Apple Music is SO SLOW

Not sure that I can give you any specific advice but it may be helpful if I mention a few steps I took in 2007 when I started ripping CDs and adding these and personal recordings to create a music library as I migrated from using physical media. I anticipated I'd end up with a large library so before plunging in I thought carefully about what type of library structure would be the best for me to use. I decided at the start to use iTunes for all tag editing (but not necessarily play back) because it was already mature software that would have ongoing support.

I begun by defining more specific Genres - something that might help you and which requires relatively little time to implement. So for example I defined genres for: classical-early, classical-baroque, classical-classical, classical-romantic, classical-modern, classical-contemporary.

For classical music (~80% of my library) I decided to use the Album tag for classical 'work' which I defined as: [Composer - Work] e.g. Beethoven - Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op.125 "Choral". I guess this approach would be very time consuming for you to implement starting with a large library.

I anticipated I would need large storage so soon moved the 'media' folder to a separate hard disk while keeping the top-level iTunes folder on the system disc with the iTunes application. Unfortunately sometime over the first few years the library became corrupted, with tracks becoming 'lost' (Doug Adams scripts were a life saver here). As a result I now store the entire 'iTunes' folder on a separate hard disc. For many years I had this folder on my NAS but performance ('fetch' time) deteriorated as the library grew in size so now I have the prime 'iTunes' folder on a fast thunderbolt disc and I curate the library using iTunes. I keep a copy of the iTunes folder on the NAS (which is updated daily overnight) and this is used for streaming music using MinimServer software running on the NAS.

Unfortunately I can't really help you with playlists as I only compile them for mobile devices when I wish to listen to music on my travels.

Hope some of this ramble is helpful!

It's the Music app on my Mac that is horrible... I do not subscribe the the Music service. Just opening the app takes 5 seconds at the quickest, most frequently about 30 seconds, and often enough to be annoying -- 2 minutes. It is reprehensibly slow. You can just forget trying to search your library for something... IF it does search, results are only based on "begins with", not "contains", which while infuriating in its own rite, but it most frequently just fails to search at all.

I've deleted "smart" playlists, as suggested - nothing. I've deleted playlist folders - nothing. I'm remiss to delete my primary playlists, as they have been so carefully cultivated over the years, and find it INCREDIBLY difficult to believe it will have any effect. More importantly... if that is indeed the only way to fix this issue -- WHY NOT have a tool, or script that "imports" the old playlist into a new playlist to correct the issue? Each version of Mail, iPhoto into (the reprehensibly horrible) Photos, Contacts, Calendars... they all had conversion scripts to take care of this sort of issue -- so I cannot believe that deleting all of my playlists will do anything other than make me angrier.

iMac, 24Gb RAM, entire Music folder on external thunderbolt drive

The solution is probably to report this as a bug or ditch Apple Music. As a Logic Pro user, it would be more convenient to keep using Apple Music since you can export directly to your music library. If anyone has a link to the bug report please post it so we can vote on it.

My internet connection is great BTW, it even took less than a second to upload this png (which is a quarter of the size of the mp3), and it's taken so far 20 minutes to upload my latest mp3... and it's still going.... One 2MB mp3 from Logic can't go in my Apple Music playlist so that I can listen to it on a run with the rest of the album.

Because of this bug, I get this error every time I want to listen to a song on my phone:

If I have an album of songs I have exported from Logic and I am ready to quit Apple Music I commonly get this error too:

Very annoying. Maybe there's a hack to prioritize Apple Music uploads on my network? Or another app that would be faster to listen to playlists of songs I'm working on from Logic on my phone? Dropbox works great for single songs but it's terrible if I want to listen to a playlist / album / EP I am currently recording.

This is happening on the latest Monterrey 12.5 Beta, but it's been an issue since at least Catalina.

Same here, along the rest of the problems I have with this horrific program...

Not only is it slow, but it works very badly. All kinds of problems, on top of the spinning beach ball and the making up of multiple copies of my folders and playlists. A nightmare.

Hello,

Same same same.

I have a Macbook pro 32gb from 2018.

Everything works well but Apple Music is so slow.

Same connection and it was faster on spotify...

Starting to regretting Spotify... :s

Help!!

I cannot help but wonder why Apple is so slow to react to basic issues like this which will certainly annoy many users. Other cases like this: Macbook fingerprint sensor being completely useless, AirPods Pro firmware update to fix noise cancellation, ...

Also the Music app process will show 100% CPU for awhile and then show (Not Responding) as if it had crashed, then if it sits there long enough will come out of the crash condition and again show 100% CPU.

Same here, it was working fine about 6 months ago; now on all my Macs its super glitchy and slow. I think Apple is just trying to get people to ditch MacOS for iOS when it comes to Apple Music. Surprisingly iTunes on Windows hasn't gotten worse, but not that it was any good before. I still prefer iTunes>Apple Music. That transition was horrible imo.

I've had this issue since upgrading to Catalina as well. I dread needing to update any music on any of my devices through Apple Music because it's so unreliable and glitchy. As I sit here typing this, Apple Music has been "Checking Music Library" for over 10 minutes.

It's embarrassingly bad.

Exactly the same in here.

I'm using more and more spotify, I have a huge music library, so I'm painfully moving everything to other programs, and the ones I stream I get them from spotify.

This is so painful after having organised all my library in Itunes since 2007.

The search function used to be really good, but now you can't see the columns and organise by years, play counts, etc instead you've got pictures and not many options to organise data.

Really annoying.

I'm making this comment hoping Apple will see many users with the same issue and fix it.

Or I would love if someone knows about a softwares that optimises Apple Music to make it run smoothly.

Thanks

the same thing is happening for me. i’m trying to make a new playlist and the search engine on apple music isn’t even working! like i used to love apple music but now i’m regretting not getting spotify for sure. i just thought about switching over!

Ditto for me. The Music application is horribly unreliable and a serious black mark on Apples credibility. I regret the day that I upgraded to Catalina. I also regret the destruction of iTunes. I have been a loyal Apple user for over 20 years. I am very close to ditching Music altogether and going to Spotify instead. Is anyone at Apple listening to these complaints? This is horrible customer service!

You're not alone, Calvin. I've been using iTunes, in all its iterations, since OS 9. There's been up and downs, but I've never before felt like their core Music app, a centerpiece of their "Services" strategy, and one of the applications that ties together Apple's offerings across all its devices, has been relegated on the maintenance and improvement priority list to somewhere well behind Bento.