a NAS with a dedicated media server rather than Apple Music.
I have a massive music collection on a 2TB SSD connected to my Mac Mini M2. I play it via PlexAmp on my iPhone which is set to connect to my home network via Tailscale when I am not on my local wifi.
Instead of moving it to a NAS , I’d get an external drive and move data to that while keeping the music library right where it is.
Apple music and libraries on network drives don’t go well together.
I buy larger internal drives just for my music library. I also rsync it to my NAS so that plex can access it . That adds Plexamp to the list of media players.
But the library on my mac remains the master copy.
This is because after you changed the “media location”, this happened…
From now on, new songs and other items you import are stored in the new location. Songs you’ve already imported stay in their current location.
And yes, you can put your whole library somewhere else. Should you do it? According to Apple:
Important: For best results, don’t change the location of the Music folder or the folders inside it.
There are articles out on the internet describing how to do what you want to do, but most of them are quite old back from the iTunes days.
The thing with Apple Music is these days that it really is the Apple Music service, relying on a local Apple environment with drives inside the Mac or connected to the Mac via USB (using the latest filesystems like APFS). Those “old” iTunes remnants still are part of the app, but they keep deteriorating. I have given up on curating my Music offline library a long time ago when I noticed that Apple Music kept messing with my metadata, with my covers and even started to show one album as several albums and so on. All can be fixed until it is broken again.
If you really care for your local Music library, Apple Music may not be the best choice these days. I probably would think about using Jellyfin, but I have not tried the music part (I am using it for my digitized movies, digitized TV series and “home movies” in combination with InFuse. I still have my “old” local music library backed up, but I do not really use it as of today. I “live” in Apple Music (the music service), which is both good and frustrating to me at the same time. When I buy music (which does not happen very often) I will get the CD or I will make sure that I save the digital files to my “old” local music library (which is not accessible to Apple Music).
Sadly Plex is treading the same path as Apple Music, not for Audio but for Video. Introducing their own content and gradually spending less time on the self hosting part of the product.
The main person who seemed to spend more of their time on the music side left Plex recently which isn’t a good sign for me either.
Due to having taken funding, More and more Plex is looking to make money. Recent changes include silently playing their hosted content instead of the same content you have in your local library so that they can serve ads to you. It’s only when an Ad pops in your face that you notice.
All this to say that I wouldn’t go down the Plex route if starting self hosted music collections now.
This is why I switched from Plex to Jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org) two (?) years ago for my local video stuff. FOSS in active development. Works like a charm, beautiful, no upsell (FOSS), in combination with InFuse even a pleasure to use on Apple TVs.
I currently have Jellyfin running alongside Plex and have been gradually ironing out a few kinks in the system. if I feel the need to pull the ripcord on Plex, I’ll be a lot closer to being ready.
I setup my iTunes/Music library this way…
My main Music library lives connected to my Mac mini using a LaCie 20tb RAID for storage (I know it’s not the same as a NAS). Currently approaching 3tb of Lossless files.
My method is the following:
Quit iTunes/Music
Open Users > Music > and copy the iTunes/Music folder to external drive
Holding Option key down and click on iTunes/Music icon in dock.
It should ask you to Choose a Library. Choose the Library on the external drive. It may take a few minutes but now everything should be pointed to that drive going forward.
You can delete the iTunes/Music folder from the Main drive and empty the Trash to free up that space.
As long as that external drive is connected when opening iTunes/Music, you should be fine. If you do open iTunes/Music when the drive is NOT connected, you will be prompted to Choose a Library again.
I do not use a NAS and can’t offer advice for proper setup. This is what I have used for the last 10 years successfully. I use Apple Music Match for access to my other devices. It’s not Lossless but it is “good enough” for background noise.
Thank you to all who chimed in.
Reporting back that everything went well.
I neglected an important step: Under File/Library/Organize Library there is the step to Reorganize files in the folder “Name of your newly assigned folder”
At one point that was greyed out and unavailable, not sure how I “ungreyed” it, but then I checked the box I got a message that asks if you are sure your want to “copy” your files? I hesitated at first, not I don’t want to “copy” in the conventional sense of creating an extra set of files, but here copy means more like reassigning what you see in the Music app as your Library to the same files in their new location. With my 50k of songs this took a few hours, but now everything is proper and working fine, and I can now delete the music files taking up too much space on my computer’s drive.
I’m glad I can stick with the familiar Music app which I don’t have any issues with.
Cheers.