Music app problems in Big Sur

I am having the same problem with my HomePods. I can play to one at a time but not all of them. I can AirPlay to all of them simultaneously using my iPhone or iPad but not from my iMac since upgrading to Big Sur. I have also noticed that in the little airplay drop-down menu each iPod has a little lock icon next to it.

Good news. If I hold down the option key on my iMac while selecting my Homepods under the dropdown menu for Airplay Music will play to any combination of the Homepods. I once again have my music from my library playing throughout the house. While I am glad this is working again it would be nice if Apple gave you some kind of clue as to how to do this. Hope this works for you also "extankerman"!

After more than 2 years, iTunes/Music still have two same major issues (both introduced with Catalina)

1. The soft divides some random records in two parts...
2. During importations, the soft looses the links to the tracks located on the external drives (TB3). The tracks are well put in the folder, but iTunes/Music looses immediately the links, so you have to drag and drop the folder again to the left column...

For me it looks simple to adjust these two gugs... but it seams hard over for the Apple team of developers...

Verified on 5 different clean installations of course...

I have a similar problem when I hook up the iPhone (iPhone 7 Plus) to my "late 2015" Mac desktop. I continually get a “The file can’t be found” warning box (with a smiley face…is that Apple sarcasm?) when I attached the iPhone to the desktop. Though I can access my iPhone via the finder, I am unable to manager any music files on the iPhone through the Mac. I am running Big Sur on the Mac and just updated the iPhone software to 14.2, though the problem was occurring with the previous iPhone software version. I had hoped the upgrade would go some way to solving what appears to be a simple interface problem. No such luck. I have deleted, one song at a time, all the music on the iPhone and then tried to load the playlist. No joy. I then re-loaded the Music App, and still encountered the problem. All I want to do is move one Playlist from the desktop to the iPhone, which doesn't seem to be too big a challenge and used to be accomplished at some point in the distant past with a simple drag-and-drop. Now the whole affair appears to be more complex and less stable through the finder. I do not know if the problem is associated with the "The file can't be found" message, but this is annoying and suggests there may be some other issue. When I click on the question mark on the top right of the box with the "...can't be found" message, the info block is empty. The longer this persists the advantage of having an iPhone to complement the Mac is less enticing. Of course, I suspect if I spent the several thousand dollars buying a new desktop AND new iPhone all this would miraculously go away. Sometimes it may be good to leave well-enough alone.

For a long time, I have had no problem playing Music, from my Mac, to my multiple wireless speakers, all B&O, then, all of a sudden, last night, in mid-play, this stopped. Since then, I have only been able to play from my Mac to one speaker at a time. I have restarted my wireless network, ‘Music’, my Mac and all the speakers. I can play to multiple devices from my iPad but still not from my Mac. All my devices have the latest updates. Any suggestions? Is this a ‘Big Sur’ problem?

I am experiencing additional issues. Playlists not syncing with devices, the mouse is really squirrelly, while trying to change the order of songs in a playlist. It literally is changing the screen (similar to when you swipe the top of the mouse to go back or go forward). I wish they'd do a more thorough evaluation. I also can't seem to figure out where the option to select which playlists I want to copy to a device is? Really don't like the whole Finder thing. Ugh. Help.

Airplay is cutting in and out with Big Sur. Once I figured out how to get multiple Homepods playing simultaneously I noticed that the music would cut out through the speakers. The Music app showed the song was still playing, just no sound. The sound then comes back on before dropping out again after an indeterminate amount of time. I am now trying playing music through just one speaker to see if the same thing occurs. I’ll update if there is any different behavior.

I noticed yesterday that I no longer have to hold down the option key to airplay to multiple speakers. Not sure what happened! I am still having intermittent drop outs of music however. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. Just drops out on all speakers but if I look at Music it shows the song is still playing.

I still have to hold the ‘option’ key but I have noticed a new idiosyncrasy and that is that, from time to time, I get a message that "this computer is not authorised to play this song” and I am presented with an old Apple ID and asked to authorise my computer. If I simply skip that song and then go to History and ‘Play Next’, up it comes, without asking for any further authorisation.

I've had similar issues with my playlists, as well. A new thing I've also discovered is that when I click on a random playlist in my iTunes, the dock and main menu at the top completely disappear. Even the image that's used as the playlist artwork disappears. I can play the songs, but no dock or main menu to be found. This has got to be a Big Sur issue. I'm regretting the upgrade I did about a week ago!

Same probleme Here. It always say it has lost connexion. iCloud works perfectly on my iPad and iPhone but I cannot make it work on My Mac since Big Sur.

It's really bothering me as I cannot add new CD or songs I like and make them sync.

I contacte Apple... Nothing works. The only way I was able to upload songs was by sharing my 4G connexion. But it uses a lot of data of course ! It seems like Big Sur don't upload via Wi-Fi or ethernet.

Same issues here, plus:

When notifications are on my Mac, every time a Mail notification comes through Music app stops the tune I'm playing while on the treadmill. Yeah, totally inconvenient.

It seems this update creates too many situations where you have to do more instead of less.

I had to restore my entire library and now am stuck in updating Genius which I know is no longer used. I keep getting an erro message saying Music Library file can’t be saved. An unknown error occurred (-3201) This doesn’t look good.

I was going to add my complaint when I read your post, Vtgolfr. Great! It really works. Thank you so much, now I can send music from iMac to both Bose speaker and Yamaha amp (both supporting AirPlay, of course) again. Anyway, this mean that Big Sur manages Homepods/AirPlay differently, and this is not quite fair. In addition, I noticed that I cannot move songs up and down in Mini Player queue, as I did before, but only delete them. Another minor bug?