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

I sympathise with you, it's unbelievably frustrating.

I had a similar problem a few months ago with iTunes Match. I signed up for £25 a year and everything got synced in the iCloud. I then spent months sorting out all my metadata (ratings, groupings, years, etc), getting it just the way I wanted. Then it was suddenly all changed back, as if I'd never done all that categorising and labelling, because the Match/iCloud version overwrote my iTunes library on my PC!!

When I spoke to Apple Support they just told me to reinstall iTunes, which didn't fix the problem at all. Seems Apple Support staff aren't all they're cracked up to be.

I still don't know how to tell Match/iCloud: "make the iCloud version match the master iTunes library on my PC, not the other way round!"

I'm now trying Apple Music but will not switch on iCloud on my PC iTunes library until I'm 100% certain I won't lose all my careful categorising and labelling.

Wishing you the very best of luck getting your music back the way you want it - a super frustrating situation.

well, the feedback page as of time of writing doesn't allow for iOS 8.4 in its pulldown-menu... Very professional, Apple!

It's crazy that you have all these (expensive) Apple products that ought to be compatible and still you're having a frustrating time!

I think I'll cancel my Apple Music trial, stick with Spotify for streaming music and keep iTunes for my own music...

I guess I'm lucky...

My laptop was on the fritz, and iTunes wouldn't update... so I still have 12.1.

I noticed the album art change after enabling iCloud Library on my phone, like many of you. All of my songs are from ripped CDs.

Luckily, since iTunes still had my library, I was able to turn off iCloud Library on my phone, and resync from iTunes.

For me, I don't really have specific metadata, (as long as it has the correct name, artist, and album, it's fine with me) but I have really specific album art (I change every song's album artwork to a picture of the artist... don't ask why... because I have no idea why I do it)

Anyways, I'm sure (what with all the press coverage now from many different tech sites) that Apple is aware and working on a fix, because they don't want the bad PR surrounding the launch.

I would bet we have a fix in a month if not less. Definitely before October (when people stop their trial and have to decide whether to pay or not).

Just my 2 cents and experience.

After two days and many hours of tedious work, I believe I am mostly back to normal.  Completely disconnected from itunes in the cloud and apple music is turned off. Started a new itunes library from zero and manually added all of my music and videos from a TM backup. Then threw away the bad itunes folder. Have no idea if this will be the end, or was the right thing to do, but at least its all clean and a fresh build. And of course, will never turn on itunes match again. Truth is I'd like to delete the copies of my music in the cloud, but you have to turn on itunes match to do that, which as I said, I'll never do.

Craziest thing is how insane the damage was -- folders albums filled with completely random songs, each misnamed and mislabeled with the wrong artwork. How does that even happen?

Thank goodness for having a backup of music folder before updating to iTunes 12.2 unless of course you prefer listening to Frank Sinatra when playing Vampire Wekend Horchata with Pink Floyd Dark side of the Moon Artwork, just one examle of roughly 4081 other errors in my iTuvnes library after updating - RDIO is good enough for my streaming needs and it can scan my iTunes library to create a playlist of what's in there 

everyone that is having issues do you 1) use the cloud or 2) did you subscribe to Apple music?

I Am not having issues. I do not subscribe to apple music. But I do have iCloud music library enabled. I was and still am a match subscriber. It sounds to me as if it's not so much having the iCloud music library enabled but more if you have it enabled in conjunction with apple music. I could be wrong. Again total speculation but I don't use a Mac, mine is a windows machine - it seems the problem is on Mac machines but that may be incorrect on my part. The frequency of reports from Mac owners is prob down to their being more users of iTunes by Mac owners. I do think though joining Apple music is the trigger for corruption r

My main issue with this entire problem for me was Apple dumping remixes of original songs that it couldn't find on iTunes or keeping the metadata fro the remix and pasting over that with the original track .mp3 off iTunes which was soul-destroying because it takes me ages to perfect my library and find awesome remixes and songs that not everyone knows about. So I was annoyed because I wanted Apple Music to work seamlessly since I am slowly building an entire Apple eco system. So the goal was getting those remixes onto iCloud Music Library without Apple wiping them over.

I found what helps is definitely the .itl trick and backing up your music folder once that .itl trick is done. I archived mine into a .zip folder and tucked it away safe for protection. Then turning off Apple Music and iCloud Music off on all devices, Mac included. Wiping all music of iOS devices. I know, big step. But then re syncing the music onto iOS devices without Apple Music hanging around. Now your iOS devices should have your original music, pre-8.4/apple music update screwup. When that is done, turn on Apple Music and iCloud music library back on on your mac or PC. Letting that sort out and all. Then when thats settled, with resynced music on iPhone for example; go into settings and turn Apple Music and iCloud Music Library back on. When the dialog for iCloud pops up, CLICK ON MERGE. MERGE MERGE MERGE.

