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

Apple says this happens if you used and canceled iTunes Match before subscribing to Apple Music.

Quite frankly, that is not true. I had problems and I was subscribed to iTunes Match and got 'upgraded' by Apple to Apple Music. I never canceled before upgrading.

Hi all,

Well it happened to me. Wrecked library in iTunes after subscribing to the 3 months tryout of Apple Music.

About 300 of my 5000 songs got a new genre and album art. They are of course the purchases of iTunes song.

Why did iTunes and Apple give us the choice and a way to change genres in the first place if they now want to change them back to default for the sake of their nonsense Apple Music? It's my music that I paid for. Apple tampering with it seems like theft to me. What next, will they tamper with our iCloud Keychain? Ou account settings and so-on?

So I managed this in iTunes 12:

1-Preferences, General: uncheck Show Apple Music;

2-Preferences, Store: uncheck Share library details with Apple;

3-In iTunes under Store: Disactivate Genius;

4-In iTunes went to my Account settings and cancelled automatic renewal of Apple Music (why want such awful stuff);

This got me rid of Apples nonsense "Music" novelty.

5-Went through the difficult process of changing back the genres to the ones I had made.

6-Downloaded a replacement app for iTunes, which is the Ecoute App, for my mac and iPod. They work great.

7-Keeping away for Apple for quite a while and I am now purchasing my media anyplace other than Apple.

This is the second time this has happened to me. The first time was upgrading to iTunes 12. managed to fix that after weeks of renaming tracks.

The second time was after upgrading to el capitan there last week. Exactly the same problems only this time I CANT fix it the way I did before. Using a timemachine backup I managed to fix a lot of issues but ultimately will have to spend days fixing metadata. Ive stopped correcting all my tracks after about 2 hrs as the thought that this could happen again with another update entered my mind. So instead am starting to focus on an alternative to iTunes.

And mostly, try finding a other place to purchase your media (music, video clips, TV show, movies, etc.).

In my case, everything purchased elsewhere than Apples iTunes Store seem fine. I guess Apple considers what you buy on iTunes is still theirs and they can do whatever they want with it.

For those that only have problems with "genres", being changed by Apple, thy this:

-Forget Genres-

Just make playlists of genres without bothering with the genres tag. And back these lists up manually.

I FIGURED OUT HOW TO FIX THIS MESS!

First go to:

- Preferences>then under "Library Names" there are 2 checkboxes 1)Show apple music and the second one will auto check in response to the first>uncheck the first box - It will then come up with a box that says something along the lines of "deleting genius data"

-While this is happening go to your device that you're syncing to and go to

settings>Music>And turn off "Show Apple Music" and "iCloud Music Library".

After both steps are done, sync your device and voila! Your music library will return to what it originally was!

Have been trying to clean up my iTunes for a few days now......but its hopeless...some music is renamed, wrong artwork, has become an as import, duplicated, stuff in wrong albums ....and when I "fix" some songs they disappear..never to be found again and I'm left with an album with 9 out of ten songs or in some cases 4 out of 10 songs. Leaving the only thing to do and reload the music from my cd collection. Which is an arduous task an frankly cannot be bothered. If that's what I have to do then I may as well find an alternative to iTunes and I think swinsian may just be that. Starting to see how hard it is to keep digital data safe over decades of change in operating systems etc. Music seems to be the hardest to manage/control/store.

Totally agree on the statement trying to keep a digital collection safe through the years of change is very difficult. My iCloud Library on the PC has remained relatively safe (guess I've been lucky) but the effect on my iOS devices hasn't been so great.

I know this may apply more to iTunes match than Apple Music but what causes me great difficulty is that songs I have bought from iTunes over the years have caused grief. Where once they were 'purchased' now quite a number are icloud status 'matched'. If you go into the iTunes store - purchased link many songs no longer have the 'play' symbol next to them even though they are in the iTunes library. The exact same albums still exist in the store. So I can only assume many songs have been altered behind the scenes in some way by Apple. Maybe some kind of hidden identifier has changed. The result is things like my Apple TV will display a song I've bought twice in it's library, presumably one is the 'matched' version and the other is the symbolic link to what was once categorised as a 'purchased' song. I have to go into iTunes store - purchased and hide these songs to fix this. The iOS devices get sync'd via USB quite a bit, not to sync music as iCloud library is switched on but to sync movies/TV shows. Often after a sync I'll look in my iOS music app and see duplicate songs. It's madness. If I look in the device when sync'd to iTunes under the music tab, I see lots of duplication/greyed out ghost songs. It's pretty messy. I then spend time fixing this deleting hundreds of songs and re-downloading them. There is no way to nuke the music library effectively short of wiping and restoring the phone. Probably a lot of orpahend music inside the iOS devices too which will never get deleted even by swiping to delete music under storage.

