I have 2 Macs and I'd like to sync my music collection between them.
I organize my music files myself so the options to "Consolidate files" and "Reorganizes files in the folder Media.localized" are off. "Keep Music Media folder organized" is off (I'm not actually using the media folder). "Copy files to Music Media folder when adding to Library" is also off. This is because I have machines other than Macs and I try to keep the files synced across all machines.
In one Mac I see an album that is showing no cover. I pick "Get Info" and paste in a new cover image. I see that Music has modified all mp3s in that album and inserted the album cover as meta data directly in the mp3s. I can copy those mp3s to any other machines (Mac/Windows/Linux) and see the album cover is embedded in the mp3s.
I then sync those updated mp3s to another mac. Let's call it MacB. MacB had had the old "no album cover" mp3s but now I've replaced them with the new mp3s with embeded covers. I can see in the finder on MacB the covers are embedded. Example
But Music shows no covers
Clicking an album also shows no cover though if I select a track and choose "Play" there is a cover shown at the top
I tried picking "Music->Add To Library" and selecting my music folder (/Users/me/My Music).
It scanned many things but when it finished no covers.
I tried resetting the Music Media folder.
That seems unrelated although it did scan more things when I clicked it.
I tried deleting my "Music Library.musiclibrary" data.
Restarting Music asked me to setup my music library again. After 10 minutes of scanning all the music showed up but 98% of the albums now had no cover and my playlists were gone (expected but sucks). No idea why a few albums had covers. Music showed some message in the bottom left about something like "Scanning for gapless music" (I don't remmeber the exact message). That went on for about 10 minutes after which the CPU settled down but no album covers appeared.
I restored a backup of my .musiclibrary data so at least I'm back to the state I was in above.
Is there some way I can sync the album covers across machines? Maybe I need to sync the .musiclibrary file? That's scary as I might add new music separately on both machines. Syncing mp3s only that's not an issue but the music db that would be an issue.