Apple Music issues after iOS 18 Update

I spoke with Apple Tech Support yesterday. She tried a buncha things on her end, some more button pushing on my end, end result is that the problem is not fixed/workaround, it's just different now. Still missing a gob of songs from iPhone -> iTunes -> Purchased. She suspected they were "hidden". She did something at her end to unhide a bunch of them, but not all. I had tried "Unhide All" a few days ago, but it didn't seem to do anything. Today that's gone.

I have provided a buncha data to them for analysis. She recommended that I not put a lotta effort into fixing/workaround at this time. Wait for a bug fix. Then start cleaning things up.

Anything I do now might be a total waste of time because the bug behavior is sporadic and it might break something I thought I had fixed/workaround yesterday.

This looks like a database corruption problem. iTunes has always had issues with creeping crud in the database, but this is a whole new level. It's possible that the hotfix may be unable to repair the database damage, and we'll have to rebuild our music library from scratch.

My experience and recommendation is to stop trying to fix something that's fundamentally broken, we can't find a workaround that doesn't get undone or some other problem manifests when Music goes insane again tomorrow. Imma just suffer through it, use what limited functionality it still has, and wait for a fix. I've wasted cumulatively two whole days on this, and I'm no better off than I was before. Different, but not fixed.

Not sure if this new Apple Music app has bugs, or a Mr. Smith virus spreading in it. First I can't drag a song to a new playlist window, then I can't drag a song in the same playlist without an instant crash, then I can't edit the names of playlists, then finally, my playlists won't save and I wind up with a playlist with only one song in it...forever. They changed the playlist naming edit to just on the left column. When I edit, it shows up correct in the playlist window and not the left list. Then it reverts both back to the old name. This app is now unusable. I only play with my own mp3's. I can't imagine trying to actually stream with it. Has apple hired a bunch of Microsoft people? Actually, my Lenovo PC laptop is more stable at this point, and that is a sad state of affairs.

In addition to some of the issues mentioned by others, the most important problem that I’m facing since iOS 18 is that the currently playing list is lost when connected to external devices (car, in my case) through USB. When starting to play a list, the songs in the currently playing list appear properly and so does the number of the song. After a while, usually when moving to the next song, the song’s number appears as 1, and the list is no longer accessed from my car's interface (latest Mercedes in my case) and therefore I can no longer move to next/previous song. I’m forced to switch to Bluetooth so I can move to another track, but I naturally prefer the USB as it used to provide better manipulation and quality.

Interestingly enough, the same occurs even if I switch to CarPlay! Of course in that case I can access the list through CarPlay’s interface, but in the car's dashboard the list is still lost and I can still not move through songs.

I’m having a premium Apple Music subscription and the latest updates rendered my iPhone almost unusable in one of its most important usages (since I’m traveling a lot).

I do not know if the same happens with other streaming applications (I only maintain this subscription), but I suspect this is an issue of the iOS and not of Apple Music in particular. It appears to be an issue with the iTunes Library API the iPhone is using to expose media players’ content to external devices. If I use the Apple Music app from an Android device, I don’t have this issue!

Needless to mention the issue we always had and it’s been posted tens of times: That when we reconnect to the car, what was being played is always lost and the phone switches to playing the first song from the All Songs, alphabetically. That was there always and I had to make an automation to switch back to a preferred list, which is still not a solution.

So, while for others this may seem a reason to abandon Apple Music, for me I would add it’s a reason to abandon iPhone altogether.

18.1 will be released next week hopefully they will fix the issues but I’m not holding out any hope for that, may need to wait till 18.2. Many people comment saying Apple haven’t commented or made any reference. They do not reply to this forum. If you want Apple to take notice raise a support ticket.

If I play music and then go use another app or close my phone for sometime, my music will eventually stop playing and the app will crash when I go back to it. So far the only way I’ve figured out how to avoid this bug is to periodically go back to the app. However because it doesn’t always happen after the same amount of time or songs (afaik) I sometimes forget or take too long. This happens with carplay, bluetooth headphones, and my bluetooth speaker.

Two problems surfaced since installing v 18 1 wk ago:

1. Using AirPlay on iPhone15 to play song and Album Artwork from iTunes playlist onto a smart TV, the Album Artwork projection on TV is noticeably SMALLER in center of TV screen. Gives appearance it has been crammed in a box.
2. Using CarPlay with a high end music system in car, the Audio quality is significantly inferior after v18 update. The sound is ‘raspy’ and broken up. Totally UNACCEPTABLE. Was on phone with 4 level Apple Tech support and they could not fix problem. Suspicion is Apple made decisions to compromise features to balance ‘streaming overhead’.

Yes! Adding a song to a playlist is tortuously slow, and I can watch the app process unfold in slow-mo as the graphics flash off and on. This is my primary complaint. I have not suffered some of the more egregious problems experienced by others. What did they do to precipitate such a varied consequence to their users?

