This Applescript will force playlist re-build from original "iTunes Music Library.xml"
https://github.com/dimecho/iTunes-Catalina
https://github.com/dimecho/iTunes-Catalina
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Music - Missing Features, Bugs, Issues & Troubleshooting
- Thread starter ErikGrim
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I've just updated, has anybody figured out how to resize the album art and have it fill the width of the window and not have the black bars next to the art (as show in attached). Only having 6 albums a row is infuriating when you have just shy of 3,000 albums, makes scrolling through infuriating.
I'm here to report success! And ask a question.
Success: Upgraded my 2TB iTunes library from Mojave. Yes, Loading Artwork actually crashed my computer three times. But eventually, over two days, everything passed and it all now works.
My advice: Prepare to not use your computer for anything else if you have a +1TB library for at least a day as Music uploads and re-scans everything. Ideally two days. Is this ridiculous? Yes, but I'm just telling you best practices if your iTunes library is extremely important (as it is for me). I tried using other applications while Music was doing its thing (CPU at 105%, massive memory hog) and invariably, other applications would begin not responding. So best to not do anything else on the computer while Loading Artwork is working.
Question: What is our file structure (in Finder) supposed to now look like? I have all these (now defunct?) folders from iTunes - are they still being used? I ask about the main Music/iTunes folders as well as folders in ~/Library. Can I now safely delete them? Attached is my current "Music Media folder location."
Success: Upgraded my 2TB iTunes library from Mojave. Yes, Loading Artwork actually crashed my computer three times. But eventually, over two days, everything passed and it all now works.
My advice: Prepare to not use your computer for anything else if you have a +1TB library for at least a day as Music uploads and re-scans everything. Ideally two days. Is this ridiculous? Yes, but I'm just telling you best practices if your iTunes library is extremely important (as it is for me). I tried using other applications while Music was doing its thing (CPU at 105%, massive memory hog) and invariably, other applications would begin not responding. So best to not do anything else on the computer while Loading Artwork is working.
Question: What is our file structure (in Finder) supposed to now look like? I have all these (now defunct?) folders from iTunes - are they still being used? I ask about the main Music/iTunes folders as well as folders in ~/Library. Can I now safely delete them? Attached is my current "Music Media folder location."
Attachments
Anybody else have the issue where clicking on See All on artist page doesn’t do anything?
Thanks for this! I lost some playlists because I deleted them from my phone thinking they would re-download when I synced with the new Music app, but that did not happen.
Question - If I have playlists that I have updated since last week when I installed Catalina, will this script touch those or will it only re-create playlists that are not there?
Anyone know if today's 10.15 Update fixes the Apple Music "lost album art" and column browser problems?
Kind of. My issue is that the sort order on smart playlists isn't synced to the device. In the Music app, I sort most smart playlists by Artist. When I sync to my iPhone or iPad, the smart playlists are … kind of sorted by Artist, but all recent additions (within the last few weeks are sorted to the bottom). It's like there's some weird point in time where it stopped updating the play order or something.
On regular playlists I had the same issue, but right-clicking the playlist and doing 'Copy to Play Order' works to get the right sorting on iOS. Of course this is a garbage workaround, as it requires manually doing it on every playlist any time it's updated, but you can at least address some of the issues while Apple bugfixes this mess.
My album art on devices is a complete disaster, and not even consistent between devices; my iPhone has album art missing on some albums, while the same albums have album art on my iPad … but the iPad has other albums that have no art.
All albums have art in Music, and previously did in iTunes and iOS 12.
The loss of the column browser is obviously terrible, too.
This app update is trash. Syncing in Finder is a boneheaded UX decision, and the basic functional bugs to playlists and album art are terrible. I reported them in the developer bug reporter, but I have logged dozens of bugs there over the last ~5 years and they're largely ignored.
Sad to say, it's clear that Apple has severely deprioritized users who still sync music to devices. Which I get is a minority in these days of streaming, but with the size of the install base it's still millions and millions of customers.
