Downloaded music keeps disappearing from my iPhone

[rmcnelly]

Yesterday approximately 5,000 songs disappeared from the Music app on my iPhone 6 Plus. I was listening to a downloaded song, while surfing Facebook, and the song stopped. When I went to the Music app to restart it, my entire library and all my playlists were gone. This was not only downloaded songs, but also ones added to my music but not downloaded. The Settings app reported there were no songs on my iPhone, yet the available memory did not increase. I had WiFi off at work, and resetting the iPhone did not solve the problem. The Music app still had me signed in, as the "For You" section still showed suggestions.

When I got home, I turned WiFi back on, and the Music app then showed all my playlists and songs added to My Music, but nothing was "made available for offline use". I began downloading songs, which takes forever. I opened iTunes on my Mac, and took a look at what it said was on my iPhone, and realized the Music app was now downloading duplicate songs, apparently couldn't see the songs that were still on the iPhone.

In frustration, I wiped the iPhone (full reset), started from scratch. I first reinstalled all my apps, and set up everything. Then I opened the Music app, which again showed all the songs and playlists in My Music, but none were downloaded. I selected the "Purchased Music" playlist, about 3,100 songs, and let it run all night while the iPhone was plugged in. In the morning it had only downloaded about 1,800 songs, and had failed to download a great many songs saying they were no longer available, or couldn't be downloaded at this time.

I turned off WiFi when I went to work, and the iPhone kept trying to download the songs even though I have the preferences set NOT to download music or apps on Cellular Data. This ran my battery down, and continued to interrupt me with alerts it couldn't download a song.

The iPhone resumed downloading songs when I returned home and turned WiFi back on. I took a nap and was happy to see it had now successfully downloaded almost all the remaining songs. The Settings app indicated it had also downloaded 20+ videos. I went into the video section of the Music app, showing the ones available on the iPhone, and deleted most of them.

I then examined one artist which the app had downloaded 4 albums. The first one was missing some songs, so I had it display the entire album, and tagged it to make the songs available for offline use.

Then over 2,000 downloaded songs disappeared from the iPhone. WTF !!!!!!!!!!

The Settings app showed 544 songs on the iPhone. iTunes on my Mac showed only 12 songs on the iPhone. I signed out of the Music app, signed back in, and now it shows only 12 songs on the iPhone. The Settings app now shows 13 songs on the iPhone.

I am so frustrated by this experience. I am an Apple fanboy, and cannot believe this is happening.

 

[Pagemakers]

Yesterday approximately 5,000 songs disappeared from the Music app on my iPhone 6 Plus. I was listening to a downloaded song, while surfing Facebook, and the song stopped. When I went to the Music app to restart it, my entire library and all my playlists were gone. This was not only downloaded songs, but also ones added to my music but not downloaded. The Settings app reported there were no songs on my iPhone, yet the available memory did not increase. I had WiFi off at work, and resetting the iPhone did not solve the problem. The Music app still had me signed in, as the "For You" section still showed suggestions.

When I got home, I turned WiFi back on, and the Music app then showed all my playlists and songs added to My Music, but nothing was "made available for offline use". I began downloading songs, which takes forever. I opened iTunes on my Mac, and took a look at what it said was on my iPhone, and realized the Music app was now downloading duplicate songs, apparently couldn't see the songs that were still on the iPhone.

In frustration, I wiped the iPhone (full reset), started from scratch. I first reinstalled all my apps, and set up everything. Then I opened the Music app, which again showed all the songs and playlists in My Music, but none were downloaded. I selected the "Purchased Music" playlist, about 3,100 songs, and let it run all night while the iPhone was plugged in. In the morning it had only downloaded about 1,800 songs, and had failed to download a great many songs saying they were no longer available, or couldn't be downloaded at this time.

I turned off WiFi when I went to work, and the iPhone kept trying to download the songs even though I have the preferences set NOT to download music or apps on Cellular Data. This ran my battery down, and continued to interrupt me with alerts it couldn't download a song.