This will scoop everything up together regardless of whether songs are on iTunes or not. Check to see if songs are good to go with right remixes/artwork etc. If okay then repeat on other devices.

It worked for me, it should work for other people.

Steps (Organised view )

1. Do the .itl backup trick first on mac / pc and that should sort out

2. turn off apple music/icloud library on all devices including mac.

3. wipe music off ios devices via Settings-usage-music-edit and then delete. All devices!

4. Re sync freshly musically emptied devices with computer again with out apple music hanging around.

5. Turn on apple music and icloud library on again on mac/pc and let that sort.

6. Go to ios devices and turn on apple music and icloud music library in settings on ios devices

7. CLICK MERGE! MERGE MERGE MERGE.

8. should be good to go, go to music app, click my library, let it load the library. Should be okay. Just have a scroll through to see if things are okay.

Personally I think Apple would have avoided these problems with metadata and wiping away remixes that aren't on iTunes and all these other troubles with the launch if they brought out iTunes 12.2 before they brought out iOS 8.4. Thinking about it in regards to the steps above if we all set up apple music and icloud library from computer rather than mobile devices it wouldn't have turned bad. I think. Thats my personal opinion. If im right let me know.

Hopefully ive been a help.

And the bad thing is: I've had that problem already five months ago. iTunes 12.x changed all my data.  And I did write a post about it. So they should have known about it.

Been to the Zurich Apple Store, contacted Apple... No help and no interest to help.

That much for listening to the customer - well done, Apple!

If your music file tags are a total mess and you don't have a backup and you want to start manually fixing them, I suggest you start by using the TuneUp application version 2.5 (don't use the version 3.0 because it's a mess). TuneUp doesn't do a perfect job in fixing tags and album art, but it's a start. For each song it analyzes the music file data in order to determine what song it is (just like iTunes Match does when determining whether a song can be "matched" with one in iTunes store). You can download TuneUp trial from the official site www.tuneupmedia.com/download/mac-64-bit and then upgrade it to the full version by using the following license key code:

TuneUp 3.0.5 license key:

913-KFUA-ZGSB-677

(Grab it while it lasts. I know I would be devastated if my meticulously crafted music file tags were corrupted)

If your library has more than 10,000 tracks, read this note about TuneUp: http://support.tuneupmedia.com/hc/en-us/articles/200441098-Library-Size-Limitati ons

i can confirm that this is happening also on windows (i do use both, mac and windows on pc and on the mac). i already wrote before - my music library was completely scrambled. files have been renamed and moved around, album art and metadata was changed, songs have been deleted. so i experienced everything that you can find in this discussion. just going back to an old itl-file was no solution as this does not fix the corrupted files.

well, i hope that everyone who will have the same problem does have a backup of some kind. because in the end this is the only solution that really fixes this mess. of course only if you not forget to turn off the cloud (which in the end cripples apple music to almost being useless).

AS far as i know tuneup 2,5 won't work with itunes 12.2.ıt finds the tracks but i couldn't get it fix it on itunes

don't really know if TuneUp works, or the key you provided, but for all of you that want to try out a cleaning up tool i recommend to take a look at MusicBrainz Picard. It's by far the most complete tool i have come across so far, and it's free. It's a little daunting at first when you take a look at all the options, but it's worth investing a little time in it:

http://picard.musicbrainz.org/

And as always. Create a backup before you touch your library with a tool like this.

I find it staggering that each iOS update seems to cost me a day in time sorting out issues after. This stuff used to 'just work' - I don't want Cloud, I don't want Match, I don't want Radio, I just want a load of music I bought from you to appear as it always has.

with the update to 'Music' on my iPhone, I lost all the ratings info for 1100 purchased tracks. On syncing to iTunes, this caused all those songs to lose their ratings in my iTunes library too (Despite Apple Support saying this shouldn't happen).

Now doing a 10 hour Time Machine back up to return to old version of 'Music'. Will then try to return to old version on iPhone and wait for them to fix this issue in an update.

Have finally learnt my lesson... If Apple offer a software update, don't accept it until you absolutely have to. I understand that the software is complex and some bugs are inevitable, but these days they appear to be every time and quite sizeable issues.