Don't hold your breath, all this garbage is going to persist for months.
Yes, this is a huge one for me. I can't believe all my previous organization is gone. I am hoping that this script from Doug's Scripts can be redone with a batch feature, to reset all my over 3500 playlists. And will probably have to create a macro with Keyboard Maestro to go through and change every playlist to song view first. THIS IS INSANE!!
Ok wow, so I just read the whole thread and I am having a few issues that are not listed here. The biggest are to do with the Finder iOS sync. The first is that you can't restart while the finder is syncing with an iOS device, as you can't force quit the finder only force restart it. Maybe there a process that I could force quit (maybe it is AMPDevicesAgent) but I used to just be able to force quit iTunes and now I can't until the sync finishes, and I have no idea how long the sync takes. I am assuming that this means that is doing the interminable backup stage:
And then once this finished you get the actual sync going.
Though of course that first stage takes forever with no feedback (at least iTunes gave me text feedback to tell me where the sync was).
And my other huge issue has to do with Folders in Playlists. I have thousands of playlists, in fact over 3500 as I do them for every album and put the year in the playlist title, it is just how I have always synced. And some I put into folders. Well here is my folder for my Big Finish Doctor Who audio files in Music:
And here is the same folder showing up in the iOS Finder Sync:
Not in any order that I can figure out whatsoever. Now my first sync after upgrading to Catalina didn't show this, but after that first sync this is what I get. And it makes no sense, so syncing is so confusing!
I have reported this bug to Apple's Feedback but have gotten no response.
Does anyone else have some files in folders, and how do they look in Finder iOS sync? Am I the only one with this issue? This is huge for me!
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And then once this finished you get the actual sync going.
Though of course that first stage takes forever with no feedback (at least iTunes gave me text feedback to tell me where the sync was).
And my other huge issue has to do with Folders in Playlists. I have thousands of playlists, in fact over 3500 as I do them for every album and put the year in the playlist title, it is just how I have always synced. And some I put into folders. Well here is my folder for my Big Finish Doctor Who audio files in Music:
And here is the same folder showing up in the iOS Finder Sync:
Not in any order that I can figure out whatsoever. Now my first sync after upgrading to Catalina didn't show this, but after that first sync this is what I get. And it makes no sense, so syncing is so confusing!
I have reported this bug to Apple's Feedback but have gotten no response.
Does anyone else have some files in folders, and how do they look in Finder iOS sync? Am I the only one with this issue? This is huge for me!
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No it needs to be updated to work for sure, but it would be amazing to get it updated and have an ability to batch.
My frustration at this piece of **** app grows, why does it take you into a different menu when clicking into album instead of expanding it below the art like what used to happen? How in anyway is that better?
Well I finally upgraded. The only issue
I faced was the library synced with iTunes wasn’t comparable with music, I kept getting the message not enough free storage on my device to sync the entire library. I deleted the library from my
iPhone manually and then it all synced ok 1st time but I did need to restart it first.
Only other issue I can see is that DFU mode works in finder but if the IOS software isn’t already on your Mac it states it needs to download it as before with iTunes but then it never downloads........
I faced was the library synced with iTunes wasn’t comparable with music, I kept getting the message not enough free storage on my device to sync the entire library. I deleted the library from my
iPhone manually and then it all synced ok 1st time but I did need to restart it first.
Only other issue I can see is that DFU mode works in finder but if the IOS software isn’t already on your Mac it states it needs to download it as before with iTunes but then it never downloads........
No improvements and a few more bugs in 10.0.1.33. Fun.
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3500 playlists is going to be frustrating indeed. For my couple of hundreds adding this keyboard command was enough to alleviate my frustrations:
I am not on board with the search function in the Music app. I wish I could type something in and have my long list of songs filter down to what I'm typing...just like the good ole days.
