Apple Music / iCloud Music Library has made a right old mess of my iTunes library :(

[randy98mtu]

I have yet to sync my phone, but things are still working well. I want to removed all music on my phone before I sync it again, but I've run into a bug on my phone that I can't delete all music as I did on my iPad Mini. When I touch on music (which has no name as my other storage items do) it just faults out of the Settings app. I am on iOS 9 Beta 2, so I wouldn't be able to enable Apple Music on it anyway.

I've been on vacation this week and this is only the second time I've gotten to sit and play music, but it's worked great since my initial struggles to get it working without forking up my library.

 

[gnortenjones]

I'm giving up on Apple Music, it's just not worth the massive headache it's causing. Like a lot of other people on this thread, my library was nicely managed, and manicured. Thanks to Apple, it is completely FUBARed.

When I turned on iCloud on my iPhone 5 to try Apple Music (which i never did figure out how to add music to my playlists from AM, apparently "add to playlist" doesn't actually mean "add to playlist"), it deleted 3/4 of my playlists, and made duplicates of the remaining ones. A lot of my artwork is now screwed up.

I've been trying to get the issue to fix itself, but my playlists (about 30 of them), are just gone.

**** you apple.

 

[lagwagon]

Just tried to match some live albums. Definitely just pulled in album versions for every single track.

Yep, thats one of the major issues with the matching. Remove that live album(s) from iCloud Music Library and before re-adding back to IML add (Live) at the end of all the track names. This should fix most if not all. (I say most incase they have more than one live album and it matches to the wrong live album.)

I've said this before but it's the fact IML goes through each song, one by one to match. When it would be a TON less headache for the user if it only looked at artist name + album name instead. (It's the false track matching that screws everything up, from wrong track version to wrong album art.)

 

[Rigby]

I've said this before but it's the fact IML goes through each song, one by one to match. When it would be a TON less headache for the user if it only looked at artist name + album name instead.

Of course people would abuse this to match music they don't own ...

(It's the false track matching that screws everything up, from wrong track version to wrong album art.)

This is something I don't understand. With iTunes Match, the matching never overrides the user's meta data, including the artwork. Rather, the system stores the user's meta data in the cloud library and links that to the audio file it found. And it still works that way if you only have iTunes Match. Somehow, subscribing to Apple Music seems to screw this up based on the reports here.

 

[Richardgm]

6,000 songs, all with proper tags upgraded with no problems. Then again used Match before.

 

[lagwagon]

Of course people would abuse this to match music they don't own ...
This is something I don't understand. With iTunes Match, the matching never overrides the user's meta data, including the artwork. Rather, the system stores the user's meta data in the cloud library and links that to the audio file it found. And it still works that way if you only have iTunes Match. Somehow, subscribing to Apple Music seems to screw this up based on the reports here.

Not sure how one could abuse having it just look at artist + album name. Even if you "could" trick it into thinking what you had was something else without owning it.

1: You wouldn't be able to keep it anyways since AM music is protected and unusable once you unsubscribe. (so no real difference between "attempting to steal" which you can't VS just downloading for offline through AM.)
2: It would probably just upload the songs you had in the album since track times would be way off.

 

[jsmith189]

I give up. Now nothing's working, period. No song loads, artist photos are disappearing, I can't save for offline, and I occasionally get the JOIN APPLE MUSIC page randomly showing up.

Let me just take a deep breath and exhale when iOS9 comes out. Hopefully they fix some of this by then. So strange that it's working (near) perfectly in iTunes.

 

[happycadaver]

Thank you for beta testing @All!

I will pass on AM for the moment. I'm still in the hospital, so i couldn't actually test it my self, but the reports in the community sound like a small desaster. Staying with Spotify and my own local library seems to be the place to be.

 

[Soni Sanjay]

The problem with Match is that sometimes it gives you a wrong version of a certain song...

Match should just allow a "force upload" option, and a "match to different version" option, I mean, they should let us select which version of the song we want, since Match sometimes gives me a wrong version, that would solve so many problems.

 

[aixki]

Yep, thats one of the major issues with the matching. Remove that live album(s) from iCloud Music Library and before re-adding back to IML add (Live) at the end of all the track names. This should fix most if not all. (I say most incase they have more than one live album and it matches to the wrong live album.)

I've said this before but it's the fact IML goes through each song, one by one to match. When it would be a TON less headache for the user if it only looked at artist name + album name instead. (It's the false track matching that screws everything up, from wrong track version to wrong album art.)

I've faced the exact same problem. I had to fix every id3tag of my live albums to add (live) in their title tag and cross my fingers. So far it worked. But for some reason, I have a studio record that IML matched as a live record ! Apple should really look at Album id3 tag to make its matching.

 

[lagwagon]

I've faced the exact same problem. I had to fix every id3tag of my live albums to add (live) in their title tag and cross my fingers. So for it worked. But for some reason, I have a studio record that IML matched as a live record ! Apple should really look at Album id3 tag to make its matching.

I WISH it would use album name as part of the matching, it could save massive amounts of headache and time. I don't think it does at all right now. From what it looks like it's just artist and track.

