How to Create a New Apple Music Library

Aug 11, 2021

1 minute

You may want to create a new Apple Music library for many different reasons. If you're like me, you've moved your library folder to an external hard drive, and now Apple Music complains when you try to open it. Or maybe you're looking to play the music in Apple music from an outside media center, such as Kodi.

By default, your iTunes library folder is in your home folder. For me it's:

/Users/josephtylerjones

The original library folder is called Music, but you can name it whatever you'd like. For the sake of this guide, I called it Music2.

Now, let's show you how to make a new Apple Music folder.

iTunes	×	1
Mac OSX	×	1

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Completely Quit your Apple Music on your Mac.
Hold option while clicking the Apple Music icon in your dock.
Select Create Library....

Note that you can also Choose Library... if you want to switch between your created Apple Music libraries once you've set them up.

Choose a name for your new Apple Music library and write it in.
Choose where you want the library to be stored. (For example, if you want to create a library that's stored on your external hard drive, then make sure to have the external hard drive connected—and choose it.)
Click Save.

Apple Music will automatically open up with your newly created library. Now, you just need to add the songs/media that you want to store specifically in your new library here.

Remember that to open back up your original library, you'll need to quit Apple Music and repeat step 1 to choose a library.