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

I just installed the iTunes update. I was hoping it would reverse the damage.  I still had a huge group of artists lumped into one album of unknown artists/album.

But here's what I had to do to get it working:  I had to turn off "the virus" AKA iCloud Library. And re launch iTunes and let it run again. This is even after the new update they offered!

And now everything *seems* like it is back where it should be. And then turn on iCloud library back on.

And then hope your music doesn't become corrupted, because I am a Match subscriber and I still don't understand how they are integrating the two systems, Match and AM.

And rather than we are enjoying our libraries and listening to music that HEALS us, we have to constantly be on guard of their software updates corrupting our own LOCAL files.

It shouldn't touch your own local files. It shouldn't commandeer your local files like this.

It reverted back to the hundreds of songs back in the same unknown artist/unknown album for me just now.

These are MATCHED or UPLOADED to iCloud.

@fishdoggy - You say "teasing it album by album" - I thought it was an all or nothing thing? How are you getting it to handle one album at a time?

Can anyone with a very large library (125,000+ track) report on how it handles things since they're still limiting the total track count? What happens to all the music that doesn't fit into the quota? It just gets left behind? How does it determine what to upload and what to leave behind?

After having seen my 16.000 tunes library, carefully curated since 15 years, messed up in the most horrible way in a matter of minutes...

After having spent frustrating hours trying to restore in vain from a first Time Machine backup I have at home (error -36 popping up without mercy)...

After having to wait a week before I had acces to a second Time Machine backup I keep out of home, which luckily enough did function...

I will under no circumstances trust any iTunes updates enough to connect to iCloud music library again before I have moved all my tracks to another off line application.

I have a library with about 1400 albums in it. I turned on the music iCloud thing on my laptop but did not merge or add everything into the cloud straight away - you can defer that indefinitely. What I am doing is going through my iTunes library artist by artist and right clicking that artist and choosing "Upload To iCloud Music Library". I then check each album by that artist (on my phone or on another machine running iTunes) to make sure the tracks are correct and that artwork is consistent...then move on to the next artist. Some artists with vast back catalogues, tons of "collections', live albums etc are really tough to get right. e.g. both Elvises (Costello & Presley!), Beatles, Stones, R.E.M., Bruce, Queen etc.

An album like "Bowie at the BBC" for example has a load of studio recordings made by him at the London BBC studios which are neither live recordings nor the album-released versions. Yet the cloud matching system just matches them with any old song it can find. For the actual album to get uploaded I have to go in & rename every track (for example Space Oddity becomes Space Oddity (BBC)) then do the upload. The matching system finds no match for a track called that and so my mp3s get force-uploaded.

What is doubly frustrating is that iTunes can match the album quite easily. I have Roy Orbison one called "A Black and White Night" which is a live recording made just before his death, If I click on that album in iTunes and select "Show in iTunes Store" it finds it and displays the correct tracks. When I upload to the cloud...I get a load of mismatched recordings from the early 60s onwards. Its quite obvious that the matching algorithm does not look for "artist/album/track"...it is quite happy just matching "track".

.........."I will under no circumstances trust any iTunes updates enough to connect to iCloud music library again before I have moved all my tracks to another off line application".

My experience is similar to yours. My question to you is have you identified another off line application that you like? I have looked at several but have not identified one that I really like yet. I have 17,500  carefully curated songs, and I most certainly do not want to have to experience this again.

taalvoel wrote:

 

[after updating to iTunes 12.2.1] And now everything *seems* like it is back where it should be.

Can someone WHO HAS A BACKUP now try enabling iCloud Library on their phone and see if metadata is accurate AFTER enabling iCloud Library on iTunes 12.2.1?

No, not yet

I really only just start my research now.

Two links I read:

http://beebom.com/2015/05/best-itunes-alternatives

http://www.headfonia.com/os-x-audio-players-amarra-audirvana-pure-music-fidelia- decibel-and-bitperfect/

It will take time to test trial versions, but I'm not in a hurry.

just installed 12.2.1.  Made no impact on my trashed library.

Interestingly, it looks like when it has made a mismatch, it does it for the entire album.  So every duplicate song in the Adele / 21 album is actually a Stevie Wonder / Talking Book track.

I jumped in the cold water and installed iTunes v.12.2.1. My thought was it can't get worse than what it already was.

I did notice improvement. On my iPhone the artwork seems much better. So far I spotted only one wrong cover. But I just did a very quick check.

Anyhow artwork which was previously wrong now is OK, except the one case I spotted.

BUT in iTunes the artwork is still messed up. Any ideas? Has anyone had the same experience?

In iTunes if I play Metallica's Creeping Death track it ends up playing Rick James, which I am sure I did not even have in my collection.

If I play the same track on my iPhone it plays the correct track!

What a mess....!!!!!!!!

Tumulus wrote:

 

No, not yet

I really only just start my research now.

 

Two links I read:

 

http://beebom.com/2015/05/best-itunes-alternatives

 

http://www.headfonia.com/os-x-audio-players-amarra-audirvana-pure-music-fidelia- decibel-and-bitperfect/

 

It will take time to test trial versions, but I'm not in a hurry.

I've tried alternatives such as Clementine (looking for open source whenever possible), but the ultimate media player for me has always been VLC.  It runs on everything, and is back on iOS now. It plays FLAC files and just about anything else you care to throw at it.  I am keeping iTunes for now as it makes for easy syncs between the ipod and the mac, and of course, DRM protected iTunes videos, (and I like the cover art in Silicio in the notification center), but I think that VLC is going to be the future for me.

I can't figure out any reason why I would pay $10 for Apple Music yet.  I'm not getting anything that I can't get through the free versions of Pandora, Spotify, Vevo or the various streaming stations for new music discovery.  Of course I do not have mainstream tastes in music, and I am bucking the trend of wanting streams instead of owned albums.

Just installed 12.2.1., not only did it not fix anything, but it made it worse than the first time. Jumbled album art, songs, artists. Thankfully its an easy fix to replace the .itl file, but come on Apple get it together already!!

As mentioned earlier in this thread, if Apple really is/was changing metadata in the files themselves, then no iTunes update can fix the scrambled files - your only option is to restore your audio files AND the index from backup.

The fixes just released are (I imagine)  just to minimize or mitigate the problem going forward. If you want to test for improvements in the update, your only option is to restore the index and the audio files from backup, *then* start over with the latest update.

If I'm wrong about metadata having been changed in audio files themselves, ignore this message.

I just stumbled upon this help article: If your music library shows incorrect details with iTunes Match or Apple Music, and you previously cancelled an iTunes M…

I think you have to perform all these steps after installing the 12.2.1 update to fix the issue.

Thanks sweet-jane. I wish I had this last night. I ended up manually deleting/replacing all the apple music songs I had saved in my library. Basically did all the other steps, and everything seems to finally be in sync. Whatever happened to "it just works"?  Ha