I am trying to play music from an external hard drive to my TV using my Apple TV and Network with no success

This is an apple household with Apple TV HD, Airport Extreme base Station, Macbook Pro 16 (2019), Catalina, not to mention iPhones and iPads.

I have a large amount of music, almost 400gb, on a SanDisk 500GB Extreme Portable USB 3.1 Type-C External SSD. This is far more than the capacity of the Apple TV.

I would like to be able to access my music on the drive directly on my Sony TV using the Apple TV. I have 2 computers accessible through the Apple TV and Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil to play music through the network by connecting it to the TV through my network, but I'd rather be able to directly access the drive and my music through the Apple TV without using my computer.

I did try to plug the hard drive directly into the Sony TV's USB port, but it said the device was not supported-perhaps because it's too large?

Is there a way to access my music on the drive directly using the Apple TV?

Thanks in advance for any help and ideas!

marc

You can use VLC which can play most media formats - both movie and audio.

Under “Local Network” map your External drive, and then you should be up running.

But the External drive need to be on the network e.g. as a NAS or added to your router as a media drive.