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Level 1

15 points

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

I have a 13000 song library on my iMac. Installed iOS 8.4 on my iPhone this morning and had Apple Music and iCloud Music Library going...Everything was working fine on the device. Got home and installed 10.10.4 and iTunes 12.2 on my iMac. It asked to turn on iCloud Music Library and I accepted. All of the sudden it starts overwriting my album art with completely wrong art (example: Weezer showed art for a Radiohead album) on both my iMac AND my iPhone, screwing up metadata by putting random songs in albums where they didn't belong (there was a Cursive album where the first track was listed as a Foo Fighters song). Even worse, when I'd click to listen to certain songs, it would play the wrong song/artist, like the metadata was hijacked. What in the ****? I've had this library organized perfectly for the better part of a decade and Apple Music screwed it up in minutes.

I was able to restore everything through a Time Machine backup and made sure NOT to turn on iCloud Music Library when I re-opened the .itl file. What a disaster. Hopefully someone from Apple reads this. Thinking it may have something to do with a iTunes Match account I had briefly a few years back. But yikes, can't believe how much damage it did in 5 minutes.

Posted on Jun 30, 2015 7:45 PM

625 replies

Tuff Ghost Author

Level 1

15 points

Jun 30, 2015 10:33 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

Ok I have a makeshift half-workaround for at least deleting whatever is in iTunes Match so you can start fresh (I believe). I'm not re-enabling iCloud Music Library on my main computer until tomorrow in case it ***** up again, but I think this may have cleared out the iTunes Match files that were screwing everything up. I used two Macs, but you should be able to do it by creating a new iTunes library if you have only one Mac.

1. Re-sync your iPhone or iPad with music sync turned off (so there should be NO local music on your device). Turn off iCloud Music Sharing and sign out of Apple Music. Essentially, the Music app should be empty.

2. On your Mac, turn off iCloud Music Sharing in the library in question and close out of iTunes. Obviously make a copy of any iTunes library files somewhere safe just in case.

2. Create a new empty iTunes library (option click on the itunes icon)

3. In the new iTunes library, sign into iCloud Music Sharing. You should see the little cloud icon on the right working and after a bit the list should start populating with music that is currently in the cloud.

4. Once everything is loaded, select 999 or less files at once, right click, press delete. Let it sit for a little bit. Repeat until you've cleared everything out.

5. Turn OFF iCloud Music Sharing, exit itunes

6. Re-open, and sign in to iCloud Music Sharing again. If it worked, no items should populate. It took a couple times before I got everything out of the list. Exit iTunes.

7. Sign back into Apple Music on your iDevice. In My Music, with Show Music Available Offline unticked (no green circle) nothing should appear which would confirm everything has been deleted from the Cloud/Match.

8. Option Click on iTunes and re-select your main library.

From here, I don't know what happens when you re-enable iCloud Music sync, but I am able to download music off Apple Music with correct album art.

Jun 30, 2015 11:10 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

How did you restore everything with Time Machine? I can't seem to get it to work! please help!!!

Tuff Ghost Author

Level 1

15 points

Jun 30, 2015 11:15 PM in response to undeadguy

Delete (or move) the .xml file, restore the entire iTunes Music folder where all your music files live, then restore the .itl file. Open the restored .itl file and it should be back to normal..the xml file will recreate itself.

huhublau

Level 1

0 points

Jun 30, 2015 11:19 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

I did not update ANYTHING, but my music on iphone and ipad are srewed up totally. Jerry Garcia hijacked most of my Dylan albums. I knew he would try some day...Steve! Look down on us!!!

Jun 30, 2015 11:38 PM in response to Scott B. Silverman

SOLUTION! SOLUTION! SOLUTION! SOLUTION!

This is a simple super solution and it worked for me instantly, turning a couple hours of frustration into instant joy.

