unable to update iCloud music library and sync with Music on my iMac

Hey there mitch.cox,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. I understand you’re having issues with your Music library not working as expected across your Mac and iPhone. I’ll be happy to help.

What is the exact error message you’re seeing on your Mac? If you open Music > Preferences and click on General, is Sync Library enabled? If not, enable the feature and see if your Music library looks as expected. If it is enabled, turn the feature off (this can remove music you’ve downloaded from your Mac). Restart your Mac after that and enable Sync Library once more:

How to turn your Mac on or off

See if your Music library looks as expected after this.

As for your iPhone, make sure it’s up to date:

Update your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

If the issue continues, force close the Music and then go to Settings > Music and turn off Sync Library (this will remove any music you’ve downloaded) and restart:

How to force an app to close on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Restart your iPhone

Enable Sync Library and see if your library looks as expected.

Regards.

Hi mitch.cox,

Thanks for that info. For your Mac, do you have any firewalls enabled, anti-virus apps, or things of that nature enabled? If so, turn those off and see if you can sync your Music library as expected. If that doesn’t help, see if this occurs in safe boot or a new user account to isolate and possibly resolve this issue:

How to use safe mode on your Mac

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

Also, install any updates available for your Mac and see if this helps: 

How to update the software on your Mac

As for your iPhone, delete the Music app from your iPhone and turn off Sync Library in Settings > Music. Restart your iPhone and install Music back onto your phone, and enable Sync Library. 

If you still have issues, try accessing your Music library from a different network and see if this helps.

Take care.

I fixed my duplicates problem. I was repeatedly toggling iCloud Music Library, which was causing merges and creating the duplicates.

I am able to update my iCloud Music Library to completion, but I am also getting duplicate playlists and playlist folders when I do that. I have tried removing the duplicates from my Mac, but then they reappear on the Mac after the update. The duplicates also show up on my Apple TV and on my iPad. I can access my playlists on my Homepod, which is my primary goal, but the duplicates are messy. It’s not worth it to me to erase or reset my library to clean this up, but short of that I’d like to fix it.

2012 MBP running 10.15.4

iPhone XR, 2018 iPad Pro, 4th gen AppleTV, HomePod running 13.4

Thanks! — Bill