Apple Music Apple Music Not Syncing Across Devices and Tracks Disappearing

[Lee TeeCee]

I'll try keep this as short as possible...

I have Apple Music on my iMac (2021), iPhone 12, iPad Pro (12.9) and an Apple TV HD. All are up to date software wise.

Normally when I make changes to the tracks in my iMac library (genre, album artist, etc.) the changes reflect on to my other devices. I've noticed over the last month or so that not only are the changes not being reflected they're actually reverting back to their original state on the iMac. I make the changes then download the tracks onto the iMac hard drive.

The songs are still syncing across devices but last night a smart playlist had 60 tracks disappear on the iMac ALONE. They're still on my iPhone and iPad. They're not in my iMac library at all but when I go into Apple Music to re-add them to my library, it shows a tick like it's already added and downloaded and won't let me remove and and re-add. I've had to do that through my phone which then puts it back in my iMac library.

After going into the file system, the downloaded tracks are still there in the album folders they were originally downloaded to but if I go to an album that has both missing and tracks that are still in the library it's showing the ones that are available as .m4p but the ones that are missing are showing as .movpkg.

The info on those files show it as a HLS Media, when I did a search there are 400+ files that now appear like this and are missing from my library. Somehow they seem to have been converted and I've no idea why.

Is there an easy fix to change them back or do I have to delete 400+ tracks from my phone (1 by 1) and re-add them? Is there a way to stop this from happening in the future?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[avz]

After going into the file system, the downloaded tracks are still there in the album folders they were originally downloaded to but if I go to an album that has both missing and tracks that are still in the library it's showing the ones that are available as .m4p but the ones that are missing are showing as .movpkg.

From my experience this can happen when the album that was originally available in your region becomes unavailable(for whatever reason).

So the important thing to understand about Apple Music is that your active subscription does not guarantee you the availability of all the titles that you once downloaded.
Owning the hard copy on CD/vinyl as well as backups of purchased iTunes tracks is the only way to ensure availability of your music.

 

[Lee TeeCee]

Each track, so far, that I’ve deleted and re-added is still available. Most of them have been part of an album where it’s just one or two tracks that have converted.

 

[avz]

Each track, so far, that I’ve deleted and re-added is still available. Most of them have been part of an album where it’s just one or two tracks that have converted.

I know what you mean, I also had to delete and re-add some albums. Like out of nowhere the album was replaced with "best of" compilation which resulted in disappearing and mismatched tracks. It almost feels like Apple Music has a mind of its own and lives a very fluid and independent life. But to be fair in my case it only happened to a couple of albums, I never had to delete and re-add 400 tracks.