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Music - Missing Features, Bugs, Issues & Troubleshooting

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I don't think I've ever been as frustrated and pissed off with any application in history like I am with this godawful Music app on my Mac. I thought iTunes was a mess but this thing is a raging inferno of annoyance. Missing music. Music I purchased on iTunes will have missing artwork randomly. Albums I've purchased in iTunes will have missing songs and when I re-download, some tracks will only play in a preview version as if I'm listening to them on the iTunes Store. Everything is a goddamn mess. I have about 2TB of music on a hard drive and most of it is hard to find, local music or just rare punk recordings that aren't available to stream or I would just say "F it" and spring for Spotify.

If I delete this pile of trash Music app and re-download it from the App Store will that help me out at all? I'll probably have to reconfigure my whole library but it can't be any worse than it is now, right?
 
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Burningtime said:
I don't think I've ever been as frustrated and pissed off with any application in history like I am with this godawful Music app on my Mac. I thought iTunes was a mess but this thing is a raging inferno of annoyance. Missing music. Music I purchased on iTunes will have missing artwork randomly. Albums I've purchased in iTunes will have missing songs and when I re-download, some tracks will only play in a preview version as if I'm listening to them on the iTunes Store. Everything is a goddamn mess. I have about 2TB of music on a hard drive and most of it is hard to find, local music or just rare punk recordings that aren't available to stream or I would just say "F it" and spring for Spotify.

If I delete this pile of trash Music app and re-download it from the App Store will that help me out at all? I'll probably have to reconfigure my whole library but it can't be any worse than it is now, right?
Click to expand...

I don't think you can delete/reinstall the Music app as it is built in as part of Catalina, thus the only way to "reinstall" it would be to reinstall the OS
 
Burningtime said:
I don't think I've ever been as frustrated and pissed off with any application in history like I am with this godawful Music app on my Mac. I thought iTunes was a mess but this thing is a raging inferno of annoyance. Missing music. Music I purchased on iTunes will have missing artwork randomly. Albums I've purchased in iTunes will have missing songs and when I re-download, some tracks will only play in a preview version as if I'm listening to them on the iTunes Store. Everything is a goddamn mess. I have about 2TB of music on a hard drive and most of it is hard to find, local music or just rare punk recordings that aren't available to stream or I would just say "F it" and spring for Spotify.

If I delete this pile of trash Music app and re-download it from the App Store will that help me out at all? I'll probably have to reconfigure my whole library but it can't be any worse than it is now, right?
Click to expand...


I would just honestly grab Retroactive and use that. Its the iTunes client on Catalina and its works, as youd imagine, flawlessly
 
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Personally I think Apple made a "Marketing" mistake, they should have made a separate app for Streaming music (maybe call it iMusic ?) and left a pared down version of iTunes for locally managing "purchased music" - ie purchased from apple store, amazon, MP3's ripped from CD collections etc. This would make it less confusing for managing local libraries and not mixed up with the streaming library and versions of songs

I think there are 2 types of users - old legacy users like me that started with SoundJam and my Nomad II MP3 player and built up a library over the decades, and the newer younger generation that likes the streaming, online access from all devices etc. Why not have 2 apps?

At any rate I have basically achieved this by switching to Spotify for streaming and listening to "new music" (very good for Classical Music with multiple versions by different artists and ochestras) - much better value IMHO for the monthly fee - more selection.

I am using apple Music on 10.5.6 beta 2 and it works very well (minus the streaming service) - artwork is as good as it ever was and all the playlists have all migrated well - some of them no doubt started on Soundjam way back in the day - lol

Nomad-II-Player.jpg
 
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mikzn said:
Personally I think Apple made a "Marketing" mistake, they should have made a separate app for Streaming music (maybe call it iMusic ?) and left a pared down version of iTunes for locally managing "purchased music" - ie purchased from apple store, amazon, MP3's ripped from CD collections etc. This would make it less confusing for managing local libraries and not mixed up with the streaming library and versions of songs
Click to expand...

I actually disagree here - even though this is what I would prefer myself. To this day I am frustrated that  Music is in the way when I just want to listen to local music content and I would prefer there to be two apps, but the general public wouldn't.

