Apple Music issues after iOS 18 Update

I've had similar issues, I updated all my devices to the latest operating system (iOS/tvOS18) and I've had playback issues while streaming music from Apple.

The biggest issue is the complete interruption of certain songs after a while: usually the song plays for several minutes and cuts out before the end of the song. The timeline keeps moving forward but no sound until next song.

Additionally, several equaliser and volume issues have occurred while playing from HomePods (OG version).

my phone also is having a score of difficulties, all revolving around wired sync for the music library. In order:

• Began taking far longer to complete sync, seeming to hang at the part where it gets ready to sync tracks (checked music, checked playlists, new additions to the desktop library)
• Proceeded to declare almost all of my onboard music files ineligible for playback because of region issues, for files that were *local data to the mac*
• above prompted removing all music from the phone and reuploading them, restoring my legacy music collection
• new problem: the latest dozen or so tracks appeared as present in library, but playing them would result in other songs in collection playing. Now they won't resync to phone.

mobile device: iPhone 12 Pro with iOS 18

desktop: 27" iMac 2018 with Catalina 13.7 (latest catalina update as best I can tell; hadn't upgraded yet because a friend and others online had been running into USB connnection errors)

EDIT: After deleting the tracks, removing them from the desktop library, re-adding them to the library, and trying multiple sync attempts, including having to unplug and plug the phone back into the desktop, the songs finally are back on the phone and working again.

OMG! I thought I was alone on this. I am a heavy Apple Music user and it keeps crashing. The songs will mix together 15+ seconds before the current song ends. Additionally, the app keeps deleting downloaded songs, especially "Saturn" by SZA. I have deleted the current song, but the file won’t delete until a day or so. Once I try to download it again, it does not download nor does it save back in my library for another day. I can still listen to it by searching it on Apple Music as opposed to my library, yet I can’t do that if I’m in the subway or somewhere without internet. 😔

My music has disappeared on my phone, but on my Mac it says it's in my library, it's greyed out, and says waiting under Cloud Download. The Mac, phone, and iPad all say different things, even though they all have sync turned on, signed into the same profile. Cover art doesn't show either. I spoke to 3 people at Apple who could not fix my problem.

I just started using Apple Music, coming from Spotify (trying the Apple One subscription) and I am having all these issues. I never used it before iOS18 or Sequoia so i'm not sure how much worse it has become. I cannot get favourited albums to sync between phone and macbook, they randomly disappear or some i can't even add. Some albums have songs missing entirely. I can add an album to favourites on the macbook and watch it appear on my phone in real time but then it disappears later. Albums I add on the phone never make it to the macbook. I wanted a break from all the bloat of Spotify (podcasts, audiobooks etc) and just use an app for music (with bonus lossless audio) but man this basic stuff is just painful!

Since iOS 18 my actual physical library that has always synced in its entirety with my iPhone from the music app on my MacBook, now only syncs a couple songs from each artist, which I can play on my device, when I go to search the library it says there is no music there. Very odd.

My issues were not as comprehensive as most here. Mostly around Homepod and playlists skipping and pausing unexpectedly etc. ive been rolling since 18.1 released and that issue at least has gone away.

I would like to add I use Apple Match and have had seemingly at random multiple duplications of songs in albums ranging from the whole album to one or two songs on my iPhone after uploading iOS 18.

My iPad Pro v2 which will not update has no issues

Smoking gun to and huge amounts of work trying to rectify

Another issue I've noticed is it sometimes forgets a song has been played and reverts Play Count to a previous value. I have a fair few audio books so in order to remember which chapter I'm up to I have a smart list showing tracks played less than X number of plays. A few times recently I've gone into the playlist and a few earlier chapters are appearing. In fact in the last few minutes I went into the playlist intending to set it playing when the current song by Peggy Lee finished and it was the correct chapter showing. Before the song currently playing finished Music crashed and when I opened it back up two earlier chapters were showing as the next to play from my audio book.

While browsing, tapping into any artist shows nothing, no options while using the music app on CarPlay. For context, I have a lot of music (7,000 songs and 430 artists), and my own local files transferred from iTunes (Purchased MP3s and M4As from different sources).

Also, the volume normalization (I believe it is now included in what is called "Sound Check" in the iOS 18 Music settings) stopped working. There is no normalization going on, which makes me have to manually change the volume when playing on shuffle.

Hope you can fix this for the upcoming update!

I’m using the ios 18.0.1, I didn’t directly update to ios 18 , I’d waited so yeah. But then this update has made my Apple Music laggy asf, keyboard is slow when I type fast. It’s frustrating. I recently got an AirPods Pro 2 and I’ve been regretting updating to ios 18.0.1. It’s so bad that the sound on the AirPods isn’t consistent Everytime I put it it on. Sometimes it’s too loud at like 60% but it’s fine but the audio quality is kinda messed up. But the app is still so laggy and it’s frustrating me. My phone is like 9 months old and this is started happening too soon.

Ever since updating to iOS 18 Apple Music has become unusable for me. Songs constantly buffer and take a while to actually start playing, if I try to skip more than three songs the app freezes, when I try to add a song to a playlist the app freezes, when I add a song to play next it skips over the song majority of the time. The app also continues to play a song even when I skipped it causing the app to freeze & when I close the app the previous song is still playing. At this point idk even know if it’s worth having Apple Music since other platforms work normally, or better than AM, at this moment.

I spent an hour (3rd time) with Tech support timing all the operations that are lagging huge related to all of this and sent in the diagnostics files, so the software guys can see the exact problem. Hopefully this will get someone's attention! I kept pointing out that I am part of this community thread with tons of people having the same issues, but they say it doesn't matter/mean anything without seeing the actual problem, i.e. the diagnostic files....sheesh! So much for Apple Community impacts!

When my playlist starts playing automatically at 9pm it only plays a few seconds of each track before skipping to the next one. Only started happening after latest update for homepods downloaded. Am using iOS 18

Yeah, it's almost unusable, especially if I want to play music stream for a long time as something goes wrong quickly.

1. I start a playlist and it scrolls through songs without playing
2. goes to next song and no sound
3. Airplay is a mess, homepods start making a loud 'repeating' sound as though it's a vinyl record or CD stuck at a certain point.
4. Homepods keep disconnecting while Airplay through Sony receiver continues
5. Airplay goes out of sync from one speaker to another
6. Restarting constantly does not fix issues
7. I start an album, it starts loud then halfway into a song, the sound drops a lot.
8. Playlist skips tracks for no reason

I could go on. So much Apple software is no longer "it just works" .... grrrr