And I am sure it was around the time Apple Music reared it's head that much of this pain began. I've never subscribed to it but I think it's had knock on effects. Seem to spend less time using/enjoying music and too much time fixing things. One of the reasons I don't like updates/change. Things get more complicated and more problems arise. In the early days it was much simpler and far less headache.

It's sad to see people have such problems, though in this very unscientific forum it is impossible to tell how many are truly affected.

I've tried to make Apple Music + iTunes Match screw up, but honestly I can't do it. My library is only 27,000 tracks, so perhaps I need something larger to see a problem. All my album art, playlists, genres - everything - are intact across 5 devices (2 Macs, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 4). I frequently change things - edit, add an delete tracks - and everything works. No exceptions. Even my Beatles collection (which is as convoluted as anyones, with all the various reissues over the years) is 100% fine. I often add tracks that are definitely not in the store - things like rehearsals for my own projects - and that all works perfectly as well.

I started using Apple Music on June 30, 2015 - day one. I never sync anything via USB - it's all in the cloud.

The only shortcoming I've observed are a few isolated cases of missing album art - and in every case, the original art came from the iTunes store (no matter the source of the music) and the original album ceased to be available because the record label had changed it. But that's an easy fix for perhaps 3 or 4 albums.

I hope everything works out for everybody. When it works, it's pretty darn nice.

all my apple music songs were removed when I turned off iCloud music library , and they can't be downloaded back from Apple Music , any help?

RaySat, in my experience (dealing with a collection of 10k albums / 100k tracks), the mistakes appear *only* in the iCloud versions of songs, *never* in the master copies. But it sounds like you are saying that your originals were messed with. Can you verify that please?

Scot Hacker : The originals where indeed messed with. Although only Apple purchases seemed to have been messed up. I never have turned on the iCloud library option in iTunes Preferences. And I don't even have the "Show iCloud downloads" column checked in the "Presentation options" (command-J).

It's been a while now, but and I wonder if, when I tried Apple Music, the process might have turned on "Show iCloud Purchases" under Controls in the menu bar.

And maybe, this is what messed up my purchases. Since I turned everything "off" as said in my previous post after the changes to my Genres (Turned off: Show Apple Music, Genius, Share Library details with Apple...), I cannot be sure.

I've now changed my genres back to my personal settings and I have found a new way of organizing my music by genres. I simply made playlists of each genre I have (manually, not "Smart playlists). I have "Genres" unchecked in the Column browser. So, if my genres get changed again, it won't really matter. For Album Art, I haven't found a solution but I don't really care. And, I have made a manual back up of all my songs from the Playlists in individual folders (on a external drive). Any purchases I make, I add tho the drive. I just cannot trust Apple to manage my music or other stuff anymore.

Wait, you never turned on iCloud Music Library? This entire thread is about people experiencing issues with iCloud Music Library. And people experience issues with their own uploaded music, not with their Apple purchases. I'm not sure what you experienced, but it sounds quite different from what's being discussed here.

Well, I guess I should have started my own thread, then.

But, I still think think there is a link with trying out Apple Music and the iCloud Music Library. It seems something got turned on automatically as soon as I tried Apple Music. Both (Apple Music and the iCloud Music Library) are linked in iTunes preferences. And, some of the hints and solutions in many posts of this thread gave me solutions. Since about 300 of my songs got changed, It also seems the change process was happening in batched like others report. Since I quickly made changes explained before, no other songs were changed.

Is the library on or off, simple question. If it is you fit right in this thread, if it is not it's nothing to do with this thread.

So, which is it?

It (iCloud library) is now "off" for sure. And it will stay off. I cannot take a chance for changes to take place again. So it's simple. I do not fit in this thread.