Also, Apple's idea of the  Music scenario is actually really ideal if it worked flawlessly (and despite our moaning here I think it more or less does). This is really the only service that really even tries to integrate your local and cloud library and allow them to coexists together. In theory you can merge your special songs that aren't available to stream with the massive cloud library catalog and everything just blends into one pile perfectly. That is a really ideal situation and I think  Music comes close-ish. The only feature it's really missing is lossless quality, but I personally am not bothered by that.

Where the service falls down is for "power users" of Music and I think there are more of those than Apple thinks. I like to have a bit more separation between "owned" and "cloud" music and the Catalina Music app makes that harder since you can't select "View Downloaded" on a case-by-case" basis (all of my owned music was downloaded and all of my cloud music was in a single playlist called Apple Music and I set Mojave iTunes to only show downloaded for all views except that playlist). Buts where a song just randomly won't download, play counts aren't reliable, lack of Smart Playlists that reference other Smart Playlists are all things that inhabit this ideal situation for me.

At the end of the day, I can't go all in on any streaming service not for some philosophical war of rent vs owning, but simply because (1) I have a lot of music that simply isn't available to stream, and (2) with a DRM download you are never guaranteed to keep it forever. However, I like having a massive catalog to enjoy and  Music lets me kind of have both.
 
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Apple Music is in THEORY what we all wanted: a stripped down iTunes only for listening to and managing your music. No podcasts, no movies, no tv shows, no books, no device management. It should be leaner, faster and more intuitive. Unfortunately it fails in just about everything.

Go get Retroactive, keep at complaining to Apple.
 
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mikzn said:
Personally I think Apple made a "Marketing" mistake, they should have made a separate app for Streaming music (maybe call it iMusic ?) and left a pared down version of iTunes for locally managing "purchased music" - ie purchased from apple store, amazon, MP3's ripped from CD collections etc. This would make it less confusing for managing local libraries and not mixed up with the streaming library and versions of songs
Click to expand...
Hard disagree here. Having to use separate apps depending on which song of your music collection you want to play sounds beyond unintuitive.
 
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Okay, this isn't a bug, but I guess it was an old behavior that is so ingrained in my mind that it's extremely frustrating. In iTunes, double-clicking on album art started to play the album. Now it just opens the album. That would be an issue if each album wasn't in it's own window/section rather than just expanding in place.

A small thing and just a change in behavior, but apparently I just double-clicked albums a lot when working on my iMac.
 
coolaaron88 said:
I would just honestly grab Retroactive and use that. Its the iTunes client on Catalina and its works, as youd imagine, flawlessly
Click to expand...

I have iTunes installed on Catalina via Retroactive. It works without a hitch. However, how does one get it to sync to an iPhone or iPod? (Yes, I still have an iPod 160GB that works GREAT.) Thanks.
 
Burningtime said:
I don't think I've ever been as frustrated and pissed off with any application in history like I am with this godawful Music app on my Mac. I thought iTunes was a mess but this thing is a raging inferno of annoyance. Missing music. Music I purchased on iTunes will have missing artwork randomly. Albums I've purchased in iTunes will have missing songs and when I re-download, some tracks will only play in a preview version as if I'm listening to them on the iTunes Store. Everything is a goddamn mess. I have about 2TB of music on a hard drive and most of it is hard to find, local music or just rare punk recordings that aren't available to stream or I would just say "F it" and spring for Spotify.

If I delete this pile of trash Music app and re-download it from the App Store will that help me out at all? I'll probably have to reconfigure my whole library but it can't be any worse than it is now, right?
Click to expand...

You are entirely too kind. Catalina's Music has to be the worst program I've ever used since I bought my first home computer, an Osborne One in 1982. Apple Care is zero help. I may have bought the most expensive iMac last year and spent over $10,000 with Apple on it and other devices but that means little. The folks at Apple are nice and polite but that's all. I follow their instructions and send them all sorts of data their program vacuums up. But that's it. They never call me back nor email me with a solution.

I did save all of my iTunes purchases. I did do a nuke and pave using Catalina 10.15.5. I turned off in Music all iTunes Store functions. I have been slowly adding back my CDs that I ripped with dBpoweramp, then worked on consistent metadata using Tag Editor.

