Music library uneditable (Monterey 12.1)

Have you tried signing out of your Apple account on the music app to force it to look at your local library instead of the cloud library?

I have a related problem (some of my ripped music has the wrong album art and/or the song playing does not always match the displayed song/album title). Am also ****** that Apple took away the ability to search your local library (reverts to searching all of Apple Music).

When I have time, I will see if I can correct all my mis matched songs and album art, but I am living with it for now....

Try holding down option as you launch Music, click the Choose option, and select the file ~/Music/Music/Music Library.musiclibrary. Any improvement?

tt2

It is working again now after I rebooted my Macbook, but why should I reboot everytime for a simple feature to work. Really disappointed with this.

Please try option-starting-Music and opening the Music Library.musiclibrary file from ~/Music/Music, or other location you might have previously chosen.

tt2

In other thread I said I was giving up and downgrading to BigSur but the hassle is too much.... so I've found this has been working for me (not always, but sometimes). I reboot the computer, open Music App and then make a small change - like adding a song to a playlist or rating a song - and then synch to the cloud. I found around 5 / 10 times this works and the changes are reflected in my iPhone. Once this happens, then I can keep making changes for a while and they will be reflected everywhere. Eventually, the changes will stop showing in the iPhone and reverting in the Mac but at least for a while you can go on.

It's veeery frustrating but doesn't seem to be any other option now...

can you turn off the iCloud sync or log out in music when making all of your changes. Then log back in when finished to allow the server to sync the the new preference list all at once instead of it trying to make update to the cloud live as you are organizing the setup and making changes? Maybe it’s pushing the data instead of pulling to sync and the cloud is struggling with trying to keep up? I would think a large library would create a bit of lag and glitch trying to keep up possibly?

Temporary fix that works for me is to create a new playlist on an iOS device (iPhone or iPad for me) and add four or five songs to it, then switch over to my iMac (Monterey 12.3.1) and add more songs to be sure those are appearing on my other devices. I can now make changes from the computer side such as adding / deleting songs and playlists, or changing the metadata of songs and have those changes be permanent. This seems to last until an undefined, not long period of time after I stop making the changes. Again: it's a temporary fix that works for my setup and certainly not ideal.

Not sure if this makes any difference, but all my devices are less than a year and half old and all are updated to the most current OS versions.

Here's something that works for me for a while. Instead of rebooting my iMac, I log out (Apple Menu > Log Out <username>...), then log back in. Star ratings changes in Mac Music show up right away on my iPhone after this.

I don't know how long this will stick. I'll try updating metadata again in the morning to see if syncing still works.

You're not trying to edit metadata while using AirPlay are you? For reasons unknown this isn't supported.

tt2

Reboot your computer without reopening windows and try again.

tt2

Just to add a new twist to this issue (and maybe some useful information). Although the problem seems to be linked with the cloud, with the Music app ignoring changes done in the Mac and overriding them with what was on the cloud, it is also present offline.

As mentioned before, I've made the decision to try to downgrade to BigSur. In the meantime, as I just can't stay without listening music while working, I decided tu turn off the wi-fi in my Mac while listening to music. Also I figured, now that I'm offline I might as well continue rating the songs I have not rated and tweaking the playlists as I want, then do a full time machine backup, downgrade and then in Big Sur every change will be there. So I rated around 50 songs while offline and added a few to a playlist. Then I had to turn on the wi-fi for something else, so before doing that I shut down the Music App. I worked online for a while, then turned off the wi-fi, and opened the Music App again. What do you think happened?

Yes, of the 50 songs I had manipulated offline, around 30 lost the rating and a few (not all) changes I have done in playlists were gone. This was without any synch to the cloud, which tells me the problem does lie within Monterey 12.1

Naively, I tried to see an upside of this and thought "well at least not ALL the songs lost the rating and SOME of the playlist changes were maintained, that's more than what I have achieved lately, so at least sync this to the cloud and that would be something" Yeah right... so I turned on the wi-fi, synched to the cloud, and then ALL changes were lost and my library reverted to the way it was like a week ago haha. (well, ratings and playlists changes, because I've noticed if I buy new songs, those remain).

I so wish Apple fixes this soon....

I read that on a reddit thread :

"According to Apple (I have a case open with them about this), its a server side issue that affects Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey. Possibly Windows (Itunes), too."

I think we must wait...

I've been experiencing the same infuriating problem and have no solution, but I'll share what I did so other people don't go through the trouble. My music library is over 23,000 files going back decades now, all the way back to when iTunes was still SoundJam MP.

I exported my Music library xml file and created a brand new Music library by holding Option on launch. Then I imported my old library file. iCloud still overwrote this new library with duplicate playlists and old playlists I'd tried to delete.

Next I tried completely reorganizing all the actual files; moving them into a new media folder and re-importing all of them into Music, consolidating, etc. As clean an install as is possible. The problem still came back.

What I haven' tried is creating a brand new Apple ID with a brand new iCloud account. That might prevent the old Music library from reasserting itself, but I've no reason to think the same problem wouldn't happen again with the new library on the new ID.

This is incredibly maddening. iTunes was once my favorite app. I'm sure this is a simple fix for Apple's engineers. I really hope they're monitoring this thread and take care of it. I'm not going to deal with this much longer, and Swinsian is looking like an attractive alternative.