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Do Music Playlists live in a file somewhere?

Like the subject says, do music playlists live in a file somewhere in the finder?


Here's the backstory:


I've been having issues where my Mac Music won't sync to my other devices, as in any changes made to playlists aren't reflected on other devices, but if I make a change to a playlist on another device, it's reflected on my Mac. It's been documented and Apple Support told me the issue was known and they've been working on a fix (which AFAIK hasn't happened yet).


Today, suddenly every playlist and playlist folder on my Mac Music was duplicated. This duplication wasn't reflected on my other devices, which was odd. When I looked at my duplicated playlists, one version of them would be correct, and the other version would either be empty or have one song. I decided to delete ONLY the empty/near-empty duplicates, and suddenly this deleted EVERY playlist, not just the duplicates, on ALL my devices.


I tried going back a few days in my Time Machine to a Music Library file and restoring that, but that didn't change anything, which is why I'm wondering where playlists might be stored.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on May 20, 2022 8:56 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 21, 2022 11:53 AM

Are you an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscriber? If so the playlists are stored in your library, but also mirrored to your iCloud Music Library in the cloud. A recent issue has meant that for some people updates made in Monterey weren't uploading to the cloud and the library might later later revert. This appears to be fixed in the latest release.


When restoring a Music Library.musiclibrary database from Time Machine you may also need to option-start-Music to make sure it really is that library database that gets opened. If you are a subscriber the library is also going to get updated with the current version in the cloud. If you are trying to recover playlists that you've deleted go offline before restoring the database, export the lists you want to recover, go back online and let the library update, then import the exported lists.


tt2

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5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 21, 2022 11:53 AM in response to cbunag

Are you an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscriber? If so the playlists are stored in your library, but also mirrored to your iCloud Music Library in the cloud. A recent issue has meant that for some people updates made in Monterey weren't uploading to the cloud and the library might later later revert. This appears to be fixed in the latest release.


When restoring a Music Library.musiclibrary database from Time Machine you may also need to option-start-Music to make sure it really is that library database that gets opened. If you are a subscriber the library is also going to get updated with the current version in the cloud. If you are trying to recover playlists that you've deleted go offline before restoring the database, export the lists you want to recover, go back online and let the library update, then import the exported lists.


tt2

Do Music Playlists live in a file somewhere?

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