WARNING: iCloud Music Library just destroyed my Mac's iTunes Library

It certainly didn't restrict itself to hidden purchases with me. Most of my library consists of CD rips and these had wrong album art and wrong song/artist metadata. It could not have been more messed up. Some websites are reporting that using an old library file will fix the issue for everyone. Well it will not if your library has files that now have incorrect tags. Around 70% of my ripped music suffered.

In my brief period with Apple Music I downloaded the Enhanced High Violet album by The National for offline listening. After I updated iTunes, even this album had wrong artwork! (Stereophonics). The way that Apple tries to match your music in the cloud is obviously at fault...however NOTHING should come in and mess with our local files. That's very very wrong. May I ask Apple one thing: let us upload our music to the cloud without this matching nonsense. I cannot see the justification for matching, and why has it been so disruptive.

What a mess!

I was able to get iTunes match without Apple Music on my Mac by signing out, clicking the Menu Item for "iTunes Match..." (which gives you the subscribe to iTunes Match page) then logging in, which turns the subscribe button into "Add this computer" and after hitting that I have iTunes Match without Apple Music.

As far as I've come by, everyone had an iTunes Match subscription once including me.

I have done both two things. Not sure which one solve but my icloud music library off now.
- On itune (computer): Preferences-->General--->Untick Icloud Music library and hide apple music

- On Iphone: Settings--->Music--->turn off Icloud Music Library

Share if it can help you, it can help others

Cheers!!!

Well FINALLY I've found some more people with this problem. I was on the phone with Apple Support pretty quickly and have been escalated to "Engineering". I haven't touched my iTunes library of purchased music for a few years, since using Spotify. But i wanted to give Apple Music a fair shake. So when iOS 8.4 came down, I upgraded my devices and started selecting some albums that I had on Spotify to re-create playlists in Apple Music. Then iTunes 12.2 hit and when I got home I upgraded and turned on iCloud Music Library there. That's when it all went to [poop].

At first, I thought it was just cover art that got messed up. But noooo. It would show art for one album, the title for another, an artist from yet another, and all the tracks of something different. Click the track to start playing and it would actually play a track from the album the art was showing for. I turned off iCloud Library on everything. Of course, the albums I had chosen to stream went away but I found that my purchased music was still borked. I signed out of everything everywhere then investigated my actual track files, but they were irrevocably screwed. I even tried replacing the iTunes Library.itl file. My library just rebuilt with the bad data. So I was forced into a Jurassic Park "hold on to your butts" style system reset. I restored my iTunes folder from a Time Machine backup. I spoke with my Apple rep and told him what I'd discovered. With the restore, my own purchased tracks were set right. But now I needed them to wipe out my iCloud Music Library data. I said I couldn't turn anything back on it would just sync the bad data again. He agreed with my plan and now I'm just waiting to hear back.

I have been following this thread and have a couple of observations and questions. My library contains 17,500 customized songs. I have EQ'd a lot of these songs and categorized them the way I want. I was really excited about Apple Music until it happened. I thought the idea of making all of my music available to all of my devices was cool. Little did I know that Apple would start making a complete mess of my library once it actually started. So I checked the little iCloud Music Library box in preferences, and away we went. As the process went along, I looked at what Apple was putting into my library and noticed immediately that it was adding songs with incorrect metadata and albums/cover art as a match for existing songs. Some of the songs added had an inferior sound to those I already had. I stopped the process after it had added about 1,000 songs. So now, how do I correct this mess? I found that I could easily delete/hide the added songs by just right clicking on them and hitting delete/hide beside the songs in my library with the little cloud beside them. Once I did that, my iTunes library(even with being signed in and Show Apple Music checked in preferences) returned to normal. As long as leave the iCloud Music Library box unchecked in preferences, I will no longer see any songs that may have been added to my library by Apple. I don't know if those songs are just hidden, deleted or what, but as long as they don't affect my original library, I don't care.

I also found out that, if you just sign out of Apple Music, the only thing you see when you load iTunes is your original library. Am I missing something here? I'm sure there are many of you have seen whole libraries corrupted, and I agree that would be a nightmare. However, if you can use your original library just by not logging in to iTunes, that's one workaround. Second, aren't these songs that Apple adds to your library just in the Cloud unless you actually download them?

