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

Thank you thank you thank you thank you . . . Apple were so useless on the phone this morning that a MANAGER didn't even know a new version of iTunes was just released . . . THANK YOU!!!

you don't need a subscription to iTunes match for this. Just read through the thread I linked, it only involves renaming your iTunes folder. After that you reactivate the iCloud library, which is now supposed to be the equivalent to iTunes Match. This might be the root cause of the problem, mixing iTunes Match with the new iCloud library

I ran into this problem too. I had turned off iTunes match because of all this mess and cancelled my subscription. Now this.

One question from your steps.

If you try to drop the restored .itl file it will ask if you wish to replace. I changed the corrupted file name first.

You have a step of: Rename the previous iTunes library that you just dragged in to iTunes Library.itl

I don't understand why you must rename this. To what? Why? I did it without renaming it and it seems to work.

Clay

I did everything that you said but my library is still messing up when I click a song. I went into preferences to turn off the Apple Music and the iCloud sharing thing. I'm just so upset, all the years I spent on organizing my library and its all ruined. I have an older iPod with all of my music, should I just delete all my music and upload whats on there. But I want to make sure that everything associated with apple music is turned off. PLEASE HELP

Library was restored, I made sure to click no to iCloud. As soon as I played one song, the tags changed by themselves and my that's the beginning of it becoming screwed up again. Joining the service was one of my biggest mistakes. My library is now wiped, and the music is in the iTunes folder but I see that the tags are all screwed. This is such a huge mess. Completely disappointed with this service.

What's the solution for Windows? Where is this .inf file you speak of? I don't see it.

I also noticed that iTunes changed my Library location back to default, when it was on my external hard drive. Now after I updated it, it's not updating the music in iTunes to show all the music in my external. 😟

Replacing the .itl file with an older copy worked for me. What a frustrating experience. The ability to stream my personal library alongside the apple music library was a "switch from Spotify" feature. If I can't use that, I will likely cancel and return to Spotify. Just extremely disappointed right now.

I got victimized by this as well. Upgraded to iTunes 12.2, agreed to turn on iCloud Music Library, and quite a bit of the metadata in my iTunes music library got seriously messed up. I am currently working through Kottemer's suggestion above. I used to have an active iTunes Match subscription but that was canceled long ago. Instead, I am creating a new iTunes library and letting it use iCloud Music Library in order to delete all of the stuff that's currently stored there. Thankfully, I make regular clones of my MacBook Pro SSD so restoring my iTunes library prior to this mess will be easy.

After deleting everything from my iCloud Music Library, I restored my cloned iTunes library and verified that everything is OK. I then turned iCloud Music Library back on. All all my songs now show a cloud icon with an X inside id.

When I click on this icon, iTunes prompts me to add the sone to my iCloud Music Library. I am going to do some experimentation with this to see if adding songs to my iCloud Music Library corrupts anything.

Restoring the .itl file solved the problem for me. For now, I have the iCloud Music Library turned off. Hopefully we will see a fix for this soon.

Thank you @Zackadelic

Hey Zackadelic, every time i replace my old file to a new .itl that i had backed up a few days ago it still does the thing where I click a song and it is tagged as something else. I have the iCloud thing turned off. I don't know what I am doing wrong can you please help me, my poor library.

Hello Jkwuc,

I had an iTunes match subscription that got very corrupted and I attempted the same thing with starting a new library. I had the same problems you encountered. I also tried syncing an empty iTunes match library and letting it sit for 7 business days just to see if it would clean it all out. Nothing showed on my devices that way when I activated the cloud. So then I moved all my music back into a library. As soon as it synced again, iTunes match was screwed up again. I finally gave us and Apple was "nice enough" to fully cancel iTunes match and give me a refund.

Now, with this cloud business, all of the problems I had with iTunes match have returned. I'm very hesitant to do any more experimentation given how long it took me before and I never got anywhere. Apple wanted me to call them to discuss it. I gave that one shot, was on the phone for 45 minutes, and I felt like I knew more about it that the apple tech. I gave up.

Just wanted you to know others feel your pain.

If you find something that works I would love to hear it. Thanks.

One question about how you've gone about it.

When I tried creating a new library and bringing my music in, I lost all the playlist and such. I didn't want that obviously. How did you do it? Did you lose any tags, playlists, etc?

I wonder if somehow it's tied to the apple user ID rather than the library files given I couldn't get past whatever was corrupted. I tried following instructions I found online as to how to clear it with no success. I've now cancelled iTunes match so I don't have that to play around with anymore.

That quick fix did not work : / My previous iTunes library is from a year ago. With being said after the rename I'm sill missing songs seems to be from my iTunes Finder folder being scattered as well. This is devastating, I have over 20,000 songs.

With my iTunes library safely cloned away on an external HD in case something goes awry again...

I restored my cloned library after deleting everything from my iCloud Music Library. I then selected every song with the "missing from iCloud" icon, right-clicked and selected "Add to iCloud Music Library".

iTunes is now uploading "something" to do this because Activity Monitor is showing a lot of upload network traffic from iTunes. I am going to let this run overnight and report my results tomorrow.

I replaced my iTunes Library itl file which in the past has always restored my playlists with no problem. It's not working this time. All of my playlists have been corrupted. Is there another file too?

(Edit): I just realized I restored from a time capsule file that was done right after installing the new iTunes. Went back to the night before, restored, all the playlist are back like they were. Sorry for the false alarm.