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

After my iTunes library on my iMac was destroyed by AM's iCloud library function, and restored by Time Machine, I looked for an alternative for iTunes, but found no application that would give me the same convenience.

I then decided to switch AM off on my iMac, but switched on on my iPhone and iPad. Further on, iCloud library is switched off on my iMac and my iPhone, but switched on on my iPad.

In this way my iTunes library on my iMac is not corrupted any more, and I sync music with a cable between iTunes on the iMac and on the iPhone. My iPad is not synced any more with my iMac, but it can carry other AM tracks off line away from home. And I can still stream AM tracks on my iPhone, as it has AM switched on.

This setting works for me, but it's not good enough to pay for after the free trial period.

I wish I would've read all these solutions earlier!

The same thing happened to me but I only have 2,000 songs. It either deleted or overwritten my album artwork too then when I disabled iCloud Music Library, half my songs were deleted (physically stored ones). I just manually added them back in from my exHDD and manually did everything. .. So yeah.. I wish I found these solutions earlier.

This worked for me thanks a lot. I knew of this issue when Apple Music first came out but I just assumed that it would have been corrected by now. WTH Apple.. Fix this!!!

I actually kind of worked out a solution to this. I already keep backups of my library on my OneDrive for Xbox Music streaming so whatever stuffed my library up the first time could be reversed. ANYWAY.

1. Make sure all the music in your library is organised. Preferences > Advanced, tick the top two boxes (Keep folder organised and copy files to folder).

2. Stop the album art madness by unchecking "Automatically download album art" in the Store tab of Preferences.

3. Right click all music in your library and consolidate files to copy all the missing music into the iTunes Media folder.

4. Go to that Media folder in Finder/Explorer and copy the Music folder. Basically make a backup.

5. Turn on iCloud Music Library (Preferences > General, tick Show Apple Music and iCloud Music Library)
6. CLEAR EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIBRARY. Control/Command + A and delete.

7. Wipe the music on your devices by going to Settings > General > Storage > Music > Edit > All Music

8. Activate iCloud Music Library on your devices, and open your Music app to make sure no music is on your phone and in the Music database file on your device. It should be EMPTY.

9. Proceed to copy that folder you backed up into iTunes. Just drag it over your empty library. Needs to copy everything back into that iTunes Media folder so may take a while.

10. Show the list view of all your songs and watch the outlined clouds slowly disappear. It'll retain all metadata and sync your custom metadata to your iCloud Library and hence all your devices as you expect. While Album Art still isn't showing properly on my phone, I can live with that. At least now I can add Apple Music albums to my existing library as I expect it to work.

GG WP

iCloud library is just not going to work for large, esoteric libraries. I was in a best buy looking at Apple watches the other day. The Apple Rep there and I started talking about Apple Music. He was very defiant when I told him it was messed up. He said he has 50K songs and every one of them synced perfectly. I told him about this post and all the articles on tech sites and he acted like I was lying. So yesterday, I spent literally 5 hours trying again before my free trial ends. I created a brand new itunes library, named it Cloud, it SHOULD have opened empty, but it opened with 16, 000 songs out of my 30K songs. I sat and deleted thousands of songs as I wanted to start with a smaller library to test. I left AM and ICL off on my iphone. Once I weeded songs out of the library, I turned on ICL and let it start uploading/syncing to iCloud. No Go. After several hours, despite syncing very quickly to my surprise, it still replaced all my live and outtake cuts to studio versions. Even tracks purchased thru itunes. For example: Tom Petty outtakes from the box sets, were replaced with studio versions. Stone's live tracks all replaced with studio versions, and worse, The Beatles various box sets ie stereo, mono, and US versions all replaced with stereo versions. Not to mention art work still a mess. Apple has done nothing to fix this. Their silence on this tells me they never are going to fix it. Oh and my ''For You'' contained so much taylor swift, kanye west, all the apple supporters imo, I was like ''get me out of here" No thanks. I am cancelling AM and Spotify and sticking with Google Music--which uploads my tracks and artwork perfectly--and Radiant Player for Mac.

Cryptex-S91 wrote:

I actually kind of worked out a solution to this. I already keep backups of my library on my OneDrive for Xbox Music streaming so whatever stuffed my library up the first time could be reversed. ANYWAY.

1. Make sure all the music in your library is organised. Preferences > Advanced, tick the top two boxes (Keep folder organised and copy files to folder).

2. Stop the album art madness by unchecking "Automatically download album art" in the Store tab of Preferences.

3. Right click all music in your library and consolidate files to copy all the missing music into the iTunes Media folder.

4. Go to that Media folder in Finder/Explorer and copy the Music folder. Basically make a backup.

5. Turn on iCloud Music Library (Preferences > General, tick Show Apple Music and iCloud Music Library)
6. CLEAR EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIBRARY. Control/Command + A and delete.

7. Wipe the music on your devices by going to Settings > General > Storage > Music > Edit > All Music

8. Activate iCloud Music Library on your devices, and open your Music app to make sure no music is on your phone and in the Music database file on your device. It should be EMPTY.

9. Proceed to copy that folder you backed up into iTunes. Just drag it over your empty library. Needs to copy everything back into that iTunes Media folder so may take a while.

