Apple Music is SO SLOW

From the start of this thread till today been almost 3 months, but dont see a response from @Apple not sure why. I have the same problem and everything else works perfectly fine. i went through the whole thread, some say deleting playlists etc.. what is the real solution pls? Help is much appreciated.

Can you give a few more details please. What kind of Mac, what version of MacOS, free space on your hard drive, etc.? My problem was that I had several “Smart” playlists in folders that got randomly duplicated by the system over time. Every time the Music app launches it tries to rebuild those playlists which took forever and made the Music app virtually unusable. So do you have any playlist folders? Do you have any “smart” playlists? They may be causing the problem, but I’m just speculating.

Apple doesn't give a **** about us. As an example, my own case: I contacted them back in January about the fact that Genius didn't work (iMac version of the Apple Music app). Since then I've been bounced around from one counsellor to another, without any solution. They had me reinstall the app, reimport my whole music library (over 75000 songs), reinstall Catalina, and I am not going to list all the other stuff they tried. Still genius doesn't work, but worst of all, the manipulations they made me try made things worse: I ended up with multiple playlists and playlist folders (from 2 to 6 or 6 duplicates...) and the app had become unusable, so slow even a simple click on anything mede the spinning beach ball appear for 10 seconds or more. I tried to erase the duplicates but they kept on coming back. All that time, I had communications with senior advisors who were supposedly escalating the problem to engineers. At one point, I had enough and asked the last senior advisor to reset the iCloud music library so I could start over the whole thing. But I was denied, no explanations, the engineers did not to do that, and asked that I sent a screen video of what was happening... That was after countless exchanges and hours on the phone with their colleagues! I did send them the videos, only to have them tell me they could not open them and the advisor, in her last communication, wrote me that she would reach out to the engineer about that. Since Ethen, nothing even I sent her 2 more requests. After many manipulations (erasing playlists gain and again), for some reason they stopped reappearing and I almost don't see the spinning beach ball and the program is usable again. No thanks to all those Apple clueless employees who did more damage than help with their trial and errors.

Natalie (Senior Advisor from iTunes Store Support), Calee (senior Technical Advisor), Moussa, Alexandros, Perla, Tahjay and some others I didn't note the name: do you recognize yourselves?

These are some of the names of those people who are supposed to help us. Especially you, Natalie, the one who decided to stop answering and left the whole thing without a solution!

Works customer service ever! I am actively trying to find an alternative to this darn software.

Rjaipal, chrysbar, and all the others who are suffering in one way or another … courage. It seems Apple is only concerned about its profits, not about its users! Today in the news: Apple worth 1.5 billion US dollar. That is 1,500,000,000 US dollar. Really, for the first time since i started using Apple devices [1988] i'm thinking of switching!

Similar problem here. Apple music desktop app super slow, keep freezing, I don't even have a local music library. Today is my fourth day talking to different Apple support people. They even reinstalled my OS Catalina and the problem got worse. Now I'm waiting on the phone to talk to another apple support person.

I’ve wasted probably over 100 hours of my life talking to support and trying fixes they recommended -

now, I’m resigned to just putting up with it - I think the problems cropped up even before iTunes was done away with. it’s better now than it was last year

I spent over four hours chatting and talking on the phone with them, this morning. I got nowhere. They act like they've never heard of this problem. We all know it's Catalina, right? I have two Macs and it's the same with both. My iOS devices are fine. My problem is searching: it's either very slow or doesn't work at all. Sometimes it works fine. And I also have trouble adding songs to playlists—I'll get an error message and it adds the song anyway or I'll get an error message and it does nothing. I like to manage my music library on a Mac, but I have to resort to typing on my tiny iPod just to search for and to add songs! This really *****!