I've had albums that aren't available on iTunes but have a song or two that are on some compilations that are on iTunes. So instead of just uploading the album (since it shouldn't be a match) it matches those couple songs to the compilations and replaces all the art to what the compilation has for that album....it's idiotic I say.

 

[aixki]

I've had albums that aren't available on iTunes but have a song or two that are on some compilations that are on iTunes. So instead of just uploading the album (since it shouldn't be a match) it matches those couple songs to the compilations and replaces all the art to what the compilation has for that album....it's idiotic I say.

Exactly ! And no matter what we do about id3tags, there's only modifying title id3tag that could save us. But I don't want to create a mess in my titles! So the only workaround that I've found is that for these songs that have artwork mismatch, I go on another computer, get the iCloud music track, and replace the artwork with the correct one. Then it sync and I get the correct artwork on all my devices.

 

[jsmith189]

Exactly ! And no matter what we do about id3tags, there's only modifying title id3tag that could save us. But I don't want to create a mess in my titles! So the only workaround that I've found is that for these songs that have artwork mismatch, I go on another computer, get the iCloud music track, and replace the artwork with the correct one. Then it sync and I get the correct artwork on all my devices.

That's basically what I've been doing - re-applying the album artwork that's already attached to it. X_X But with 1,000 albums, that's not going to be a fun task. I just don't see why it can't grab artist + album as @lagwagon said, THEN compare the titles against what's in that artist and album. It can then just keep whatever tags you have but match the audio. That might create more tracks to be uploaded, but that's a more convenient (and accurate) alternative to me.

Hell, even add in a Shazam type functionality. Match audio with audio.

 

[Paradoxally]

Exactly ! And no matter what we do about id3tags, there's only modifying title id3tag that could save us. But I don't want to create a mess in my titles! So the only workaround that I've found is that for these songs that have artwork mismatch, I go on another computer, get the iCloud music track, and replace the artwork with the correct one. Then it sync and I get the correct artwork on all my devices.

That what I did too, but you don't need to go on another computer. Right click album -> Delete -> Remove Downloads. Now you're just accessing the iCloud tracks. You can edit the metadata of those and it will update. I tried this yesterday for Abbey Road which was uploaded in its entirety and then went to grab a HQ version of the album art and it updated across all my devices.

 

[randy98mtu]

I just checked one live album I have; Zac Brown Band - Pass the Jar. On my laptop it is still the correct songs. It is also correct on my iPad Mini, which has no local songs on it now.

 

[PghMike4]

I'm wondering if there is anyone who hasn't used iTunes Match who is having these problems. I've never used iTunes Match but I don't want to be the one to activate this and find out that it's not isolated to just iTunes Match users.

Just one data point: never used iTunes match, enabled iCloud Music Library and Apple Music (seem to be the only way to still play music purchased from Apple but not present on your phone, via streaming) and had no problems at all.

Caution: I've seen rumors that if you have iTunes Match, it may replace your DRM-free copy of your matched music in your library with a DRM'd version from Apple Music.

 

[Rigby]

Not sure how one could abuse having it just look at artist + album name. Even if you "could" trick it into thinking what you had was something else without owning it.

Exactly that. People could create white-noise tracks of the same length with the proper artist & album tags, and download the entire music store for the price of a Match subscription.

1: You wouldn't be able to keep it anyways since AM music is protected and unusable once you unsubscribe.

With iTunes Match, the music does not have DRM and is yours to keep even after the subscription runs out.

 

[JonDigital]

First off I am really sorry about the TLDR post. I’ve been lurking in this thread for a bit and wanted to throw my 2 cents in.

I think I may be in rare category of not experiencing any issues with my library since day one of using Apple Music. Maybe I use my library differently? I don’t know. Here is my workflow and experiences and some of the things I have run into and the workarounds I have found for some things I didn’t like. Not sure any of it will be helpful to the forum but at least it’s one more voice chiming in.

First off I have been an exclusive Spotify member since 2012 and have not used any other streaming services since. I also have been an iTunes Match subscriber since day one. My playlists consist of years. Each year I create a playlist that corresponds to that year and throw all the tracks I discovered within that year into that playlist. So I have 4 playlists (all made available offline), each consisting of about 100 tracks going back to 2012. I also have one master playlist called TBL (to be listened) which I throw tracks and albums that I want to listen to in the near future. After listening to those TBL’s I triage those tracks into other playlists or just remove them all together if they weren’t to my liking.