I now use my iPad (not upgraded) to maintain my library and playlists. Not convenient, but more efficient and less frustrating. We all expected better.

My issues include Playlists that I've created and downloaded have the downloads gone. Luckily the songs are still there, but I've so far had to re-download 3 of them. Might be time to go back to Spotify, but I have Apple Plus for the other things.....

It is apparent that Apple’s primary focus is aligning internal ’tech’ resources (especially those relating to ‘Streaming Services) to AI initiatives. This is evident by the i.OS v18 rollout. In my case, the quality of AirPlay projecting Album Art (size much smaller) and poor quality of Audio playback in CarPlay (raspy, hissing sound on all tracks) is the current result. I’ve made (3) calls to Apple tech with case numbers for each and cannot get beyond level 1 tech support. Both premises appear true. Apple is not giving ‘Music’ priority only if it results in signing up for monthly service fee. Also, they appear to be rationing ’streaming resources’ towards AI. Unfortunately, AirPlay & CarPlay have been negatively impacted.

Yes, everyone needs to start hammering them with Feedback and demanding a refund for the Music app since iOS 18 came out = 4 months now!

Feedback - Apple Music - Apple

Me. So thankful to find someone else with this issue. My Apple Music has been almost unusable since the upgrade to iOS 18. Crashes when scrolling a playlist, crashes when trying to remove songs from a playlist. Won’t let me edit larger playlist. Also freezes a lot, is super slow, and the audio quality has decreased. I have been on basically a 4 day phone call with a Apple Senior Adviser about this and they can’t figure it out, plus they say nobody else besides me has reported to them issues with Apple Music on iOS 18. Which is hard for me to believe. The tech is calling me back tomorrow with what his bosses said about the screen recordings i sent them showing my issues. I’ve done every troubleshooting step they can think of except reinstalling iOS 18. I hope they can figure it out cause it’s annoying me to no end not being able to use my music.

Yes we seem to be and Apple also told me nobody has called in besides me having the issue we seem to be having. They called me today with some more troubleshooting steps the higher ups there wanted to have tried but they didn’t help, they had me send them some screen recordings of the issues, ran a diagnostic test and sent that all in to the higher ups as a response and now I have to get yet another phone call from them Tuesday with the response from the higher ups. I told them I have seen others post about Apple Music issues after iOS 18, maybe not the exact issue I’m having but some kinda of issues but they aren’t calling in they are waiting on another iOS update with bug fixes and he said they need to call in cause they can’t make those bug fixes unless people call in with the issues. But I can kinda understand, as nobody wants to be on a weeks long phone call session with them and then having to repeat the same steps pretty much each time and no real solution coming out of it. Hopefully I do get a solution though, or at least an idea of when there will be one. I will let you know what they say Tuesday when they call me.

Same here, my music app is terrible on all Apple devices I own now. Mac is the only thing that seems to be working normally.

star ratings freeze the app completely. Having any playlists over 100 songs freezes and crashes after about 3 or 4 tracks, and don’t even get me started on smart playlists. No cover art loading, freezing after about 30 seconds. It’s absolutely unusable now.

im having to Bluetooth my Mac to my AirPods if im outside of my office at home, and I can’t even listen to music at work anymore or on the commute. It also hates streaming on cellular now too. 😬

My phone updated yesterday, took an hour to complete, and issues with Music started immediately. I've no degradation in sound quality, but (1) it has crashed a few times, (2) scrolling through playlists is jerky and slow, (3) album thumbnails don't always appear, (4) when one song finishes playing the next starts ok but the display still shows the previous song playing and the currently playing song next in queue, (5) when I start playing from a different playlist it doesn't always start playing, it displays Loading then fails and displays Not Playing, or occasionally reverting to the last song playing from the previous playlist, (6) (not an issue, just an annoyance) if a favourite song appears at the bottom of the queue and I want to move it to the top, when I click and hold the song the options have moved round and Move to Top isn't in the usual place!

There are other issues not connected to Music, eg my Notes are now all saved on iCloud, it seems. Lucky I don't have any personal information in them. Same with my photos. A few (not all) apps are very slow to load. A small number of websites need me to remember my passwords because my phone has forgotten them. Like I can remember 16 character randomly generated passwords! And last, but by no means least, the battery appears to be draining faster than usual, same as happened after several previous iOS upgrades, some of which took several further fixes to correct fully.

I am also having an issue with iTunes since updating to ios18. For me, iTunes won’t play. I’ll press the play button and nothing happens but a flash of the pause button. Closing the app does nothing. Only way to reset is to restart the phone. It will work but then when I pause and go back to play, it does the same thing again.

Also, a separate issue - my phone has randomly shut off and then rebooted…3x!!!