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

I'm dealing with a large library that, when I enabled iCloud Music Library, became corrupted and unusable. Beyond re-titling the song in the iTunes interface, the actual song files were renamed and moved into different folders. This means that reloading from a previous .itl file would not work for me.

After paying for TuneUp, I realized I could backup from my Time Capsule, so I did. Hopefully that works.

I believe however, there is a possible solution that may have to do with the fact that I had iTunes Match enabled a year or two ago, but then disabled. It occurs to me that my information/library remained active on the Apple server after I deactivated it. When I reenabled it, it looked at my Library and started to download/re-sync my library-- jumbling everything up in the meantime.

This is just a theory, and I will test it when I get back to my computer. Here's how I will test:

1) Temporarily rename my iTunes Library (that I just retrieved from backup)-- take it out of harms way.

2) Open up iTunes, starting a new iTunes Library under my AppleID.

3) Enable iTunes iCloud Music Library... see what happens

4) If my music shows up, I simply delete everything from iCloud. Then I can reinstate my main music library and enable iCloud Music Sharing again.

I'll post when I see how this goes, but someone might be able to try this sooner and see if it works.

Cheers,

Hi, I tried this. Whilst my local library seems to be more secure now, the results in the cloud are entirely unpredictable. The Apple matching system that attempts to replicate a library in the cloud is so broken as to be unusable. I have albums with studio tracks replaced by live versions (and vice versa), I have songs replaced by different bands altogether, and hundreds of examples of incorrect album art. I don't know what algorithm they are using but sure as he'll isn't 'match artist, match album title, match song name'

I think you all have to remember, Apple didn't go out and was like "Hey let's mess up everyone's years of work, it will be fun!"

It's a bug, albeit a major one, but I am more than positive they are working on a fix for it.

Apple didn't do this on purpose.

I don't know how to link to a specific post, but when you jump to page 18 and scroll down to the second to last post on that page, I have listed all the steps in detail. Essentially what you are attempting to do.

One other piece of information, after I was finished. I tried to import my saved playlists and noticed they were initially not showing up on other devices. Just by chance, because one playlist was missing a song that I manually added, I discovered that as soon as I change something about the playlist, even if I just re-order a single track and back to its proper place, the playlist pops up on other devices. Magic.

Frank Berzau wrote:

Here's how I fully recovered from a destroyed iTunes Library and to a working state of how  Music was intended to be used.

Lessons learned:

1) No longer is watching a keynote sufficient. I have to read blogs, support articles and call Apple support in order to get things fully understood and working.

2) iTunes Match is, for the most part, replaced by what  Music does, but one important piece is not. Downloading DRM free versions of tracks on other devices.

Step 1 - Disabling iCloud Library

In iTunes Preferences under General uncheck 'iCloud Music Library'. I also, following some other folks advice disabled the option to automatically download Artwork. I'm not sure, but the thought of giving iTunes control over not just filling missing artwork but potentially overwriting existing... No.

Step 2 - Deleting my entire iTunes folder

Emptying the trash right after it. This looked like it gave me enough disk space for the next step, the Restore. However, it did not! When I tried to copy the iTunes Folder from my Time Machine backup, Finder reported it had 'Not enough disk space'. At that point, I ran Disk Utility to Check the disk. I got errors and a prompt saying I should do a repair from the Disk Util run from the Recovery Partition. This was on a MacBook Pro with a 1 TB SSD, a little over a year old. Did that, and then magically there was enough disk space to copy in my good iTunes Folder from the Time Machine backup.

Step 3 - Restoring my iTunes Library from a Time Machine backup

I chose to not simply run Time Machine to go back, but rather first made another copy of the backed up iTunes folder. In my case this was hundreds of Gigabytes copied over WiFi, but - for the sake of making me feel better - worth doing. There are KB articles on the topic of remotely mounting a Time Machine backup file. One thing to be very careful is to NEVER modify or delete any of the content of a Time Machine backup, just simply copying it over to another drive (or in my case another Mac).

Once the copy process was done, which took a few hours (the 4 hours of sleep I granted myself in the process on Friday), I Option (alt) clicked iTunes, which prompts to create or open a different Library. I chose the one I had copied in from Time Machine. Took a while watching the spinning wheel but ultimately it opened my Library and it was all fine.

Step 4 - Creating a clean Library

I did this on another Mac (brand new iMac 5k) but this should - provided you have enough disk space - be possible by switching between libraries by Option-clicking the iTunes icon and choosing the respective (old and new) library. In my case, on the new Mac, I created a new, empty Library and first subscribed to iTunes Match, then enabled the iCloud Music Library. I deleted everything that popped up (thousands of tracks that were already imported during the initial disaster), and just left purchased songs untouched.

Step 5 - Exporting Music and Playlists

Going into my old Library, no iCloud Library enabled still, I copied all Music to my new Mac, by simply dragging and dropping into a Finder window where I had the new Mac's drive mounted. Of course if you do this on a single Mac, this step is obsolete. As far as exporting Playlists, I export them as XML.

