Apple Music overwrites my album art

[garnerx]

I just got a full subscription to Apple Music after enjoying the three month trial, so I thought I'd turn on the cloud library feature so I could have various streaming albums listed in my regular music library. Without that, you have to search for them, which is quite inconvenient.

Big mistake, obviously. After I'd done that my iPhone burned through its battery in a couple of hours, frantically downloading new album art for everything, much of it incorrect. Some of it was censored (e.g. Electric Ladyland by Jim Hendrix), some for the wrong artist, some were title cards for curated playlists, and so on. It was a complete mess.

Luckily I hadn't switched on the computer, so the originals in iTunes hadn't been affected, and switching off the cloud library and resyncing the phone was enough to repair it. But it means the albums I want from Apple Music aren't in my library, so I can't just scroll through and find them easily.

Is there any way to add Apple Music albums without having the cloud library mess up all my album art?

 

[Julien]

....Is there any way to add Apple Music albums without having the cloud library mess up all my album art?

USB HD backup is the ONLY real insurance against all possible problems.
.

 

[garnerx]

It's not insurance that I need - I have a time machine drive and iTunes does keep backups of its library files.

Looks like this is an old problem going back years. The whole concept is slightly confusing, as I've no idea what useful function is served by fetching its own artwork for non-Apple Music items. I can't even add Apple Music items to a playlist unless I turn on the cloud library, in which case it's goodbye album art.

As far as I can tell, the only way I can have a list of the things I want in Apple Music is via the For You > Recently Played tab. Which isn't great because it also has things I didn't like.

 

[Night Birds]

In the past, iTunes/Apple gave you complete control over all of this stuff. Now it's a ****ing mess. Songs will just remove themselves or become grayed out, album artwork changes, song data changes. It sucks.

When I switched to Apple Music (which I waited to do for a long time), I deleted my entire existing library and started fresh because their metadata systems were so jacked up. Figuring out if something was Apple Music, Downloaded, iTunes Match, etc etc etc etc was too difficult and many people had massive problems.

 

[Loge]

In the past, iTunes/Apple gave you complete control over all of this stuff.

It still does, IF you don't subscribe to Apple Music. I'm not trying it until I can ring-fence my own music.

 

[Howard Ellacott]

If you leave it for ages it should fix itself! I had loads of problems when Apple Music first came out, so I turned it off and restored from a time machine backup. When I tried it again all my art work changed! But after enabling on my Mac as well I left it for days, and it all changed back and now it works flawlessly. It did take ages!

 

[Berek]

Why I won’t subscribe to Apple Music.