The iPhone resumed downloading songs when I returned home and turned WiFi back on. I took a nap and was happy to see it had now successfully downloaded almost all the remaining songs. The Settings app indicated it had also downloaded 20+ videos. I went into the video section of the Music app, showing the ones available on the iPhone, and deleted most of them.

I then examined one artist which the app had downloaded 4 albums. The first one was missing some songs, so I had it display the entire album, and tagged it to make the songs available for offline use.

Then over 2,000 downloaded songs disappeared from the iPhone. WTF !!!!!!!!!!

The Settings app showed 544 songs on the iPhone. iTunes on my Mac showed only 12 songs on the iPhone. I signed out of the Music app, signed back in, and now it shows only 12 songs on the iPhone. The Settings app now shows 13 songs on the iPhone.

I am so frustrated by this experience. I am an Apple fanboy, and cannot believe this is happening.

I feel your pain but enough is enough.

If I made Apple Music I'd be thoroughly ashamed of myself.

 

[rmcnelly]

My iPhone seems possessed. While on the phone with Apple, all the music from the iCloud Music Library disappeared from the Music app, everything I had added to the cloud since subscribing to the new service. The music I already owned prior to subscribing remained visible in the Music app. In the Recently Added section, it showed the last album I purchased in June. None of this was actually downloaded to the phone and all my playlists were missing too. We discovered the "iCloud Music Library" had become deselected in the Settings/Music prefs (while I was on the phone with them). I selected it again, and all the music and playlists reappeared, and the Music app began trying to download 240 songs it had been unable to get last night.

So I am again attempting to download 3,300 songs. Apple support told me if it happens again, they will probably want me to take it into the Apple. I have the support person's direct line and email address.

No other apps appear affected (except the iPhone did drop me off speaker phone during the call) so I doubt this is a hardware problem.

 

[manu chao]

I turned off WiFi when I went to work, and the iPhone kept trying to download the songs even though I have the preferences set NOT to download music or apps on Cellular Data. This ran my battery down, and continued to interrupt me with alerts it couldn't download a song.

I assume you mean this setting:

This is a setting for the iTunes & App Store (as the title says), not for the Music app. The 'Use Cellular Data' setting applies to automatic downloads and the automatic downloads are the ones listed just above and those refer to purchased items. It does not apply to 'rented' or 'streamed' music.

If you want to prevent the Music app from downloading 'My Music' items or streaming music over cellular, you have to do so in the main Cellular settings at the top of the main settings screen. There you can cut off any app, including the Music app, from cellular access.

Apart from that little help, I can only confirm that the Music app keeps loosing downloaded music for me as well. It did this on day one and on and off again it still does so more than a month later. It also keeps loosing music and playlists from 'My Music'. It also was very erratic in showing music and playlists in iTunes that had been added on my phone.

I have now restricted Apple Music to my iPad. I seeded the it with about 50 songs copied to it the pre-Apple Music way and logged into a secondary AppleID of mine (in the iTunes & App Store section of the settings, that also controls the AppleID used for Apple Music, which makes sense) and started my own new iCloud Music Library with those 50 songs and experiment with adding music and playlists there. Only once I see some stability there might I consider turning over my iTunes library to Apple Music again.

It is disappointing that even under almost ideal conditions, one device only, almost no legacy music, Apple Music still cannot keep track of the status of songs. There are so many reports about this and not just an occasional song here or there but repeated problems with keeping songs on devices, that I think Apple should be glad that of those 600 million iTunes & App Store accounts only 11 million signed up so far for Apple Music. Otherwise Apple would alienate a large proportion of its current customers.

 

[manu chao]

We discovered the "iCloud Music Library" had become deselected in the Settings/Music prefs (while I was on the phone with them). I selected it again, and all the music and playlists reappeared, and the Music app began trying to download 240 songs it had been unable to get last night.

Ah yes, another popular feature of Apple Music/iCML. Keeps happening to me as well. At times I can tap that settings switch and it snaps right back to off the moment I lift my finger.

Right now, Apple Music is mainly a nice music recommendation service.