I decided to spend a few hours over the weekend recreating all these playlists in Apple Music. I wanted to wait until an import tool was available but rather than waiting I wanted to manually search and see just how many tracks I could find in Apple Music that were also in Spotify’s library (this is a lot faster using iTunes for Mac FYI). Amazingly I was able to recreate every playlist without missing any tracks except the recently removed Prine tracks. That being said…

MY ENTIRE LIBRARY WAS NOW FULL OF TRACKS THAT WERE NOT BEING ORGANIZED PROPERLY!!! ARGH!!!! This was my process. I printed out all my Spotify playlists (protip, open a Word or Pages document, go to your Spotify playlist, CMD-A and drag and drop the whole list into the open document and the whole list will be ready for printing) and then started searching the Apple Music catalog for each track on my Spotify lists and started adding them to my new Apple Music playlists. When I was done I was extremely satisfied, until I looked at iTunes for Mac. I now had duplicate tracks. For example, I added Kendrick Lamar – King Kunta to my 2015 playlist. When I looked at My Music, since I already had Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly already in my library and within iTunes Match, it now showed the Apple Music copy which was sitting right next to the other copy. This drove my OCD crazy. I know you can disable iTunes to only show offline music only (View > Show Offline Only) but I didn’t want to disable the viewing of tracks I discovered on Apple Music/Beats 1. I simply wanted things more organized.

My solution…

What I figured out (which I’m sure many others have found) is Apple Music tracks may not match what is in your local library due to tags or some other data. So for now on, if I know a track or album is already located within my local library or iTunes Match and I want it on one of my “yearly playlists” I simply add the track to the playlist from THAT library and not Apple Music. This was actually easy to fix after creating my playlists since tracks that are not in your local library have an iCloud icon next to them. This now keeps my library neat and does not create new albums for songs. I believe this is the way Apple intended for it to work but is not obviously clear.

I think for people who collect a nice library like myself Apple Music can cause some confusion in terms of organization. For people who just stream and have never been about owning the music or collecting it Apple Music is a smooth transition.

I take great pride in keeping my collection of local tracks (20,000+) organized like a champ. I blame this as just being an old school person whose been downloading, ripping and buying music from online services since the start of Napster.

I would also like to mention that each one of these yearly playlists is also downloaded for offline listening. I have not had one issue having them all download. I think there is a bug with the little phone icon that appears next to tracks that are available offline. If you switch your playlist view to “offline tracks only” you will clearly see they all downloaded even if the icon doesn’t show up. You can also view this by going into Settings>Usage and check the Music app section.

Hopefully I added something useful to this topic. Thanks for listening.

 

[Rigby]

I WISH it would use album name as part of the matching, it could save massive amounts of headache and time. I don't think it does at all right now. From what it looks like it's just artist and track.

If it's the same as iTunes Match, it doesn't look at the meta data at all. It just uses a fingerprint of the audio content itself.

 

[v0caltic]

That's good to hear. I once did the same about a dead Time Capsule - didn't hear back from Cook, but an operations guy in Ireland got back to me and got me a discount on a new one (it was out of warranty).

I had a messed up library and have just about sorted it out from a back up, but still have a few issues which I assume are related to iTunes Match.

A good example is a relatively rare album - Chill Out by the KLF. I have the CD, and its in my library. It is available to play in iTunes on the Mac, but is greyed out on my iPhone.

It is available in the iTunes store, but is not available in Apple Music.

I used to have an iTunes Match subscription, but haven't for a while.

So it looks as though there are issues with music that was made available through iTunes Match, but is not currently available through Apple Music.

I had this problem too, so I deleted it from iTunes, reimported from my backups and renamed the song titles in iTunes, like adding LP Version in brackets at the end of the name. This way it just uploaded my files rather than matching them. I have a lot of bootleg live albums and demos that I did this to and I don't have any more problems.

 

[v0caltic]

I've faced the exact same problem. I had to fix every id3tag of my live albums to add (live) in their title tag and cross my fingers. So far it worked. But for some reason, I have a studio record that IML matched as a live record ! Apple should really look at Album id3 tag to make its matching.

I've run into the same problem as you. I've had to write (live version) to avoid this. I also had to do this with EPs that have different recordings of the same songs, so I added (EP version).

 

[aixki]

Ok I think I have a winner here. I have imported the song The Weather Girls - It's raining men in iTunes and used iCloud Music Library to get it in the cloud :






I sync my iPhone, and here's what I got :





So, to recap : it's not the same Album, it's not the same audio spectral footprint, and I have a tough male voice telling me to go up and down, probably thinking I'm too fat.

Apple, you truly want your customers to go to the gym.

 

[dj1891]

Also made a mess of mine, I had all songs put into genre type playlists IE Country, Rock, Pop etc. Now the playlists are missing half the tracks so going to have to go though all my songs and sort them all out again, a real pain in the rear Grrrrr. I've turned of iCloud Music Library and won't be using Apple music again, To much of a headache.

 

[aixki]

Here's the most funny part of the story : my father who has subscribed an iTunes Match plan doesn't have the problem with the exact same song. I sent him the mp3 and took remote control of his computer to do some testing, no problem AT ALL.

So Apple, for those member who are not willing to pay for an iTunes Match, are you gonne bring us a fix ?

 

[lagwagon]

Ok I think I have a winner here. I have imported the song The Weather Girls - It's raining men in iTunes and used iCloud Music Library to get it in the cloud :






I sync my iPhone, and here's what I got :





So, to recap : it's not the same Album, it's not the same audio spectral footprint, and I have a tough male voice telling me to go up and down, probably thinking I'm too fat.

Apple, you truly want your customers to go to the gym.

Haha, that is hilarious and by far the BEST IML fail I've seen yet. Thanks for the good laugh.