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

@ Scot Hacker,

Thank you for being so helpful.

I have a few songs with the plain cloud icon, but when I right click I see no option to add it to my library. What am I missing? I do see that option when I go to File/Add to Library but that doesn't work either.

In general, if I understand AM correctly, your original music library remains on your iMac. In addition to that, I have a 128 GB iPhone 6+ that has my original music database on it as well. So the iCloud music library would only be available to my iPad which is signed in to AM and the Cloud but has no music locally stored on it. Any mismatched album art or songs would only appear on devices like my iPad that are only signed in to AM and the Cloud but have no locally stored music. Am I getting it?

@jazzmanjohn If I understand your question correctly, you're asking what happens if you have multiple devices storing original content, rather than just one "master collection" on a desktop and multiple client machines. I haven't tested, but I would imagine that you simply add music to the cloud from any devices, and that shared music shows up on all other machines using the same account.

To your first question: If you see tracks that have a plain cloud icon but when you right-click you don't see an option to add them to the cloud, it's usually because your selection also includes some tracks that have a different icon. Make sure all tracks in the selection have the same icon, no exceptions.

@Scot Hacker

Regarding #1 I'm pretty sure you are 100% right.

On #2 on the right-click issue, I see what you mean. On my iMac I was referring to 2 songs that are the same. The only difference is one is obviously on my hard drive without the little cloud. The second has that little cloud next to it. Do I delete one and keep the other or what? Which one do I delete?

@Scot Hacker is correct. I have 4 devices connected to my AM account, and iTunes Match. 2 Macs, an iPad and an iPhone.

ANY changes made to the music collection on one device will affect all the others. Any device may contain downloaded files, and they will sync to all the others. Hence there is no notion of a "master local library" - that is only a starting point. Once the account is populated, all connected devices are equal peers. Add, delete, rename, reorder - everybody gets the changes, and that's great.

Every so often I've found the same song in both local and iCloud versions. I usually do a quick check to see if there is any real difference (e.g., version of song, file quality) and delete the lesser of the two. All devices then show the correct single version. I've done a lot of experimenting, and haven't lost anything in the process.

Thanks for confirming BradPDX. As for the duplicates (cloud and local versions), that's one of the scenarios my article attempted to address. You should be able to merge them rather than deleting one of the two sets. Not sure whether that would make any difference if they're all reflected in the cloud anyway, but somehow feels cleaner to me (and keeps the play counts in sync).

thanks for posting! kinda made me laugh to see the mismatched art work,

and helped me get a grip and come back to my senses.

clouds clearly not for me 🙂

thanks to all for the warnings!

I used to have iTunes Match (which is the cause of some of the later problems with iCloud Music Library), and had none of these problems. It worked perfectly.

Maybe for those who are having these problems with iCloud Music Library, it's better to use iTunes Match instead?

iTunes Match doesn't have any of the problems mentioned, it syncs fine, it uploads everything it can't match, it doesn't change anything with your original files, it doesn't even touch them, and when it syncs your original files to another device, it doesn't even add DRM like iCloud Music Library does.

Maybe Apple is planning to kill iTunes Match at some point, but for the moment, it's giving the same main function of keeping the library in the cloud and being able to listen to anything from the main library on the go without having to keep everything in all of your devices.

What do you think?

To me, the only missing thing in iTunes Match is playlist syncing. Is it worth having a terribly implemented problematic service like iCloud Music Library just to be able to have that extra function?

Especially if you have no wish to use Apple Music, I don't see the point of choosing iCloud Music Library over iTunes Match. Why does nobody talk about this? Am I missing something?

zdlo wrote:

I used to have iTunes Match (which is the cause of some of the later problems with iCloud Music Library), and had none of these problems. It worked perfectly.

Maybe for those who are having these problems with iCloud Music Library, it's better to use iTunes Match instead?

iTunes Match doesn't have any of the problems mentioned, it syncs fine, it uploads everything it can't match, it doesn't change anything with your original files, it doesn't even touch them, and when it syncs your original files to another device, it doesn't even add DRM like iCloud Music Library does.

Maybe Apple is planning to kill iTunes Match at some point, but for the moment, it's giving the same main function of keeping the library in the cloud and being able to listen to anything from the main library on the go without having to keep everything in all of your devices.