Update: My unresolved issue with apple music was escalated to an apple senior technician, I was in the phone with her. She connected to my computer, then she said that she want to replicate what I'm doing in her computer, so the first, second and third song played without problem, then I tried a search and apple music froze, the "See All" links didn't work, I couldn't ruj searches, I couldn't play more songs, but the interesting thing is that the apple technician said "Oh wait, it is not only you, I have two macs and both of my computers are having the same issue." He put me on hold, after maybe 20 minutes she came back and said, "the issues in my computers are resolved, it is not a widespread problem, we w'll call you back, to try to resolve the issue." They called me back, after being transferred three times I spoke to another senior technician who told me "we are aware of this problem, it is not only you, we are working on a new apple music update to solve this issue. There is nothing we can do it now."

It is so bad, but at least it gives me peace of mind that my computer is no the problem.

So, it seems that the new Catalina update messed up apple music desktop app.

It looks like the last Catalina update (10.15.6) released yesterday, has solved the issues with apple music desktop app. I'm trying it and no problems so far. Apple music running fast, "See All" link working, running searches working, and not freezing. I hope it keeps working like that.

Mine is still running extremely slowly. It takes about a minute or more for the library to be playable. The cloud icons are all grayed out and it is impossible to play anything until then. Meanwhile, my old computer with the old operating system (and old Apple Music) can just open and start playing music in a matter of seconds. Also, my phone and Apple TV is able to load all the music within seconds. Why does it take so much longer for the Mac to process the music?? Why do we get these messages saying, "Loading your iCloud music. This may take several minutes?"

I have the exactly same issue. The "other" music app runs at the light speed.

Apple Music takes ages to load library (it's is not that big) and musics are greyed for a minute or two. Sometimes I need to restart the app several times to be able to listen to something.

I just upgraded to Catalina yesterday. I was putting it off as I have a 30,000 song sized, lovingly curated library of music and I heard Apple Music wasn't really cutting it. Anyway as I wanted the Catalina upgrade with new features & security updates I bit the bullet yesterday and upgraded and............ Apple Music is basically unusable, honestly it is not fit for purpose.

I get the spinning wheel of death every time I try to do something, for instance scrolling down my playlists, it takes 30 seconds to switch between my library and Apple Music and 10 seconds to drag an MP3 onto the desktop. It's like a student programming

project gone wrong. I have loved Apple for a long time but how can a company with so much money and resources, much of it made from revolutionising the music experience, not be able to develop a music app properly?

If you have a decent collection and a load of playlists then it's essentially worthless. Apple Music on mobile is fine by all accounts (I don't have it) but on desktop, it is an utter shambles :( Check the Apple Music group on Reddit for further confirmation. If anyone has any fixes or a way to roll back to iTunes whilst using Catalina I will be eternally grateful. I've searched online and there's not even many references to the desktop app's unusability. Now I'm starting to wonder if this is just me or is everyone else just using their mobile?

Just to add to that. I think it is a general problem, I have 2 MacBook Pros at home and an iMac at office, Apple Music is so slow. It is just a bad design which does not have to do with anything Apple does.

Loading is super slow, searching takes forever and the whole transition between artists, albums, library is buggy and slow.

I feel too sad because I would like to use it to be able to ask Siri to play music but I think Spotify is simply still a better app.

This may not solve your problem, but it's worth a try. I recently worked with Apple Engineering because I had this same problem. Here is what we figured out. I have used iTunes/Music for years so I had lots of very old playlists some contained in playlist folders. iTunes had a problem for awhile of duplicating playlists. What had happened to me was that I had a playlist folder containing about 10 "Smart" playlists. The iTunes duplicating playlists bug had turned these 10 playlists into over 700 playlists. Since "Smart" playlists are rebuilt every time you open the app (either iTunes or Music), this caused a dramatic slow down of the app (making it virtually unusable). When I deleted these playlists and the folder containing them, the app instantly was responsive. I have been using Music on Catalina now for over a month with no issues whatsoever.

Again, I'm not sure if this is your problem, but it's worth checking into. Hope this helps you.

As mentioned before, this is indeed a solution to wait until Big Sur and the new Music.

Remove all your playlists. You'll see that it goes back to normal speed.

Create them again (I thing it's better to have only a few playlists unfortunately).