Music - Missing Features, Bugs, Issues & Troubleshooting

[Jack Neill]

I went to a Best Buy yesterday and played around with a M1 Air and the Music app seemed better but still a bit laggy on scrolling just like my 2020 Air.

Pretty disappointed it takes a GB5 of over 15000 to run this app with smooth scrolling.

I used Retroactive and put iTunes 12.9.5.5 on MBA 5,2 running Big Sur and its working perfectly and I can scroll my 4000+ albums like it should, It will be nice to actually manage my iPods correctly as well. As noted above I hope the 11.2 update fixes this abortion of a application... In the mean time its back to iTunes to download my 60K song iCloud library.

 

[tandyfied]

The search field, being part of the sidebar, disappears up with the scroll.

Can’t remove playlist header in Song view. This seems to be intended behaviour, which sucks. This is the same in iTunes.

Hi Erik

Thank you for the post. Very informative!

Incredibly disheartened and disappointed by the latest release of the Apple Music app for Big Sur. The two quotes above highlight my dismay at Apple erroneously implementing new features that render my experience as counter-productive.

As a consequence I used Retroactive to download and install an older version of iTunes but found that both Serato and Virtual DJ software is by default reading the new SDK library files that Apple Music has created. Is there anyway to disable this and point the DJ software at the old iTunes database?

I have reported some of the above issues with someone from Apple Support who promised to raise this at their next engineers meeting. Don't hold your breath!

 

[TVreporter]

Wrong thread

 

[moulderine]

How does 11.2 music compare to where Catalina was? still not updated, and after the nightmare of mojave transition i wont make the mistake again untill sure big sur is ready

 

[tkermit]

I wish there was someone on Apple's Music team who listens to Classical music. *sigh* ...

 

[Jpancakes]

Lately, when I want to view my library by artist (switching from album view), I get the spinning beach ball for a while before the list comes up. Even if I want to make a change to the meta file on an artist where I have only a few albums, it takes 30 seconds or so of the spinning wheel before the change is made. Is there any hope that the app will get basic functioning in the next update? I’ve wasted hours with the current version.

 

[Jack Neill]

Lately, when I want to view my library by artist (switching from album view), I get the spinning beach ball for a while before the list comes up. Even if I want to make a change to the meta file on an artist where I have only a few albums, it takes 30 seconds or so of the spinning wheel before the change is made. Is there any hope that the app will get basic functioning in the next update? I’ve wasted hours with the current version.

There is no hope against the empire. Retroactive and iTunes 12.9.5.5 is your Jedi.

 

[DJ2K3000]

Hello all! Thanks to the starter of this thread and all who have posted here. I'm so glad I found it! I have been experiencing some very strange behavior with the Music app since upgrading my 2017 iMac to Big Sur. My problem begins with the fact that when starting up my iMac and opening up the Music app, nothing appears in the Recently Added, Artists, Albums, Music Videos, etc. columns. Everything shows up in my assorted playlists, but nothing shows up under any of the columns listed under the Library. The really strange thing is these items WILL show up a few hours after my iMac has been on for awhile! I have my music, movies and TV show libraries all stored on my external WD 8TB hard drive. I have not had any issues accessing any of my videos and movies in the TV app. It works perfectly from the start. But for some reason, recently added stuff does not show up right away in the Music app. Has anyone here had this issue? Thanks for reading, and I hope I explained my issue clearly.

 

[ouimetnick]

It's amazing how everyone hated iTunes (me included) and Apple's solution was to DESTROY the main part and purpose of it (Music)

 

[mikzn]

It's amazing how everyone hated iTunes (me included) and Apple's solution was to DESTROY the main part and purpose of it (Music)

Ha ha - Maybe they’ll end up doing the same thing Coca Cola did with their “New Coke” - they could bring it back as “iTunes Classic” lol 😂

Not much chance of that happening tho 😢 - I think Apple is more focussed on selling “streamed music” and competing with Spotify and other music streaming services.

 

[DJ2K3000]

Hello all! Thanks to the starter of this thread and all who have posted here. I'm so glad I found it! I have been experiencing some very strange behavior with the Music app since upgrading my 2017 iMac to Big Sur. My problem begins with the fact that when starting up my iMac and opening up the Music app, nothing appears in the Recently Added, Artists, Albums, Music Videos, etc. columns. Everything shows up in my assorted playlists, but nothing shows up under any of the columns listed under the Library. The really strange thing is these items WILL show up a few hours after my iMac has been on for awhile! I have my music, movies and TV show libraries all stored on my external WD 8TB hard drive. I have not had any issues accessing any of my videos and movies in the TV app. It works perfectly from the start. But for some reason, recently added stuff does not show up right away in the Music app. Has anyone here had this issue? Thanks for reading, and I hope I explained my issue clearly.

