Help! I lost all my Available Offline Music on Apple Music!

[Mazenat]

Hello,

So I have three types of songs, ones I ripped from CDs, ones I bought (+U2's album), and ones I added them to My Music and Made Available Offline. I have subscribed to Music on my iPhone 6+ and MacBook Pro. Please note that my iCloud has been full for the past couple of weeks.

I have done three things, before and after the my songs disappeared:

1. I updated my iPhone to 8.4.1
2. I signed out of my Apple ID in the App store and signed in with another Apple ID. Then I swiched the accounts back. I do this sometimes because my other Apple ID is in the US, and I like to see the trending apps in there (My other ID is not in US).
3. I wanted to charge my mobile, so I connected it to my trusted iMac that I had my phone synced with iTunes, and where I ripped my CDs to it. I haven't done that in a while, so I never checked iTunes on the iMac after I subscribed to Music.

Results:
1. I lost all songs I downloaded using Music.
2. I had Music synced on my Laptop perfectly, where any song I add to My Music on one device is added on the other simultaneously. I lost all songs I downloaded using Music. I decided to search for a song I had previously made available offline, and when the option to add the music to My Music and make available offline was not there, and I saw the option to remove from My Music. Which indicates that it's registered somewhere that I had this song added to My Music.

Things I tried:
1. iPhone: I restarted my iPhone, nothing happened
2. iPhone: I signed out of my Music, and signed in again, nothing happened
3. Laptop: I signed out of my Music, and signed in again, and something weird happened. I lost all my songs I ripped from CDs that were synced after I subscribed to Music, and all I have left in my laptop are songs I bought (+U2 album).

Now I feel so frustrated because of what happened. I thought that the songs I add to My Music is registered to my ID, which means that whenever I login using my Apple I can see all songs added to My Music.

Please help me retrieve months worth of songs :/


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EDIT: I HAVE FOUND THE SOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM

So I contacted Apple Support, and asked them about my problem. Apparently there is a toggle that has been clicked by itself, or it has been turned off in one way or another, definitely not by me

Go to settings >Music > iCloud Music Library

Toggle iCloud Music Library on, and choose Merge if you have songs you've ripped from CD's like I do, because those songs are in my iTunes, not iCloud, since I didn't subscribe to iTunes Match.

It magically worked. All my playlists are back online. The good thing about it, is that I didn't lose my library, but the bad thing about it is I have to make songs available offline manually. Every song has to be made available offline on my iPhone individually. Luckily, I have >100 songs made available offline, so it wont take long before I make it, but I feel sorry for someone who has 1000+ songs.

Thank you everybody for their help. I will keep my Music subscription hoping they make it more stable in the future.

All the best,

 

[yg17]

It's an issue a lot of people are having, but Apple hasn't acknowledged that it's an actual issue yet. In short, Apple Music is a buggy piece of crap and shouldn't be used if you want reliable offline music.

 

[NavySEAL6]

Similar experience here. All music selected for offline doesn't show, but it's still taking up physical storage space

 

[Julien]

You can find them in the backup of your laptop. If it is a MacBook and using Time Machine you can pick the individual tracks to restore. Most other backup software like Carbon Copy will allow you to pick files too.

 

[NavySEAL6]

You can find them in the backup of your laptop. If it is a MacBook and using Time Machine you can pick the individual tracks to restore. Most other backup software like Carbon Copy will allow you to pick files too.

The music still technically shows up as saved in Apple Music. Everything I selected for available offline is no longer available and gives me the option to download again, but it's still taking up space

 

[Julien]

The music still technically shows up as saved in Apple Music. Everything I selected for available offline is no longer available and gives me the option to download again, but it's still taking up space

1. Rename or move the iTunes Library.it file
2. Go to Previous iTunes Libraries
3. Copy the last known 'good' file to the iTunes folder
4. Rename it iTunes Library.it
5. Close and reopen iTunes
6. If this fails or 'screws' up simply rename or move back the original Library.it file

 

[Exile714]

I have very poor internet at home, so I've been using Apple Music 1) mainly outside my home on work/public WiFi and 2) only on my phone. I'm having the same problems and worse, like whenever I redownload my music from a master playlist, it will download everything and then an hour later everything disappears again.