10. Show the list view of all your songs and watch the outlined clouds slowly disappear. It'll retain all metadata and sync your custom metadata to your iCloud Library and hence all your devices as you expect. While Album Art still isn't showing properly on my phone, I can live with that. At least now I can add Apple Music albums to my existing library as I expect it to work.

GG WP

I am glad that your steps worked for your, but it does not solve the problem for everyone. I set up my ICML for a second time from my wife's iMac (her iTunes library is only a portion of my full library - 22,000 songs out of 60,000). And while after updated to iTunes 12.3.0.44 it did not "destroy" her library - all genres and artwork are still intact - when I turned on ICML on my iPhone 6, iPad Mini 2 on the other iMac that had a blank iTunes Library to start - there are still hundreds of cases where live albums and alternative versions were mis-matched and the artwork is still messed up.

(And yes - the settings are basically the same as you indicated and yes, I did clear out the Music from my iOS devices also as you suggested.)

Oh that *****. I probably have the same problem but haven't checked yet. Oh well... Guess the only solution is for a "Fix Incorrect Match" option like Google Music... I've been using that quite successfully until Apple Music so yeah... Might have to just keep using it

Cryptex-S91 wrote:

2. Stop the album art madness by unchecking "Automatically download album art" in the Store tab of Preferences.

I unchecked "Automatically download album art" ages ago. My album art still gets nuked.

I've written up a walkthrough for Medium.com detailing why many users end up with duplicate tracks and bad cover art, and how to fix those two problems in most cases:

https://medium.com/@shacker/remove-duplicates-fix-broken-album-art-in-icloud-mus ic-library-d58cff364fb1

HEY MAN....great article. But do you really want to pay 10 bux a month to do all that work? So everytime you add an album you have to go thru all that? I gave up, did not pay after trial ended. The weekend before it ended, I spent an entire weekend trying one last time. I started a brand new empty iTunes library. The minute I enabled iCloud Music it filled up with all kinds of stuff, purchased music from years ago etc. Ok, so I spent hours deleting all of that. Then waited 24 hours and it still had not uploaded all my music, but enough of it. Alas, it was still a mess. Beatles and Stones albums, live stuff, rare stuff, alternate stuff, everything replaced with the studio versions. Not only the artwork I have painstakingly added thru the years, but even purchased artwork was messed up beyond belief. I even tried what someone on a board mentioned about renaming the live tracks, and that did not work.

I'm sticking with Google Music and Radiant Player (google music open source player for Mac) Not one hiccup loading my rare/live/alt stuff and my artwork remains in place. Their curated lists get better and better as I like more songs and since they purchased Songza. I don't think Apple Music will ever be fixed. itunes Match certainly wasn't. But thanks for the great article, hope it works for you and others, just seems crazy to pay for a service that does not work.

Every time? Oh gosh no - this problem only affected about 5% of my music - the rest was perfect right off the bat. I'll make that clarification in the article.

And yes, $10/month is incredibly cheap for what we're getting here - I'm finding the combination of Apple Music + iCloud Music Library be musical paradise. I'm "all in."

need to read it again I guess. but did everything you did in iTunes on your main Mac sync properly on your iDevices as well? And did your ''rare'' stuff all sync correctly, ie track listings, versions, sequences, etc? That was the other mess it left me, The Beatles box sets are all messed up now. All track 1's are listed together etc. I went into ''get info'' and resorted and it won't work. Will have to delete and re-load all the cds. ***. I just don't trust Apple anymore. They screwed up all my photos and now this. Ugh. BUT I am tempted to try what you suggest and see if it works for me but I'm not gonna give them 10 dollars just to see if what they advertise actually works as they say it does. Which it doesn't. smh

Great post, Scot. I have several questions:

1. I just have an iMac that I use as my music server. All in all, with my 17,500 music library, I am quite happy with Apple Music and the Cloud library. There are some weird things I don't understand however. For instance, just take one of my Beatles' albums. It was from my cd collection. I now see songs in this album intact on my computer, but right under the original a grayed out copy of it appears with the cloud next to it. What's that all about? This does not happen throughout my collection but sporadically with no real pattern.

2. The artwork seems intact on my iMac as far as I can tell. I activated Apple Music and the Cloud library on my iPhone long before my Mac just to get used to it and see if I really wanted it. I figured it couldn't do much damage that way. I have noticed artwork changes on my phone. How could there be artwork changes on one but not the other?

3. In iTunes/Preferences/Sharing, do you have "automatically download album artwork" and "share details about your library with Apple" checked?

4. If you sign out of iTunes and the Cloud library, doesn't your music library go back to exactly the way it was before you signed in? Do you sign out daily or just leave it on continuously?

5. Is there a way to view your original iTunes library while you are signed in to Apple Music? I was told there was in the "Playlists" area by an Apple advisor, but I have yet to see it.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

My Beatles collections are a mess from this. A mess. Plus, the commercially released box sets are not showing up correctly. There is the mono box, the stereo box, the US mixes box. The sequences are all messed up and I am not even sure if the mono versions have not been replaced with the stereo versions via icloud library. When I reverted back all the versions seems correct but the sequencing is still messed up.

Jazzman...I believe if you just click MY MUSIC tab at top of itunes you get your library, but if you have icloud library turned on you will get their versions and not your versions.

jctez,

Can you just sign in and out of the iCloud library as you like without any problems? I.e., is that a good way to compare what is in the cloud vs. what was in your original library.....even the artwork?