What do you think?

To me, the only missing thing in iTunes Match is playlist syncing. Is it worth having a terribly implemented problematic service like iCloud Music Library just to be able to have that extra function?

Especially if you have no wish to use Apple Music, I don't see the point of choosing iCloud Music Library over iTunes Match. Why does nobody talk about this? Am I missing something?

But for someone who likes Apple Music - the ability to listen to stuff you don't have/own and add that music to your existing library - iTunes Match is not a solution. It is great if you only wish to listen to your own music on all your devices - without the ability to add music from Apple Music. And the idea of paying for both seems a bit ridiculous to me at least.

Yes, the iTunes Match service seems to have a lot less "matching" issues than ICML, but that is partially because it is matching from the iTunes Store and ICML is matching from the Apple Music library and they are not using the same logarithm apparently. (And yes, this was confirmed by an senior Apple Tech that I have been dealing with about the mis-matching issue since the very beginning.)

Thank you for your comment.

So, you agree that there is nothing iCloud Music Library can give to someone with an iTunes Match subscription, who doesn't use Apple Music?

Dear Scot,

I have read your article and it make me reconsidering keeping Apple Music Membership & iCloud music access. Although I'm suffering from the duplicated songs and wrong album covers which I spent years collecting them and keeping them organised, but after I have read your article I will start believing that there is a solution and to feel safe keeping this thing without being afraid that my metadata and library will be ruined at some time.

I just want to ask you to be sure. If I made the bad covers art fix and change it locally on my mac and paste all the art covers I want again, is it going to be ruined again if there was an update on itunes or apple music suddenly tries gather all the wrong informations again and return the wrong cover art?!!

Can you even go back to iTunes Match once you've upgraded to iCloud Music Library? I would certainly love to. The iCloud Music Library has really jacked up my music. I have duplicates of so much. Some of it is just a duplicate in the library and not actual file duplication, but some of the files are duplicated. Also, all of my playlists are duplicated, but now I'm finding minor differences in them, so I don't know which ones are the ones I should keep now. People get ****** at me for saying this, but I'm going to say it again: "Steve would not have allowed products and product updates be released with all of these problems. There would have been much more thorough testing." *sigh*

Thanks, glad you enjoyed the article. No perfect fixes there, and it's still way too much manual work, but it's a partial solution at least. I can't guarantee anything of course, but I would not *expect* that any of this manual work would be undone by any future fixes that Apple might apply here.

For the record, despite the fact that I have found partial solutions for these problems, and continue to use because I love having Apple Music and my uploaded music all integrated so nicely, I'm still as ****** as the rest of you that any of this manual work is needed, that Apple got it so horribly wrong. And I continue to find new problems - like trying to upload albums and find that only some tracks will upload while others just show an "error" icon with no explanation, etc.

I did as you said and the good news is all the music I had imported from a CD showed up but unfortunately

not the music file. I'm a dummy but luckily I have a copy of my iTunes library with all the music I imported into ITunes on an exported hard drive.

I'm still not sure why apple moved everything to the cloud and DELETED ALL THE OTHER MUSIC I HAD IMPORTED OVER THE YEARS LIKE EVERY BEATLE, EAGLES AND LED ZEPPLIN cd.

What do people like me have turn off to prevent doing this again. I never signed up for Music match or their online music

but failed to do something. Any help to prevent this in the future would be great.

Terry

<Edited by host>

Had the same issue, tried numerous times with apple support - hours wasted & no progress.

Luckily (compared to some of you guys) i only had 10k songs and my library could do with a bit of a cull to be honest. I emailed apple billing support an hour ago and asked for a full refund since signing up for the paid service after the free trial. 10 minutes afterwards i got an email giving me just that, 2 months family subscription fully refunded.

If you're going elsewhere, make sure you get your money back first!

Mike

Hello everybody. Found this post while looking for anyone having the same problems which iCloud music library. This morning looking for a solution I found I this one on Apple support. Still didn't have the chance to try it because can't access my Mac right now, but hope this works and could help some of you (By the way, if you already know this doesn't work, please notify me...).

AS Apple says the common problem should be a previous usage of iTunes Match.

This is the link

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

Let me know if its good for you. Il check asap