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

Ok - I'm back to normal.

The itunes update didn't automatically fix anything, but the procedure to reset my itunes match library was almost perfect. The only odd hiccup was that one of my smart playlists got converted to a genius playlist. I was able to reload my old .itl library and take screenshots of my old smart playlist, then revert to the new fixed .itl and recreate my old smart playlist. Shouldn't have been required, but didn't take long.

I have now added my itunes music files to my time machine backup. I never considered it would be possible that they would get screwed up.... live an learn.

Obviously after reading almost 30 pages of comments on this since June 30 I too am very hesitant on activating iCloud Music Library on iTunes on my MacBook as well as my iPhone and iPad - but I really, really want to able to take advantage of the service beyond just streaming music on the go! However, I have a large iTunes library of songs on my MacBook along with a lot of customized metadata and album artwork that I DO NOT want changed on my computer or any of my iOS devices.

In addition to jopu's comment above, can anyone else who: 1) is NOT a previous iTunes Match user; 2) downloaded the latest 12.2.1 iTunes update; and, 3) has activated iCloud Music Library across their iMac/MacBook and iPhone or iPad, etc. please share their feedback?

I am very curious on hearing your results on what did or did not happen to your music collection across your devices and iTunes library. Thank you for helping!

The operative words here are identify and compare. Supposedly iTunes looks at your songs and compares them to what they have. If they can match them, they are instantly in the Cloud. What I found is they were putting songs whose metadata did not match mine in the Cloud and leaving my customized songs out. I would like to know what their definition of a "match" is. I don't think their definition of "match" and mine are the same.

Thanks for this thread. After having my library trashed when Apple Music first came out, I was able to restore from a Time Machine backup. Yesterday I ventured to use iCloud Music Library with the latest iTunes and running the fix Apple suggested. In a nutshell, I turned off iCloud Music Library on all my devices. Then in iTunes I went to my account page, scrolled to the bottom of the page and pressed the button to delete my previous iTunes Match library. Then I quit and opened iTunes while holding Command + Option, then chose to restore my iTunes Library. Once done, I turned on iTunes Music Library in iTunes and let it upload all night (I have 4000 songs). After that worked without any problems, I turned on iTunes Music Library on my iPhone and iPad (choosing to "Replace" not "Merge"). It's all working as it should now. Easy as 1, 2, 3.... 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.......

Apple support document here: If your music library shows incorrect details with iTunes Match or Apple Music, and you previously cancelled an iTunes M…

Seems like more and more people are reporting that it's finally working.

Can anyone WITH CUSTOM ARTWORK confirm that it doesn't change it?

@AppleLoverWindowsHater, I never had the issue discussed in this thread (and I have an active iTunes Match subscription), but for what it's worth: none of my artwork or metadata has been touched by Apple Music. Over the course of a decade I have embedded custom artwork into every single file and I have added information like year, genre, composer, band members, additional musicians, producers, lyrics and even trivia to my almost 10.000 tracks by hand. Suffice it to say, I would be absolutely devastated if this information got changed or lost....

My experience with Apple Music has really been great so far - all my music is synched correctly between my iMac, iPhone and iPad and, as I said, none of my custom artwork or metadata has been changed.

i find it really bizarre how this could be affecting some and not others. Also how this seems to be all geared at iTunes Match subscribers. I have never used ITM and yet I had the library disaster. Almost 20K songs, many rare, live, unreleased. Most all of them replaced, deleted, messed up artwork. Luckily I was able to restore from time machine, turned off apple music and icloud music library and have not touched the new itunes update, nor will I. I also found Apple Music streaming very slow, like 2 seconds to start a song, where Spotify and Google Music start instantly. To me it is obvious Apple Music was not ready to be released, nor does Apple care. What they did with Aperture and Photos was a mess. Not to mention iWeb and all the other software they abandoned or destroyed. Mess with people's music and photos? That is diabolical. Seriously. I have decided to go back to Google Play Music. Can upload 50K of my music for free, use Radiant Player on my Mac which is an awesome Google Music desktop player/library. I"m sure in the fall when Apple starts allowing 100K tunes Google will do the same. I love OSX and IOS but Apple software is just not worth messing with anymore, except for Final Cut. Apple Music is for people with small libraries who want the latest cheese whiz for the masses. It is not for music lovers with large libraries full of different genres of music.

Ditto, jctez. My experience is like yours. I have 17,500 songs that I have carefully edited since I bought my first Mac in 2007. Some of my stuff is also rare, live and unreleased. I've never used Match, but this iCloud Music Library wreaked havoc with my stuff. Just like you, I restored from Time Machine. However, after following this thread all along, I finally installed the new iTunes update and left iCloud Music Library UNCHECKED. So far all seems well. I have also noticed a slowdown in streaming. Like you I don't think Apple cares. Actually there is no way to contact them about this and have a real conversation. I still have AppleCare for my latest iMac and iPhone 6 Plus, but the people on the other end are clueless about this stuff. I agree with you that Apple Music was just not ready to be released. I do like the idea of being able to stream anything you want whenever you want. However, iCloud Music Library is a disaster, Radio does not allow you to delete your custom stations if you want and Connect is worthless.

