Apple Music is SO SLOW

A false dawn - it's not quite that simple. After about 30mins Music reverted to the slow behaviour. After removing some unused apps including those in the login list I tried to restart the iMac only to be told that this would stop Music searching for album cover art. So I left the machine running overnight. Now Music is back to running as fast as it did under Mojave. I think there is more to the initial slow performance than this though. I'm not really au fait with the detailed functioning of iTunes/Music but I suspect that my massive library was being re-catalogued (re-writing the .itl file?) which supports rapid searching.

Worth noting that in my case this was not really necessary as I store the entire iTunes folder structure as an entity on a separate disk to the system disc so my .itl file could be picked up. Changing the OS it is obviously best for Apple to assume this is not the case (I'm sure many users store just the media file elsewhere and leave the .itl file on the system disc with app).

Whatever...............I'm now a happy user!

I have a rather large library as well that has been acquired from various sources over the years. I’ve also used iTunes Match for some time. I moved all of my media to an external drive a while back, and I thought that was the reason for the delayed start on everything. I have some work coming up that I need to re organize my library for and I realized everything has been uploaded to the cloud, so it’s not actually my external that was causing the problem.

I know the file structure and naming convention changed when iTunes switched to Music. If you have any sort of step by step guide on resetting all of this, that would be super helpful! I have a ton of playlists, which I need to retain. Probably songs spread about different devices.. I’m fairly tech savvy, but I have to say.. my iTunes music library is just a mess of confusion! I just want a fresh start, but I’m terrified I’m going to loose data. I also have many tracks cued in music to start at certain times that I don’t want to lose. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

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!

I'm really, really tired of Apple never confirming or denying technical issues. Hiding behind security concerns is always the excuse. This is not what I pay $30 a month--and $320 a year to Apple for. I feel like I'm being sold frictionless, future-facing convenience--when in fact all I'm getting is the big hole in the middle of its spaceship campus. Apple is becoming like a really ****** version of GoFundMe for a bunch of "Logan's Run" cosplayers in their donut hole headquarters.

I thought it was bad under Catalina... under Big Sur, the Music app is virtually unusable. It takes at minimum 30 seconds to open, normally in the 2-3 MINUTE range. Searching is almost impossible, and changing views (ie: songs to genres.... or one playlist to another) can take 5 minutes, if it happens at all.

@raz273 Did you ever get a resolution? Apple Music "Quits Unexpectedly" at least once per month on my mac mini. I often have to restart the app. Takes forever to start playing songs, blah, blah, blah. We all know the story.

I was a Spotify user and switched to Apple One Premier for the whole family to have access and the other apps. But this is seriously making me rethink my decision.

Interested in knowing if you have a fix.

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

I have the same problem. Using iTunes on Windows desktop PC and it takes around 20 seconds or more to load every time I choose a new album to load. iPhone takes time to load sometimes too, or only loads the first 15 seconds of the song before skipping to the next song. Both problems are very annoying.

This really is a persistent annoyance. Practically have to close all other programs to have it function with any responsiveness. I always make sure to stop whatever "genius" thinks it's necessary to use 50% of my CPU for when it starts up. But even after that, just re-sizing the window lags worse than Elder Scrolls on dial up.

I'm experiencing the same problem. Whole app is horrible SLOW, not only when you start listening song but "Radio" tab, "Browse" and other tabs loades forever. This is the main reason why i switched to Spotify

I don't have a Mac but I've always had problems running Apple Music. After all these years I've just about had enough. That means switching out of all my Iphones and Ipads. If I can't get on my computer and not be able to download stuff off my phone without pulling out what little hair I have left It's just not worth it! If someone from apple doesn't at least try to get this fixed I'm gone.

Apple Music has become garbage. 16GB RAM machine, running perfectly fine, yet Apple Music takes an eternity to load music and navigate through screens, etc. Spotify runs circles around it, unfortunatly. I really want to drop Spotify but this performance and utter usability nightmare that is Apple Music is making that a difficult decision indeed. $3T company and they can't get a core application right. Tim, I hope you're listening.

raz273 wrote:

OS X Catalina

The songs loading is extremely slow. The internet connection is working fine, everything else that requires internet is working.

I just signed up to apple music $5 voice plan and the app IS SLOW and lagging/laggy i came from spotifiy and its taking FOREVER TO LOAD SONG also my iphone 13 mini is a week old and i have no apps running in the background

why is this such an issue before this update was running fine now its slow as **** i do have a large library. but i never had this slow *** loading problem so why hasn't this issues been address and fix yet very unhappy!!!!!!!!!!

Fix this app! Music on Catalina is unusable. This is shameful. I just upgraded my late 2012 mini to Catalina and can’t believe just how awful this upgrade is. If there was a way to go back I would but I don’t have another week to get things right. Music is one of the most user unfriendly apps I have ever seen. Just ****.