 

[rmcnelly]

Thanks for explaining how that setting works manu chao,

I've now disabled the Music app from using cellular from the Cellular settings section.

I've received an email from Apple that this case is closed, and offering to re-open the case if problems continue. Ironically, they sent a link to leave feedback, and that page lists all the iPhone apps EXCEPT the Music app.

I'll try one more time and if it re-occurs (likely), I'll unsubscribe and restore all my music from Time Machine back into iTunes.

 

[chhhrrriiisss]

Is this not a common problem for offline music to just vanish? I've been experiencing it since day 1. If I didn't care about using up all of my data plan for streaming music I wouldn't mind so much. I'm just curious if everyone else is having this issue?

 

[rmcnelly]

I downloaded 4,500 songs (3,300 were my own) again last night, went for a long drive today playing several playlists. When I got home and examined the iPhone, it now only has 1,362 songs on it. This is seriously FUBAR'd, especially since my own music keeps disappearing.

I do not stream music, it would eat my data allowance, and I drive on country roads that don't always have a good cell signal.

 

[MacrumoursUser]

I downloaded 4,500 songs (3,300 were my own) again last night, went for a long drive today playing several playlists. When I got home and examined the iPhone, it now only has 1,362 songs on it. This is seriously FUBAR'd, especially since my own music keeps disappearing.

I do not stream music, it would eat my data allowance, and I drive on country roads that don't always have a good cell signal.

When turn the 'show music available offline' option i get nothing since i downloaded nothing, but when i go to Settings-About i says i have 160 songs, sometimes 138.

It is seriously ****ed up.

How can a company have so many resources and people and create something so retarded.

 

[skiltrip]

I have seen the opposite issue. I was having some doubles show up in downloaded music. I erased all my offline music in Usage settings. Then, all the music automatically re downloaded again. The second time I deleted everything it stayed deleted.

It's frustrating that a lot of these issues aren't consistent. It makes it very hard to troubleshoot.

I'm riding out the rest of my free trial and my Spotify subscription ends today. When my AM trial is up, I'll see how well they've taken care of all these bugs, and that will determine which I end up sticking with.

 

[manu chao]

When turn the 'show music available offline' option i get nothing since i downloaded nothing, but when i go to Settings-About i says i have 160 songs, sometimes 138.

It is seriously ****ed up.

How can a company have so many resources and people and create something so retarded.

Just because you have a lot of money and a decent number of people, doesn't mean you simply can snip with your fingers and make something happen. And contrary to popular belief, software makers do not explicitly add bugs to their software. It wouldn't be the first time that a new application or service (or new major version of an application or service) is released with enough bugs that a lot of people just give up after a while because the software forces them to go back to square once too many.

 

[MacrumoursUser]

Just because you have a lot of money and a decent number of people, doesn't mean you simply can snip with your fingers and make something happen. And contrary to popular belief, software makers do not explicitly add bugs to their software. It wouldn't be the first time that a new application or service (or new major version of an application or service) is released with enough bugs that a lot of people just give up after a while because the software forces them to go back to square once too many.

Compared to Spotify and Deezer for example its ****. Both are much faster to respond (playback is almost instant in my case unlike Apple music). I have not lost any music from my library or from offline downloads and basically no other quirks like i get on apple music basically everyday.

All comes down to iTunes backbone whatever it is and iCloud. Thats the core issue and everyone at apple just keeps adding more stuff to a very flawed service that it is to begin with.

 

[manu chao]

Compared to Spotify and Deezer for example its ****.
Both are much faster to respond (playback is almost instant in my case unlike Apple music). I have not lost any music from my library or from offline downloads and basically no other quirks like i get on apple music basically everyday.

Since Spotify doesn't have a non-streaming library to start with, it cannot loose anything from something it does not have. Compare Spotify to an Apple Music account that starts with zero songs.

All comes down to iTunes backbone whatever it is and iCloud. Thats the core issue and everyone at apple just keeps adding more stuff to a very flawed service that it is to begin with.