So, like I said in my above post, all my recently added music is now visible after about six hours or so. It was about 7:20 pm when I posted about this issue, and now its about 1:30am and the Music app is back to normal. If I were to quit the app and reopen it, or reboot my computer for any reason, it would go back to being empty and look the way it did in my previously posted photo. Baffling!!!

 

[miketaylor]

At first I thought it was me, but now I can confirm - if I highlight a track in a playlist and press DELETE on my keyboard (as I have for years), I would expect the prompt to remove the song from the playlist.

HOWEVER in this latest update, it is deleting the entire playlist from my library. I am now more careful with the prompts since this is a change in functionality.

The only way to remove a song is to right click on the song and select "remove song from this playlist."

Be careful folks, or you might lose some playlists like me!

 

[drakula]

I'm not sure if this is an issue with Music (1.1.2.28) on Big Sur (11.1) but I still sync music to my phone via the Music App through Finder. I've noticed that anything I listen to on my phone will not "sync" back to music in regards to play counts or recently played. I've tried even creating a new Music library to see if that would work and it does not. Is this a known issue? Any advice on anything I could try?

 

[RednBlue]

I'm not sure if this is an issue with Music (1.1.2.28) on Big Sur (11.1) but I still sync music to my phone via the Music App through Finder. I've noticed that anything I listen to on my phone will not "sync" back to music in regards to play counts or recently played. I've tried even creating a new Music library to see if that would work and it does not. Is this a known issue? Any advice on anything I could try?

I had exactly the same issue a few weeks back and eventually managed to resolve it through the settings on both my phone and my Mac. Unfortunately I can‘t remember exactly what I did - it was very much a matter of trial and error making adjustments suggested by others on this board and elsewhere on the web - but if it’s any reassurance, it is resolveable in the settings.

 

[drakula]

I had exactly the same issue a few weeks back and eventually managed to resolve it through the settings on both my phone and my Mac. Unfortunately I can‘t remember exactly what I did - it was very much a matter of trial and error making adjustments suggested by others on this board and elsewhere on the web - but if it’s any reassurance, it is resolveable in the settings.

Is it possible to post what you've changed in your settings for Music as well as your iOS device?

 

[RednBlue]

Is it possible to post what you've changed in your settings for Music as well as your iOS device?

No guarantees but here goes:

iphone (SE 2020 model) - Music settings
Show Apple Music. ON
Show All Purchases. OFF
Show Star Ratings.OFF
Animated Cover Art ON
Mobile Data ONEQ OFF
Sound Check. OFF

Mac Music settings : Preferences:
General: Tunes store ticked; Star ratings ticked; songs list tick boxes ticked
Restrictions: Disable iTunes Store ticked, everything else unticked
Advanced: Automatically update artwork ticked. Keep mini player on top...ticked; everything else unticked

No guarantees but works for me. Good luck.


See also here: https://www.guidingtech.com/fix-apple-music-mac-not-syncing-iphone/

 

[drakula]

No guarantees but here goes:

iphone (SE 2020 model) - Music settings
Show Apple Music. ON
Show All Purchases. OFF
Show Star Ratings.OFF
Animated Cover Art ON
Mobile Data ONEQ OFF
Sound Check. OFF

Mac Music settings : Preferences:
General: Tunes store ticked; Star ratings ticked; songs list tick boxes ticked
Restrictions: Disable iTunes Store ticked, everything else unticked
Advanced: Automatically update artwork ticked. Keep mini player on top...ticked; everything else unticked

No guarantees but works for me. Good luck.


See also here: https://www.guidingtech.com/fix-apple-music-mac-not-syncing-iphone/

Thanks for this. I tried it but for the life of me I can't get anything to work. I even tried signing out of my account within Music and even all of iCloud on my phone. I would have to chalk it up as a bug in this current version of Music. Since I just recently got this M1 Air around Christmas I updated the MacOS first thing, so I never had a chance to try it with the previous version of Music. So I'm hoping that if this is a bug it's resolved in the next version of Music that's released with the next update of MacOS. The link you supplied seems to be syncing music specifically for an iCloud library, which I am just manually syncing a physical library on to my phone. But thank you for the reply!

 

[RednBlue]

Thanks for this. I tried it but for the life of me I can't get anything to work. I even tried signing out of my account within Music and even all of iCloud on my phone. I would have to chalk it up as a bug in this current version of Music. Since I just recently got this M1 Air around Christmas I updated the MacOS first thing, so I never had a chance to try it with the previous version of Music. So I'm hoping that if this is a bug it's resolved in the next version of Music that's released with the next update of MacOS. The link you supplied seems to be syncing music specifically for an iCloud library, which I am just manually syncing a physical library on to my phone. But thank you for the reply!