Please let me know if I am missing something here.

(I posed my experience on page 13 and am now going back through and reading.) I don't wonder if there's a sequence to activating iCloud Library. I turned it on my iOS devices first and started choosing albums (because obviously that is what got released first), then iTunes later that day. Now that I've restored my iTunes library, I don't wonder if turning iCloud Library back on there first and allowing it to match and whatnot before turning it on iOS devices would help.

This is what you have to do if ithe .itl file trick doesn't work. Restore to pre iTunes 12.2 backup of your iTunes folder (that contains the .itl and .xml files, as well as your actual library. Should be User > Music > iTunes.

That'll get your purchased music fixed. And leave iCloud Music Library turned off or you'll just pull down the bad data again.

Had the same problem with the missing or completely wrong artwork. My solution was to clear the whole library, turn off iCloud library, then I deleted the itunes local library and created a new one without turning iCloud library on. After that I imported all the songs in this new library and let itunes search for the artwork. I turned on iCloud library now and waited until its all uploaded. Then I turned on the iCloud library on my iPhone. I saw that some artworks were still incorrect so i decided to go back to itunes deleted the corrupt artwork and instantly imported it manually (chose the artwork with a high resolution). Than i updated the iCloud library again and checked my iPhone after that. The incorrect artwork was gone but now there appeared others. So I repeated the whole artwork importing/updating thing until everything was fine. Now it works perfectly.

Well... not so fast. .itl restoration did not completely fix the issue. Launched a song this morning, another song randomly appeared in the library within the Genre I was browsing. That newly added song displayed in the "now playing" information, yet the actual music played and album jacket displayed were from the original song. ugh

iCloud is turned off. (and has been since I did the .itl restore). As others are pointing out, my local database is clearly corrupted.

I have my own sound effects library that I've been working years on. This morning I find my sound effects MY OWN GOSH DARN WORK is GONE. Freaking gone. It's not on iCloud, and I certainly can't click on it to have it play. So what.... does this mean if I create my own audio content that Apple is going to throw my work on the chopping block and delete MY work?

Yes, I have backups, and yes these are sound effects. Really good ones too... but what if they where music. My own content. Then what? does Apple delete that too? Or worse... would Apple remove MY work from MY computer, and then DRM MY WORK? - That would be an insanely insulting spit in my face.

How many of you understand these user agreements? mostly We just hit "I agree" to to answer the fundamental question "You want to continue using Apple?" ... what other answer is there? so yes "I agree". The user agreement may have spelled it out for legal purposes, but that doesn't change the more important thing... and that is my "Experience with Apple". Which is what "I agree" should really be representing. I don't have time to re-read these legal ULA's every single time a sentence has been added. Why should I have to always check whether Apple is still acting like Apple, or like a bait and switch Microsoft?

I have a very large library of non commercial source material all now in IOS 8.4. No changes occurred to my library, I assume that this is how it is intended to work.

It's incredible.

My library is almost destroyed. From 140 GB to 34 GB after 3 hours of working to reorganize things.

How Apple dares to modify my personal files?

And yes, I have a TM backup, but because Apple modified the whole library, TM went out of space and so deleted the previous (good) backup to accommodate the new (bad) one! Who could foresee that my files could be moved around and retagged (in a completely wrong way) by Apple?

I think that this will have legal consequences.

This is not software, it's a virus, it's an attack to our computers. I know it's unintentional, but the effect it's the same.

Apple, you have a lot of money, plan better tests for your software. And do not modify MY files.

I completely agree. Apple BETTER be making efforts to correct this.

On a side note and reference to the Library.ITL fix...

If since my previous library I've made changes (added files, deleted files, renamed, added comments) will reverting the library undo all of those hours of work and listening?

Cheers,

j

I spoke too soon. After a more thorough investigation, I found a lot of corrupted files and albums. I talked with Apple, and they advised me to restore from a Time Machine backup. Luckily I have two current backups. I'll try that and see what happens.