And I can't add music in iTunes without disabling offline music, which means if I want to add anything from my personal collection I have to lose all offline music (because I can't upload songs to iCloud from home).

It's all quite a hassle and honestly probably not worth it. I like the aspect of finding new music, but I like owning and carefully controlling my collection too. So if I have to buy my music to use it reliably anyway, what's the point of Apple Music?

 

[Mazenat]

Do you feel Spotify is currently a better alternative? If the bugginess is still there, I want to cancel my subscription before September

 

[mporcheron]

Do you feel Spotify is currently a better alternative? If the bugginess is still there, I want to cancel my subscription before September

I'll be going back to Spotify if the offline music bug isn't solved soon.

I'm currently living abroad for three months in Denmark and my carrier (Three UK/DK), while allowing me 25GB of roaming data, seems to engage in heavy throttling of Apple Music and YouTube (gee, I wonder why). Essentially I'm relying on the offline functionality of Apple Music, and so far, offline music gets 'deleted' almost once a week without notice. I never had this problem with Spotify.

Edit: a workaround I've used is to create a playlist with everything you want offline, and when it deletes the offline files, go to the playlist and select "Make Available Offline" again.

 

[NavySEAL6]

1. Rename or move the iTunes Library.it file
2. Go to Previous iTunes Libraries
3. Copy the last known 'good' file to the iTunes folder
4. Rename it iTunes Library.it
5. Close and reopen iTunes
6. If this fails or 'screws' up simply rename or move back the original Library.it file

Thank you for your detailed reply. This issue is occurring on iPhone, not the Mac. I'm not sure if this would help the iPhone music app "losing" where it stores it's offline available music

 

[Mazenat]

I HAVE FOUND THE SOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM

So I contacted Apple Support, and asked them about my problem. Apparently there is a toggle that has been clicked by itself, or it has been turned off in one way or another, definitely not by me

Go to settings >Music > iCloud Music Library

Toggle iCloud Music Library on, and choose Merge if you have songs you've ripped from CD's like I do, because those songs are in my iTunes, not iCloud, since I didn't subscribe to iTunes Match.

It magically worked. All my playlists are back online. The good thing about it, is that I didn't lose my library, but the bad thing about it is I have to make songs available offline manually. Every song has to be made available offline on my iPhone individually. Luckily, I have >100 songs made available offline, so it wont take long before I make it, but I feel sorry for someone who has 1000+ songs.

Thank you everybody for their help. I will keep my Music subscription hoping they make it more stable in the future.

All the best,

 

[mporcheron]

It magically worked. All my playlists are back online. The good thing about it, is that I didn't lose my library, but the bad thing about it is I have to make songs available offline manually. Every song has to be made available offline on my iPhone individually. Luckily, I have >100 songs made available offline, so it wont take long before I make it, but I feel sorry for someone who has 1000+ songs.

You can also choose to make artists, albums or playlists offline using the same menu option, however, as I described above, bugs in the iOS implementation mean it clears out your downloaded files (well, the space remains 'used', so I assume the files are there, but the app thinks they're not).

iCloud Music Library is another confusing mess (one which Dalrymple ran into).

 

[Jholbr1]

I wanted to post because this forum actually was beyond helpful for me with my loss of downloaded Apple Music and playlists. My issue occurred when I was searching for a song only available in the U.K. Apple Music catalog (I am in the US). When I was promoted to switch stores, I did and it erased all of my downloaded music from Apple Music that has spanned over the course of about a year. I was literally devastated. But as mentioned above, when I went into settings under the music tab, I found the toggle for iCloud music library was turned off. After turning it back on my music was back in tact! Thank you so much!