I think there MIGHT be a simple reason iCloud Music Library is affecting some but no others. The people who have been affected the most are people who have libraries they have carefully edited over the years. Maybe the people who have not been affected so much have a more generalized selection of music. Who knows?

Your idea about Google Play Music and Radiant Player is a good one. I think I'll look into that. Thanks for the good post.

It does change covers.

I redid all the albums Itunes on my Mac but on my iPhone a few covers have gone barmy. Apple must love george michael because it has replaced 4 albums correct covers with George Michaels face. Someone else have this problem? Itunes on Mac all redone but on Iphone goes weird?

can someone suggest something, this is beyond crazy

PS)I have deleted and transferred all music from my Mac to my Iphone but covers are still wrong, never have been a subscriber to match or Music

Replying to myself!

deleted and transfered all my music 5 times to my iPhone and now finally have albums with correct covers!!!! perseverance worked.

Jazzman...you can stream anything you want with google music. their library has even more than spotify I have found. their ios app is great too. and they are the ONLY streaming service with ''genre sort." which i need desperately as I listen to everything from world music to blues to rock to classical etc. And again, you can upload 50K songs for free, for instance if you want all your Beatles catalog and bootlegs in your library, you can. Can't do that with Apple Music or Spotify. The Radiant Player for Mac works seamlessly and has different skins you can choose for design. It is free but I donated to him for his work. He updates it as well. Check it out for sure. I am not sticking with Apple Music or itunes. I have no desire even it didn't mess up my library. The UI is awful, it is an awful user experience, and like you I could care less about Connect or Beats 1 radio. Not my thing. Good luck to all here, it has been a real mess and their lack of support makes it even worse.

Great post and most helpful info, jctez. Explain something to me. When you started using google music, did you upload all your music into the google cloud or what? Then do you download it to your computer if you want to keep a music library on it? Then do you just delete your iTunes library and just buy music from whatever source you like and import it into your google library? Then do you just use Radiant as a player if you like?

thanks and what I did was I created a google play music streaming library, and the stuff they were missing ie bootlegs, rare tracks, beatles, etc I just uploaded from my music files. I copied the files out of my itunes library into a google folder I created and uploaded from there to my google library. I have not cleaned out or deleted my itunes library yet. I was waiting to love Apple Music. But that ain't happening as we know. So yeah I just uploaded music from there that I wanted in my google library that they did not have. The other cool thing is, in google you can edit information, group/sort however you want, and add art work. And it all syncs to your phone/ipod/ipad exactly how you want it!! Imagine that!! If I want to purchase something I just purchase from Google Music and it is in your library just like itunes. Then you can download the files from your library to your computer if you want. Also, in my experience, when I choose to sync to my phone for offline listening, google music files sound better in my car than spotify. Never had a chance to do this with apple music as the sync took so long for offline play I gave up. I use Radiant Player on my iMac at home instead of using the web browser version mostly. Radiant just mirrors your library, but you have some options to change the looks, though he updated and now there are only two skins but both are nice. You can control it from the menu bar or the dock as well. I just prefer using a desktop version instead of a web browser. Hope that helps. I have tried them all but for me and my vast library and musical tastes and my love of artwork and genre sort, google has worked out the best for me. Radiant Player makes it even better. I had high hopes for Apple Music but nope, not for me, even if it DID work correctly.

I have now Apple Music with iCloud enabled and iTunes Match. Took long time to reset the bad album covers, disappearing playlists and other problems.

Another problem that I discover is when in iTunes I "Remove download" on matched song and re-download it the song is matched BUT the re-downloaded file is .m4p and is Apple Music AAC Audio File with DRM protected NOT DRM-free!

Before = Original Song

After Match !

Also some of the files that were matched appear as iCloud Status = Apple Music with FairPlay version 2 as if they were downloaded originally from Apple Music and not matched, not to mention the artwork is changed in most cases.

This is a quote from Apple site https://www.apple.com/au/itunes/itunes-match/

"How iTunes Match works.

iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud for you to listen to at any time, on any device. Since there are more than 43 million songs in the iTunes Store, chances are your music is already in iCloud.³ And for the few songs that aren’t, iTunes uploads what it can’t match (which is much faster than uploading your entire music library). Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality."

Also as far as I seen on iMore site http://www.imore.com/how-check-if-your-macs-songs-are-uploaded-matched-purchased -or-apple-music-drm-laden

"

You use iTunes Match (or both Apple Music and iTunes Match). This status means that Apple has scanned and matched the track in your Mac's library with one in its iTunes Store catalog; when you re-download it on any other device (up to 10)—or delete and re-download on your Mac—it'll show up as a 256kbps Matched DRM-free AAC (m4a) file.

You can use Matched files to upgrade poor-quality MP3s you may have from CD rips on your original device, or to simply stream your music to all your other devices; when you cancel Match, any of these files you've downloaded are yours to keep."

As I said I have iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library enabled so any downloaded song from Apple Music should be DRM free as I understand. In my case they are all DRM with FairPlay version 2 and all are m4p files.

another quote from the same iMore site:

"You use Apple Music,and Apple Music alone. This status primarily means that you've downloaded a song from Apple's streaming catalog. In addition, if you use iCloud Music Library—Apple Music's version of iTunes Match—without an iTunes Match subscription, any matched song you re-download on another iOS device or Mac will show up as an Apple Music file."