So, that interface is about 30,000 times faster than you need to play music without interruption.

The interface on the MBA is rated at USB 3.1, which is 10Gbps. Select Automatic Backups on the left side of the Time Machine window. Note: These directions will show you how to use Time Machine to set up automatic backups. Select System Preferences from the drop-down menu. Doing the math, that is 224 seconds or 30Kilobytes/second, maybe 300 Kilobits/second. Here’s how: From your Mac’s menu bar, select the Apple logo on the left side. I just looked at one MP3 on my system and have that it plays for 3:44 and is 6.8 MB. Look at any track and get the time the track plays and the size of the file. You can actually calculate that for yourself. Music doesn't put that much demand on the drive interface. For that purpose even the slow spinner on a USB-2 port would do just fine. You want to store music, presumably to play from this drive. Would that be much different from what you have? In practical terms, not much. Win! Now, is it the fastest on the planet? Probably not because right now to have that you would need a TB port with a TB to TB cable to connect to a TB interface on a drive.

So, you have a much faster drive on a faster port. I've been using Time Machine, a built-in backup program developed by Apple since I bought my first Mac. Second, the difference between a USB-c port and the TB port is really small compared to the move from that 2012 machine to the newer one. The first (TM1) was a holdover from Big Sur while the second (TM2) was created in Monterey (I used a Terminal command to create the TM2 volume). First, that SSD is much, much, much faster than a 7 year old WD passport, just in the technology alone. I have 2 Samsung 500GB T5 SSDs, each with a Time Machine volume (used for backup of the system and user files).

Let me try to back you off the ledge a bit here.

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