I can add such an album to iTunes via Retroactive or to iTunes on a Mini running High Sierra or to my 2009 iMac, also running High Sierra, with no issues. But when I import it into Music, it might be there the next time I open Music or it might not, or the artwork might be missing or songs or whatever.

The point I thought was to listen to and enjoy music. Not so using Catalina's Music. I'm just about to the point of going back to Mojave, and I don't think I'm alone.
 
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Is anyone experiencing issues with the visualizer?

Does not work consistently, even after reboots. Whats even more strange is the issue even happens with the retroactive itunes added (12.9) now tho I never had this issue with HS. Even after fresh Mojave install still occurs...
 
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moulderine said:
Is anyone experiencing issues with the visualizer?

Does not work consistently, even after reboots. Whats even more strange is the issue even happens with the retroactive itunes added (12.9) now tho I never had this issue with HS. Even after fresh Mojave install still occurs...
Click to expand...

Now working again (no changes other than mac was shutdown over night). Seriously, I just give up.
 
This app is the reason I'm gonna leave the Apple ecosystem. Everyday there is a new problem. Usually just small things like missing artwork or album artwork replaced with podcast (!) artwork somehow. It's just when it keeps building up and I can't even listen to an album that I own (even albums that I myself recorded and released) without it making me want to throw my Mac out the window I'm thinking Linux is looking more and more attractive by the day. My 400 Linux laptop can play my library no problem and there's no issue with my bluetooth headphones cutting out every five minutes either. Apple just flat out sucks sometimes even though I really want to love them.
 
I have a Music library on one iMac (call it iMac A) where all the media files live on a NAS.

I would like to use that same library for a second iMac (iMac B) on the same network.

I copied the the musiclibrary file from iMac A to iMac B, and all songs, playlists, ratings, etc show up fine. It is just missing all the album artwork and artist artwork.

Occasionally the album artwork does show up for two or three out of a thousand albums, but that's it.

Any thoughts on how to regain the album artwork in this case?
 
Aragornii said:
I have a Music library on one iMac (call it iMac A) where all the media files live on a NAS.

I would like to use that same library for a second iMac (iMac B) on the same network.

I copied the the musiclibrary file from iMac A to iMac B, and all songs, playlists, ratings, etc show up fine. It is just missing all the album artwork and artist artwork.

Occasionally the album artwork does show up for two or three out of a thousand albums, but that's it.

Any thoughts on how to regain the album artwork in this case?
Click to expand...

When I did a similar things (copying over the library file with the media files in the same location) I had the same issue. When I went to "Get Info" on each album the artwork was there. I had to click and jiggle it so the system recognized that I modified it and then click OK or Apply or whatever and then they showed up. I had to do this for all 467 albums and I was very much annoyed.
 
Traverse said:
When I did a similar things (copying over the library file with the media files in the same location) I had the same issue. When I went to "Get Info" on each album the artwork was there. I had to click and jiggle it so the system recognized that I modified it and then click OK or Apply or whatever and then they showed up. I had to do this for all 467 albums and I was very much annoyed.
Click to expand...

In my situation if I click "get info" I do not see the album artwork at all. What's weird is that is I play a song, the embedded artwork shows up in the miniplayer, but that I think is something different than the artwork Music manages.

I also note that if I right click on an album nothing happens. On some albums I get an error message that says artwork for a particular album can't be found, but for others just nothing happens.
 
Aragornii said:
In my situation if I click "get info" I do not see the album artwork at all. What's weird is that is I play a song, the embedded artwork shows up in the miniplayer, but that I think is something different than the artwork Music manages.

I also note that if I right click on an album nothing happens. On some albums I get an error message that says artwork for a particular album can't be found, but for others just nothing happens.
Click to expand...

After a day the album artwork is starting to trickle in. Still don't have artist artwork, but maybe that will come later. I'll just let it run for a while.
 
Found a bug. Not sure what causes it, but the Music app will randomly stop registering double clicks on a song to play. I have to use the "Play" button when you hover over the song number. If I quit and reopen the app double clicking works for a while and then stops again.
 
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Anyone downloading Big Sur? Please report back with changes. I know it won't affect Catalina, but it'd be nice to see if features are still being added.
 
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