Close iTunes

Navigate to you iTunes folder

Choose a former .itl file from Previous iTunes Libraries (preferably the most recent one before the Apple Music disaster) and drag it into the iTunes folder

Rename the messed up .itl to iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl

Rename the previous iTunes library that you just dragged in to iTunes Library.itl

Open iTunes

Your music library should be restored to perfection!

MAKE SURE TO NOT ACCEPT THE REQUEST FOR ICLOUD MUSIC LIBRARY OR THIS WILL ALL HAPPEN AGAIN

Jun 30, 2015 11:50 PM in response to Zackadelic

How do I turn it off on my MacBook?

Jun 30, 2015 11:55 PM in response to bravewolverine

once you have followed those steps, upon reopening your lovely old iTunes library, iCloud Library will already be off. It will prompt for you to turn it on. Deny the prompt.

Jul 1, 2015 12:01 AM in response to Zackadelic

interestingly it didn't ask me to enable...however if you go to preferences there is a toggle button for iCloud library, which I've set to off until this is fixed.

Jul 1, 2015 12:44 AM in response to bravewolverine

This is a worry, I updated to 12.2 earlier this morning. I got no prompt either for toggling it on. Already had match running. My library appeared to look ok but I need to inspect closer after seeing this nightmare scenario. I wonder how many have been hit. Apple, can you do nothing right?

zpaolo

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2015 1:26 AM in response to Tuff Ghost

Something similar happened to me... I turned on iCloud music library on my iPhone and noticed that it screwed most of my album art, didn't check the tags but this morning one of the songs was wrong, I hope it was also before 😀 I disabled Apple Music and all album art got lost, then i synced my phone with my macbook pro and every album now has its old correct art. I don't remember if I had already updated iTunes at the time. I think if you disable Apple Music on the iPhone it will be disabled on the Mac too, am I right?

Mike1306

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2015 1:43 AM in response to Tuff Ghost

I am experiencing the same problem. The complete music library is messed up right now. Replacing the .ITL file will only let it look okay but it clearly isn't. The files itself are damaged because these show the wrong cover art etc when you navigate to these in Finder. I think the best solution is to restore shut down iTunes, replace the messed up music folder with the music folder from a back-up, then replace the .itl file and then restart iTunes. Haven't tested it by myself yet because I don't have my back-up around here but in like 5 hours I can tell if it works. I'm glad it didn't mess up my movie and tv shows...

JonD25

Level 1

24 points

Jul 1, 2015 2:30 AM in response to Tuff Ghost

Same problem here. I sent Apple a support email about it before finding this thread. Hopefully it'll get their attention. Insane how huge of a mess this is.

Banksy11

Level 1

4 points

Jul 1, 2015 2:49 AM in response to Tuff Ghost

Seriously?!!!!!! I'm relieved that the iOS match problem is now sorted but now I'm actually scared to lift the lid on my Mac after reading this lot. Shall I leave it alone for a while until Apple sort it out. I mean what will happen. Will my iTunes library go tits up and then match it to all my devices. Sheeet!!!! What's the latest anyone been I touch with Apple?

zpaolo

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2015 3:00 AM in response to Banksy11

I suggest you wait and see, and keep a time machine copy of your library at hand. As long as you disable iCloud Music Library you can still use Apple Music streaming, but you won't be able to add Apple Music files to your library (maybe you can download them though, didn't check).

This feature was intended to allow the merge of Apple Music and local Music Library but it's done with the attitude that "iTunes knows best" so Apple instead of just adding your Apple Music tags to the local library is adding all your local library tags to its cloud, but since "iTunes knows best" they are also changing all your tags in the process. This is crazy

Untied

Level 1

0 points

Jul 1, 2015 3:10 AM in response to Tuff Ghost

Same issue here. It was easy to recover my library but turning off iCloud Music Library is hardly an ideal long term solution. I'm currently deleting everything from my iCloud Library from another Mac (Hoping that starting over might solve the issue). This is cloud services at their worst. Utterly opaque to the user, no easy way to reset or start over, and the damage caused propogates across devices.

I too used to have an iTunes Match subscription.

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