Q: WARNING: iCloud Music Library just destroyed my Mac's iTunes Library

The disappointing part for me is that since Apple "owns" the iphone music app and the iTunes software and library I thought they would be able to seamlessly integrate the tracks from Apple Music with the ones already on the phone or on the iTunes local library. Instead they are doing the "substitution trick" like any other streaming service already does...

I have experienced this also, I'm in the UK with 12.2 on Windows and OSX.

They should have kept Apple Music as a separate app in iOS away from iTunes music. Within iTunes they could have sandboxed Apple Music to keep it from interfering from a users actual owned music library. I prefer Match and old school iTunes. Apple Music is just really a glorified radio station where you can decide what's played. I think this would have avoided all the problems and annoyance caused. I'm never going to be a fan of streaming/radio so I don't like the Apple Music direction. I want to own music and use match to make the rest of my owned music available for download when I please. I can only imagine what all this streaming is going to do to storage space in computers and iOS devices. iOS is not the best operating system for releasing cache at the best of times. I can envisage ballooning 'other' space.

I switched it on For Mac...and no issues so far with my iTunes library. Only issue is that I'm still getting sync issues across my iPhone, iPad and macbook when I am adding Apple music to my music

When iTunes Match first launched I got excited and immediately signed up... then it scrambled my carefully organized artwork and matched wrong versions of songs (different mixes, masterings, etc). Days of grief canceling Match and putting my iTunes library back together. Last week I heard that Match was scrambling users libraries in an even worse way - maybe a glitch as Apple was preparing Apple Music? So now Apple launches Apple Music with the new and even more messed up Match/iCloud feature. Major bummer. Why can't Apple get this right?

I would like to try Apple Music without iCloud Music Library. Can any nice people confirm that iCloud Music Library will be OFF by default on all devices? I have that fear of it immediately destroying my library before I can turn it off. I do have multiple backups of my iTunes library just in case...

Same happened here. Completely wrecked my libraries on all devices.

Shocking error from the company who delcare they love music. Really want the service but won't touch it until it is fixed.

Andy Abernathy wrote:

 

I would like to try Apple Music without iCloud Music Library. Can any nice people confirm that iCloud Music Library will be OFF by default on all devices?

Speaking of iOS, when you update and launch Music (the app) it asks if you want to start the free trial of Apple Music. Just deny and go in Music settings, check that iCloud music library is switched off (it should) and turn on Apple Music. Then it will ask you to subscribe to start the free trial (you have to opt-out before three months but you can do it right now). Apple Music doesn't use iCloud Music Library as long as you don't ask it to save songs to your library or save for offline use, and even then, it just asks if you want or not. 

Thanks for the helpful info. I'm glad that iCloud Music Library is optional, but I wish I could just have the "offline" feature without the "iCloud Library Scrambling" feature!

Andy Abernathy wrote:

 

I wish I could just have the "offline" feature without the "iCloud Library Scrambling" feature!

Oh me too, it's basically the only option I need being on a quite limited 3G contract. I really hoped for a better integration between Apple Music and the local library. A guy from technical support told me that they are going to change it in a way that you can sync to iCloud without having to "match" tags to iCloud. Another guy from Apple tech support told me no way, that's not how things work

I asked if they can erase my iCloud library (which I'm not using but is still there) to avoid problems in the future but they can't. As my iTunes library on Mac is correct now, I can just sync to iCloud on my phone, delete by hand all tracks so iCloud Library get depleted, and then disable it and re-sync with my Mac. Very straightforward

This has happened to me too, as you say, seems to be when you accept to turn on "iTunes Music Library" and sharing across multiple platforms comes into play.

The data transfer between all devices goes haywire and the metadata scrambles. Not all of my iTunes Library is scrambled, but there's missing artwork, files with incorrect names, authors, genres. When you click on a file to play, it plays something completely different and there's absolutely no way to manually re-label the file correctly, it makes things much worse.

Currently restoring a 50gb iTunes Library from Time Machine as it was on 28th June, hopefully this will revert the library to it's original state.

I tried to restore a "Previous iTunes Library" but this doesn't work for me. It corrects most of the errors, but if you look closely, and play a few select files, the errors are still there.

It's absolutely crazy that this can happen. I expected a seamless integration of "My Music" and "Apple Music" but the effect is just to destroy 50gb of data in the process. Was this ever tested by Apple?

As someone has pointed out, Apple are obsessed with integrating everything into one single app, but that over-complicates the single app trying to do many things for many people. A better an more logical solution would be to keep the "My Music" as entirely separate entity, as it's own app and a localised music player shared across Mac, iPhone and iPad, and then create an "Apple Music" app that allows users to listen to iTunes Radio and stream iTunes songs, create Apple Music Playlists and differentiate between "Apple Music" streamed services and bought hard copies of your own music. By doing this, they could also create an Apple Music Streaming Web Player that you can sign into from any;location and any computer (ala Spotify).

Combining the two is massively confusing and over-complicated and causes this very problem.

Poorly though out and poorly integrated, what a mess!

Their cardinal sin IMO is to think that people want "the same music on every device". They should have done it the other way round and inject Apple Music into the local library, not "cloudify" my whole music library (which is even larger on my Mac than on iPhone but I don't want them to be "merged")

I am unable to delete any songs from iCloud within the newly created empty library. They re-populate 10 seconds after hitting delete.

Did you use a special trick or setting ?

I agree entirely. A better solution is to take an iTunes library and choose what music you share between iPhone and iPad and vice versa, keep this sharing between your local library and devices, pick and choose flexibly what you want to see on each device.

Seperately, create an "Apple Music Streaming App" which is a separate entity, pay £9.99/month and use it stream radio and songs and create playlists within the app itself. This two apps would be all things to all people, satisfying those who want to keep control of their music, and those interested in streaming without corrupting data and destroying local iTunes libraries.

Seems really incredibly obvious to me, but the two services are so totally different and warrant two totally different apps. As soon as you start to merge, upload and download data into a million hard drives, you begin to corrupt data.

I fixed it. All you need is a back up of your music folder and the previous itunes library .itl. What I did was:

1. I started a virtual machine -> windows. (can be a other pc as well)

2. Open iTunes, login with your apple id and turn on Apple Music's iCloud library. iTunes will ask you to use this one.

3. Go on your iDevices (iphone,ipad etc.) turn off the music library feature in settings > music.

4. Now delete all the music on your devices because these original files are damaged.

5. Go back to the pc, delete all the music that pops up in batches with a maximum of 999 files.

6. Close iTunes on the other pc / virtual machine

7. Delete the music library in the iTunes Media folder en replace it with the back-up music folder

8. Now rename the iTunes Library.itl (Music>iTunes folder) to iTunes LibraryFUCKED.itl (or whatever) and do the same to the XML file.

9. Copy Paste the most up to date iTunes Library file (in my case iTunes Library 2015-07-01.itl) from the previous itunes library folder in the iTunes folder.

10. Start iTunes.

This worked for me.

Great, I think this will work for everyone as long as you have a recent library backup.

When my iPhone was screwed up I still had the old version of iTunes on my Mac so that's why I could re-sync metadata without issues, but I'll check and if I see something fishy I'll use your method.

Also before getting rid of the iTunes on the VM you can delete all tracks that were synced from iCloud, in this way you will erase your iCloud library