Maybe, but I think there is much more to this than some shared backbone. iCloud Music Library has way more issues than other iCloud services. Right now iCML is bad enough that a lot of people completely give up on it. I don't see that kind of reaction with other iCloud services. Takes Photos, yes there are issues but way less than with Apple Music, I hardly hear any stories of people going back to iPhoto.

 

[rmcnelly]

I had emailed the Apple Service guy about my last attempt, and he just called me back. He has made an appointment for me at a local Apple Service Center so they can take a look at it.

 

[MacrumoursUser]

Since Spotify doesn't have a non-streaming library to start with, it cannot loose anything from something it does not have. Compare Spotify to an Apple Music account that starts with zero songs.


Maybe, but I think there is much more to this than some shared backbone. iCloud Music Library has way more issues than other iCloud services. Right now iCML is bad enough that a lot of people completely give up on it. I don't see that kind of reaction with other iCloud services. Takes Photos, yes there are issues but way less than with Apple Music, I hardly hear any stories of people going back to iPhoto.

Well you can spin this any way you want, but music is **** and iCloud is ****. The idea is great, but too bad it very often doesn't work and the worst part is that they made it so convoluted that they themselves don't know where and what starts and end. Plain and simple.

 

[manu chao]

Well you can spin this any way you want, but music is **** and iCloud is ****. The idea is great, but too bad it very often doesn't work and the worst part is that they made it so convoluted that they themselves don't know where and what starts and end. Plain and simple.

If you insist on making nonsensical statements: all of iCloud is garbage and Photos (using iCloud) works great.

 

[MacrumoursUser]

If you insist on making nonsensical statements: all of iCloud is garbage and Photos (using iCloud) works great.

Don't get me started on photos.

 

[manu chao]

Don't get me started on photos.

Photos as a standalone app or its cloud features?

 

[rmcnelly]

You guys are taking this thread completely off subject.

Magically, the iPhone now has 1,444 songs on it, up from the 1,362 from yesterday.

 

[rmcnelly]

The Apple Store spent about 50 minutes with me and doesn't have an answer as to why this is happening. They turned off "Show Apple Music" in the Music app settings, and suddenly it began downloading just over 200 purchased songs that it had given up trying to download before. The Apple rep took notes and will report the problem and symptoms to Apple, and email me if they come up with some solution.

I'm going to again download all my purchased music but leave the "Show Apple Music" toggle turned off in Music Settings, and see what happens.

 

[rmcnelly]

Well that failed too. Out of 3,100 purchased songs, the app has only downloaded about 500 or so, then just stopped trying to download another 72. Approximately 1,100 songs made available offline from the iTunes Music Library remain on the phone, so the current problem appears limited to my purchased music.

 

[rmcnelly]

I must admit, Apple support has actually been quite good concerning my ongoing problems with Apple Music. When I called Apple via the number on their web page, I received a call back from a real live person within 15 minutes. They quickly passed me up to the next tier as soon as I described the problem. The second person was unable to solve my problem, made some suggestions and asked me to email him back with the results. He called me back on Sunday, and made the Apple Store appointment for me. The person at the Apple Store could not solve the problem, and told me he would write something that gave me priority to the next tier of support. Each time they made an effort to "reflect" a feeling - "You must be very frustrated", "I know this is frustrating".

During each of these encounters, I received an email from Apple asking for feedback, which I was happy to give, including my dissatisfaction that the problem remained. During this process, they asked if I would be willing to receive a phone call about it, and I said yes.

Since last week, all my music disappeared from the Music app, several times I had been able to reinstall the music only for it to disappear again. This last time it took many tries to try and again download the music, but today I was able to get 4,700 songs back on my iPhone. But I'm waiting for them to disappear again.

