Music refuses to sync on MacBbook

Question

Level 1

4 points

Music refuses to sync on MacBbook

I recently joined Apple Music after years of using Spotify, due to their Lossless streaming options.

I used a 3rd party product called FreeYourMusic to re-create my Playlists (from Spotify) in the Music app. It worked really well – my iPhone pulled the data from the server in no time and it's all good in that regard.

But for some reason Music on my MacBook can't execute that same task. The Activity dialogue claims that it's trying to 'load and update the cloud music library' but it never manages to do it, spinning endlessly. It's been weeks now.

I've tried cancelling the Sync, signing in-and-out, loading in Safe mode, restarting and deleting the Music Library file in the Home directory - all to no avail.

Does anyone here have any ideas? Apparently I'm the only person on planet Earth facing this issue as I can't seem to find any reference to the same problem anywhere.

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Sep 16, 2021 3:16 PM

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Answer 1

freddyYap Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 20, 2021 3:47 PM in response to Igloo

Thanks for responding, Igloo. Sorry to hear of your own trials!

At the least, what you describe makes some sense: I.e. locally stored content causing extra processes to be engaged, but in my case I have no local content other than 2 or 3 tracks.

So all that really needs to happen is for the playlists available on my iOS device to also be available on my MacBook.

Note that when I sign into the Music app in a browser, all the correct tracks and Playlists are there. It's very much a local issue.

There's definitely something wrong. I wish I could "flush the cache" or similar and have it download/sync the data cleanly. Alas, I don't think I'm able to do such a thing.

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Answer 2

Igloo

Level 1

30 points

Sep 17, 2021 6:12 AM in response to freddyYap

Take solace in the fact you're not the only person!

Mine is in the same state. I took a brave pill and ticked 'Sync library' on my Mac after subscribing to Music, and now I am left with a massive pile of grey boxes and content that won't play.

My Mac apparently finished syncing after approx 8 hours (50GB worth) but my iPhone library still has the whirly wheel of nothingness spinning away, 'Syncing Library', after 2 days now.

I have read that it can actually take days, sometimes weeks if you have a large library. It works in the same way iTunes 'Match' does. It checks to see if your locally stored content is available online, if it is, great, here's a lossless version of it, happy days. Unfortunately, I think the problem lies with older stuff you may have imported from CDs etc, but in any case, it should just upload it (DRM free) anyway.

I think it might be a phone call to Apple Support I'm afraid as I can't figure it out either. I hope you have a backup of your content on a physical disk somewhere? I would never encourage anyone to enable 'snyc library' without a backup in place first!

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Music refuses to sync on MacBbook

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