Mac Music Playlists Disappeared

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Level 1

5 points

Mac Music Playlists Disappeared

I recently cancelled a 5-month Apple Music trial.

A week later I went in to Music on my Mac and discovered that about 90% of my playlists have disappeared. Many years worth. The same has happened on my iPhone now because I had synced that before I realised.

Are these gone forever?

If I want to protect playlists in future is the solution to never use Apple Music streaming service again?

Posted on Aug 13, 2022 4:09 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,516 points

Aug 15, 2022 12:54 PM in response to Smnrthr

See Empty/corrupt iTunes/Music library after upgrade/crash - Apple Community. If you have a Time Machine backup of the library from when you were still using Apple Music, and all of media was stored locally, then you should be able to rebuild the playlists. If not then you may have 30 days from the date when your subscription expired to resubsubscribe which should restore the iCloud Music Library. You can then prepare properly, downloading your music, and turning off Sync Library before you terminate the subscription again.

tt2

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Answer 2

Vero_F1

Community Specialist

Aug 14, 2022 4:35 PM in response to Smnrthr

Hi Smnrthr,

As you are missing playlists in your Music app, check to see if you have another library by following Switch libraries with the Apple Music app in macOS.

Also see Change where your music files are stored on Mac :

If a song no longer appears in Music

If a song used to appear in Music but doesn’t now, it may be because the music library or song was moved from the Music folder. To make your songs appear in the Music window again, try the following in this order:

Locate your Music folder in the Finder on your Mac, then drag it to the Music window. You should see the songs in your library again. If the music library file is included, you will also see playlists, song ratings, and other information you created.

If that doesn’t work, your songs may be elsewhere on your computer. In the Finder, choose File > Find, then search for a song by title or artist. Or search for “MP4” to find files downloaded from the iTunes Store or “MP3” to find songs encoded in MP3 format. Drag songs (or folders containing songs) to the Music window to add the songs to Music again.

Hope this helps.

Have a good day.

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