How do you know how AM is working with the iCloud Library? There used to be an indication in the top right on iTunes as to what was happening but I can't find anything similar now. The activity windows is always empty yet the options to update cloud library and genius are greyed out which to me indicates they are in progress. Similarly if I try to quit it says an iCloud update is in progress.
The issue I have is things aren't in sync anymore, anything I add on my phone isn't appearing in AM on my Mac and vice versa. I've left AM running for days hoping it does something as I have a large library but there's no indication anything is happening.
Couple of other issues I'm seeing. Does everyones artwork seem to do some sort of refresh every time you scroll. I've been through my library and made sure all the artwork is there but when you scroll up or down the vast majority show as blank and take 15 - 30 seconds to display.
Finally AM won't quit and I mean that literally. No matter how many times I try it won't quit without a force quit. Of course quitting that way means opening it again takes hours while it checks the library for errors.
The issue I have is things aren't in sync anymore, anything I add on my phone isn't appearing in AM on my Mac and vice versa. I've left AM running for days hoping it does something as I have a large library but there's no indication anything is happening.
Couple of other issues I'm seeing. Does everyones artwork seem to do some sort of refresh every time you scroll. I've been through my library and made sure all the artwork is there but when you scroll up or down the vast majority show as blank and take 15 - 30 seconds to display.
Finally AM won't quit and I mean that literally. No matter how many times I try it won't quit without a force quit. Of course quitting that way means opening it again takes hours while it checks the library for errors.
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Hit shift-command-F while viewing the song list.
Some more thoughts on "Why This New Catalina Music Client Is Way Way Subpar" that I don't think I've seen addressed in the ten pages prior:
1. some context: my iTunes library goes back to the sound jam upgrade days, so we're talking 2001-2002. That means I have 125,000 tracks and a lot of carefully curated playlists, artwork, id-3 tags, etc etc.
2. after having installed Catalina more than a week ago, and leaving Music running semi-constantly, here and there, there are still 75k tracks without restored artwork yet. Grrrrr.
3. the search function losing its features and being replaced by the modified filtering in libraries is, as we all seem to agree, so very very frustrating and backwards.
4. most annoying of all, so far: any playlist that I've manually dragged into a specific order, song by song, never sticks after quitting and restarting the app. i've tried a few workarounds -- changing the playlist views from "songs" to "playlist" (nope!) and right-clicking the playlist name and selecting "copy to playlist order" just to see if that weird workaround from iPhone importing tweaks might work on my mac. (nope!) when i add new tracks to any of these manually-ordered playlists, they are placed in the proper order at the bottom, implying that the only master sorting order that the Music app is internally relying on is by "date added."
I figure 1-3 are hopeless, but does anyone have any ideas on how to fix #4?
1. some context: my iTunes library goes back to the sound jam upgrade days, so we're talking 2001-2002. That means I have 125,000 tracks and a lot of carefully curated playlists, artwork, id-3 tags, etc etc.
2. after having installed Catalina more than a week ago, and leaving Music running semi-constantly, here and there, there are still 75k tracks without restored artwork yet. Grrrrr.
3. the search function losing its features and being replaced by the modified filtering in libraries is, as we all seem to agree, so very very frustrating and backwards.
4. most annoying of all, so far: any playlist that I've manually dragged into a specific order, song by song, never sticks after quitting and restarting the app. i've tried a few workarounds -- changing the playlist views from "songs" to "playlist" (nope!) and right-clicking the playlist name and selecting "copy to playlist order" just to see if that weird workaround from iPhone importing tweaks might work on my mac. (nope!) when i add new tracks to any of these manually-ordered playlists, they are placed in the proper order at the bottom, implying that the only master sorting order that the Music app is internally relying on is by "date added."
I figure 1-3 are hopeless, but does anyone have any ideas on how to fix #4?
TBH I can’t believe that Apple released the new Music app in such condition as it currently is. It should be in alpha or maybe beta testing phase at this time.