This evening, I received a phone call from a senior tech at the local Apple Store. He was very knowledgeable, and some of his comments reflected he had seen my written feedback. We discussed the previous attempts and noted when I wiped the iPhone to the factory settings, I had restored the phone from my iTunes backup. I knew he was going to recommend wiping it again, and this time do a clean install, which in my case would be extremely time consuming. He did suggest wiping the iPhone again, suggesting either a clean install, or doing a restore from the iCloud backup vice the iTunes backup on my laptop. I knew the iTunes backup is a direct copy of what was on the iPhone, including software patches/updates from the original, which end up taking excess space on the iPhone and can possibly be corrupted. He then explained an iCloud backup/restore does a clean install of iOS to the latest version I had installed (not copying back the original plus patches which might be corrupted), and will restore everything back to the way I had my iPhone set up, including the wallpaper, etc. I will have to redo my fingerprint scans, and extra Credit Cards in Passbook as this is only stored locally on the iPhone.

I have so many apps, it was about to exceed the free iCloud storage space, so had excluded most of the apps in the iCloud backup that the iPhone does automatically everyday. So to make this painless, I purchased 20GB of iCloud storage, and have made an iCloud backup which includes all my apps.

Then Apple just released iOS 8.4.1 (which reportedly has many fixes to Apple Music but not the problem I've been having), so I installed this first, then backed it all up to iCloud, wiped the iPhone to factory new, and am now restoring from iCloud. This time it has already begun downloading music, which is a good sign. I'm hoping this solves the problem, since it was running fine until one week ago when all the songs went missing.

 

[chhhrrriiisss]

I must admit, Apple support has actually been quite good concerning my ongoing problems with Apple Music. When I called Apple via the number on their web page, I received a call back from a real live person within 15 minutes. They quickly passed me up to the next tier as soon as I described the problem. The second person was unable to solve my problem, made some suggestions and asked me to email him back with the results. He called me back on Sunday, and made the Apple Store appointment for me. The person at the Apple Store could not solve the problem, and told me he would write something that gave me priority to the next tier of support. Each time they made an effort to "reflect" a feeling - "You must be very frustrated", "I know this is frustrating".

During each of these encounters, I received an email from Apple asking for feedback, which I was happy to give, including my dissatisfaction that the problem remained. During this process, they asked if I would be willing to receive a phone call about it, and I said yes.

Since last week, all my music disappeared from the Music app, several times I had been able to reinstall the music only for it to disappear again. This last time it took many tries to try and again download the music, but today I was able to get 4,700 songs back on my iPhone. But I'm waiting for them to disappear again.

This evening, I received a phone call from a senior tech at the local Apple Store. He was very knowledgeable, and some of his comments reflected he had seen my written feedback. We discussed the previous attempts and noted when I wiped the iPhone to the factory settings, I had restored the phone from my iTunes backup. I knew he was going to recommend wiping it again, and this time do a clean install, which in my case would be extremely time consuming. He did suggest wiping the iPhone again, suggesting either a clean install, or doing a restore from the iCloud backup vice the iTunes backup on my laptop. I knew the iTunes backup is a direct copy of what was on the iPhone, including software patches/updates from the original, which end up taking excess space on the iPhone and can possibly be corrupted. He then explained an iCloud backup/restore does a clean install of iOS to the latest version I had installed (not copying back the original plus patches which might be corrupted), and will restore everything back to the way I had my iPhone set up, including the wallpaper, etc. I will have to redo my fingerprint scans, and extra Credit Cards in Passbook as this is only stored locally on the iPhone.

I have so many apps, it was about to exceed the free iCloud storage space, so had excluded most of the apps in the iCloud backup that the iPhone does automatically everyday. So to make this painless, I purchased 20GB of iCloud storage, and have made an iCloud backup which includes all my apps.

Then Apple just released iOS 8.4.1 (which reportedly has many fixes to Apple Music but not the problem I've been having), so I installed this first, then backed it all up to iCloud, wiped the iPhone to factory new, and am now restoring from iCloud. This time it has already begun downloading music, which is a good sign. I'm hoping this solves the problem, since it was running fine until one week ago when all the songs went missing.

Please keep us posted!

 

[yg17]

Don't get your hopes up. I'm having the same issues in 8.4.1. I don't think Apple actually tested this drek.

 

[navaira]

I think Jim Dalrymple was right and they simply don't know how to solve all the problems.