Step 6 - Importing Music and Playlists

On my new iMac running the clean new Library, and iTunes Match and  Music iCloud Library enabled, I import all Music. I do this with just a couple of thousand tracks each, wait for the cloud upload and a clean state, then continue with the next. I am not done yet, but things look really good. Once all my tracks are imported and uploaded to the Cloud, I will import the XML Playlists and I should be done.

Step 7 - Cleaning up my iPhone Music Library

I noticed that when I enable iCloud Library on my iPhone, even when I chose the option to 'Replace Music with iCloud Library' it doesn't do what I expect. It still has my previously synced Music (from iTunes via cable or Wifi Sync) in addition to what's in the Cloud. So I disabled the iCloud Library again on my iPhone. Opened my old iTunes Library on the Mac and removed the check box for synching Music. This cleared the iPhone. I then went back into settings and enabled the iCloud Library again. Now all the content of my iCloud Library shows up, I can choose to make tracks or albums, or entire Genres, available offline. This part already works great, and as I'm importing more Music into my new iTunes Library and the Cloud gets populated it all shows up on the iPhone pretty instantly.

Very disappointing along the way:

A f****d up iTunes Library (thank you Apple for Time Machine)

Missing DRM-free Music, aka. lack of explaining what iTunes Match still does

Subscribing to iTunes Match took two days and maybe 50 attempts and several calls with Apple Support until it worked

Getting a clean iPhone is not as simple as it looks

It just works - No.

There ya go

Yes, you can enable iCloud Music Library on your iOS devices -and- NOT on your Mac/PC..

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This is how I had my Apple Music setup initially and it was FANTASTIC!! Especially if you want to share your playlists across all your iOS devices (it's actually required).. at the time, though, I did not notice that having this option enabled will prohibit you from being able to sync your Mac/PC music with your iOS device (which I do sometimes) - this is a TERRIBLE feature .. &btw, I eventually enabled iCloud Music Library on my Desktop/iTunes and my Apple Music experience went from FAN-tastic!!! to MISER-able!!!😠

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Does anyone else agree? This is the biggest and BEST advertisement for SPOTIFY! -who wouldn't want to be able to listen and manage their playlists both on the desktop AND mobile? Streaming music service is ALL about the Playlists... But like I've said before, this is Apple's initial/beta/1.0 release... I won't be surprised if they lure some SPOTIFY engineers into their camp to get the upperhand, because at this moment they CLEARLY DO NOT.

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Thanks to my TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE with iCloud Music Library, I was motivated to renew my Spotify STUDENT Premium subscription.. it had expired and I was holding off on renewing because I was giving Apple Music a test-drive... In the end I'm almost certain I will keep both, but Apple SERIOUSLY needs to fix this iCloud Music Library DISASTER!

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Thank you!

I doubt very seriously they will be able to fix anyone's library. I personally believe that, if you didn't have a backup, you are totally screwed. I do not believe a magic fix will happen for this one. Are you telling me that you actually believe one day they will have a universal fix for everyone whose library was trashed by this debacle? Dream on.

This is quite a bit more than I'm willing to try at this point. There's got to be an easier way.

No. I am in no way, shape, or form, saying they will be able to fix previously screwed up libraries. I am saying that they will release an update (8.4.1?) that prevents it from happening again so people with in tact libraries dont get them messed up.

I agree wholeheartedly. This should be a lesson to everyone with a serious music collection that we should wait to install iTunes updates until we know how those updates affect existing music libraries, and the discussion forums are one place to get that information. Another way is by Googling a particular iTunes update's reviews. I found a very good article when I first became aware of this problem just by Googling "Apple Music". It told me all about the problems with this latest update and led me to the Apple discussions.

I am afraid to look at my albums but I did notice that iTunes is still losing music I recorded from CDs. ***? My biggest problem is a huge drop in CPU load. It used to run between 95% and 99%. Today it is running between 60% and 75%. Anyone else having this problem?

I'm trying to drag an mp4 file into my Iphone but I cant because it says Icloud Music is enabled.

I tried to do the 7 steps steps that Frank Berzau suggested on friend PC but unfortunately I could not delete any song from the iCloud library. I created new empty library but even after deleting the songs from iCloud - they were always coming back. Yes, playlists can be deleted but not songs, and the iCloud still replacing artwork and some songs that were ripped from CD's.

(All other devices had iCloud Music Library switched off and all songs were deleted on the other devices).

my Apple Music service is working great for both the iTunes Match and streaming aspects of it, the only drawback for me is content being instantly being synced across iTunes and my iPhone 6, so I have to add Apple Music content to force the sync/updates. Hope this helps for anyone in my shoes now.

I had this happen when I first deleted all songs, they were all coming back. I then tried to delete all songs but the ones I had purchased (sort library by iCloud status so you can easily mark the non-purchased ones only). That made it stick.

iTunes was even smart enough to not create duplicates for the purchased tracks when I imported everything.

I am now finished importing all of my music and have just a few playlists left to import. Everything looks great on all devices, except a few cases where Artwork is missing, but not too many to really complain.