Catalina: Music Genius constant errors

Right.

I fixed mine with a few hours manual work:

After trying a brand new test Apple ID and an OS reinstall and then FRESH OS reinstall (Catalina) I have finally narrowed the issue down to my legacy library files.

Somewhere along the line over the last 15+ years of my music library form iTunes on Windows XP to 7 and then many OS X and Mac OS versions later, something has corrupted. Even the Catalina auto-import created during installation from the %username%/Music/iTunes files brought the error back when I tried to sync again.

I concluded had to re-create and rebuild my library to resolve.

My main concerns were keeping the Play Counts, Rating and Playlists.

I realised that I was able to preserve these by exporting .m3u playlists of the 5 Star Ratings and batches of Play count values and My own Playlists.

(You can majorly speed this process up by assigning a hotkey to the "Export Playlist" from the Keyboard settings if on a Mac)

Then after creating a brand new empty library (alt+ Open Music) and pointing the media directory back to the iTunes Media folder you can start importing the playlists and using them to batch update the library metadata.

Any Personal Playlists

Ratings Playlists:

• 5 star
• 4 star
• 3 star
• 2 star
• 1 star

For the play count data you will need to use the free DougScripts Add or Subtract Play Count v3.0 to batch set these back to as close as you want to depending on how many chunks you exported them in.

e.g.

Play Count Playlists:

• 70-90
• 60-69
• 50-59
• 40-49
• etc...

This way you keep a vague similarity to your original play counts.

It may take you a few hours but it's probably the quickest way to replicate a non-corrupt copy of your library that will work with Genius Sync/Apple Music Sync.

Fingers crossed your legacy genius data is still attached to your account. -If not at least this way your Library will talk to Apple's servers again to pull down new Genius results.

The only drawback I noticed was my album art didn't pull through, but because I had a botched Apple Music cloud sync (everything uploaded was greyed out and not accessible) it now seems to have re-populated itself along with more accurate play count values. (Yay)

Hope that helps.

I'm getting the same error.

I was led here trying to troubleshoot an issue I have been having with syncing my large 74,000+ track library to Apple Music. cloud storage.

I thought it might be my 10+year old Apple Id so I created a new one and hit this error on both my old and new account when turning Genius results back on.

Looking at the size of the Genius.itdb on an older .musiclibrary database file compared to the tiny size previous to me enabling genius on a new library database build. (export library as xml and alt+Open Music > Create New Library)

Both these errors kinda point to the Genius data sync as the point of failure..

Once my current test sync has failed again as I predict it will, i'll try backing up and removing the Genius.itdb file from the package and re-test.

Also, I have an open Apple (Music) Support case for my Late 2012 iMac for my sync issue.

I last agreed with my case owner to Rebuild my Catalina install which I have done but I think i'll need a fresh install and import to resolve if that's really the issue. (my original Catalina install in 2019 was a fresh one and the music database iTunes import transferred smoothly (or at least I thought))

Incidentally If I create a brand new empty library and add one track, my Apple Music sync works no problem.. however like OP I do not want to lose 15+ years of my personally curated music library, star ratings, 100s of playlists etc..

I've never used Genius because I'm too much of a control freak BUT I'm pretty sure the "Genius" sync issues are closely related.

If I and/or Apple Support resolve the issue I'll let you know.

Hello Teanne,

Thank you for reaching out in Apple Support Communities. I understand you're unable to use the feature of Genius in the Music app, due to an error message of 4001.

Genius a great feature to expand your favorite tunes and I'd like to help.

To help troubleshoot this behavior, I recommend to temporarily sign out with your Apple ID account and to sign back in. From there, see if you can use Genius without any issue. For the proper steps, you'll need to have the Music app open and navigate to the menu bar by selecting, "Account" > Sign Out. Then, you can sign back in and see if that helps resolve the issue you're experiencing.

Performing this step, will remove offline music content if you're a subscriber to Apple Music. You'll have the option to re-download your music back on your Mac.

Please keep us posted with the results.

Kind regards.

Dear Apple you should know that genius is gone from new Music app in Catalina. Otherwise please explain why my Genius icon and option to turn it on/off was "obliterated"

I don't see my existing Genius "auto-generated" playlists from older iTunes nor create bespoke Genius Lists starting from a specific song, as used to be possible.

Have they replaced this for something else, or hidden it conspicuously?

Quite disappointed, apparently Apple has tied up Genius to an Apple Music subscription in Catalina .... Where I live Spotify costs less than 1 tenth (1/10) than Apple Music, so it's a reap off and basically non-existent at that price. Genius is dead, long live .... what?

It isn't just Catalina. Same issues with Genius on High Sierra. It's by design. Now that they've created an inferior (but very fancy) subscription app, Apple is not going to fix this. Good news, though! Apple Music allows you to stream "today's country" all day, every day, for only $10 per month. Developers, here's an opportunity: develop a functional music management app for people who actually own music.

When solving this issue in iTunes it is typical to manually delete the file iTunes Library Genius.itdb once Genius has been turned off. In Catalina the equivalent file is called Genius.itdb and can be found if you right-click on your Music Library.musiclibrary database and Show Package Contents. I can't be certain that removing this file will fix things for you, but I would suggest backing up the file, deleting the original, and emptying the trash, to see if it works.

tt2

Teanne,

Thanks for getting back to us and for attempting those steps.

To review this further for you, I recommend contacting Apple Support through this link here: Contact Apple Support

Cheers.