Sorry I couldn't help. Hope you manage to sort it soon.

 

[drakula]

I'm not sure if this is an issue with Music (1.1.2.28) on Big Sur (11.1) but I still sync music to my phone via the Music App through Finder. I've noticed that anything I listen to on my phone will not "sync" back to music in regards to play counts or recently played. I've tried even creating a new Music library to see if that would work and it does not. Is this a known issue? Any advice on anything I could try?

I've tried everything I could think of in order to solve this. I've signed out of my account in "music" on Mac, signed completely out of iCloud on my phone, restored my phone, tried syncing via wifi as opposed to a cable. When you plug your phone in and it shows up in Music, it will show you all the music on it. You can add a "last played" option to see what was last played on your phone and nothing I play on my phone shows up as played even before I sync it. So I'm kind of at a loss here. Meanwhile I was using iTunes on Windows previously and had absolutely no problem.

 

[EedyBeedyBeeps]

I've tried everything I could think of in order to solve this. I've signed out of my account in "music" on Mac, signed completely out of iCloud on my phone, restored my phone, tried syncing via wifi as opposed to a cable. When you plug your phone in and it shows up in Music, it will show you all the music on it. You can add a "last played" option to see what was last played on your phone and nothing I play on my phone shows up as played even before I sync it. So I'm kind of at a loss here. Meanwhile I was using iTunes on Windows previously and had absolutely no problem.

I don’t think I can help much, but I know that play counts are super-fickle and confusing. I have iTunes Match and Big Sur and rely on wireless to sync everything. I think play counts update only once a day for me in my Music app on my MacBook Air (unless I play them directly on the MacBook Air, I’m which case they update in real time). And they only update for songs I played yesterday in addition to the first track I played today. And they only seem to update songs played yesterday on the device that first plays today’s first song.

So...I think that if you play a song on your iPhone, it should update the play count for that song (but not the songs after that first song) in addition to the backlog of other songs you played on your iPhone yesterday and earlier. However, that one song for today on your iPhone has to be the first song you’ve played today on any of your devices.

However, that “technique” didn’t work for me after a road trip on which I’d used my iPhone with wired CarPlay. I got home, played a song on my iPhone as the first song I’d played all day on any of my devices, thinking it would trigger an update. But all the songs I’d played on the iPhone-thru-CarPlay for a week went without a play count update for several days. Then suddenly I noticed that they had updated. I’m not sure how or why.

So, maybe yours will update after a few days, like mine did? If not, maybe try playing songs exclusively on your iPhone for a couple days? If you’ve already been doing that, or if it still doesn’t work...I admit that I’m out of ideas. I’ve been trying to figure out play counts for years, and I’m pretty sure I still don’t understand them.

 

[mikzn]

I'm not sure if this is an issue with Music (1.1.2.28) on Big Sur (11.1) but I still sync music to my phone via the Music App through Finder. I've noticed that anything I listen to on my phone will not "sync" back to music in regards to play counts or recently played. I've tried even creating a new Music library to see if that would work and it does not. Is this a known issue? Any advice on anything I could try?

Thanks for your post - I added this to the missing features on page 1 - if you find a solution - please let us know so we can also reference any solutions / updates

 

[chinchillas]

Can you add Big Sur doesn't work for Epson Stylus C110 driver?

Just to update that Epson has updated drivers for many models of Epson printers, Stylus C110 among them. Just go to their support page at https://epson.com/Support/sl/s, type your model number and choose drivers for Mac 11.1. You'll download a file named "legacy" something that contains a .pgk file. This installs the Epson printer app with its utilities. I just tried it and it works.

 

[drakula]

Thanks for your post - I added this to the missing features on page 1 - if you find a solution - please let us know so we can also reference any solutions / updates

So after doing a bunch of internetting and trial and error it seems to not be a problem with the music app specifically but what I imagine must be an iOS bug. This article from 2012 of all things helped me solve it (https://jimcofer.com/2012/01/26/itunes-not-updating-play-counts/) basically if you listen to another audio source in another app (instagram, podcast, etc) after music, once you plug the phone in and sync all the playcounts will be there. I've done this twice and has worked both times. I have encountered another strange problem that I think is iOS music app related which I will post under that specific section.

 

[gank41]

When the Music App is open to a Full Screen, and then the Activity Window is opened, the Activity Window is opening to the Main Desktop for me, instead of being overlaid on the Music App while in Full Screen or if it opened floating over the Music App, like most other apps function (Mail.app and open a new Email. It either opened in a split view window or hovers over the main app). Filed as FB8960553

 

[ErikGrim]

11.2b2 and 1.1.3.2 is out with no apparent bug fixes or changes. Thanks to whoever (@mikzn ?) took time to reorganise the wiki and put fixed bugs in a spoiler tag!