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

I sense that what it's doing is causing iTunes to not recognize the files. its something w the apple music subscription and cloud service as my files seem to be okay (I don't use cloud and didnt subscribe to apple music). I'm going to give my analyst a call again and discuss as my artwork is a disaster.

I'm in the same boat... just lost many songs here

IF YOU TURNED ON ICML ON YOUR PHONE AND NOT YOUR COMPUTER AND LOST MUSIC ON YOUR PHONE, HERE'S A SOLUTION

My problem occurred on the same lines, today I installed the new iTunes, and updates my phone 2 days ago.

The update on my phone turned on iCloud Music Library but when I turned on iTunes today I was rather skeptical about the iCloud Music Library question and said no. When my phone synced with my iTunes, the whole library on my phone disappeared including my playlists and I was so mad because it was years of built up playlists. I was so mad I almost broke my Mac in half.

Sadly I realized Apple would be too selfish to understand that. So I thought out, if iCloud music library is on my phone but not on my computer, everything is still on my computer. I turned it off on my phone, restarted it and restarted iTunes and then synced the phone again and this time the option to sync came back to the old style sync option. I put my playlists back.

I'm pretty ****** that the songs I added with Apple music are gone from my playlists but this really ****** up my day. I think its absolutely ridiculous.

i encountered the same issue, along with other issues.i am very dissapointed in apple music. Back to Spotify.

same thing happened to me.  entire itunes library wiped out completely.  and it was a pretty simple fix but is still not a nice thing to see after you perform an update.  not a good thing to feel when you have so much music and have groomed it and been selective to one's tastes.  good going apple.  restoring the itunes library did the trick though.  still, should not have to go through that.

Thank you!!!

Just saved me from breaking down in anger and fraustration with itunes!!! Really wish they would implement updates without changing and messing everything up.

• used iTunesMatch in the past
• apple music on trial (one account)
• iCloud music library on
• disaster...

Here is the problem that may be causing Apple to impose wrong CD Artwork over songs:

On my iPhone I have 3 songs called "Surrender" - 2 from Dash Berlin and one from Steps that is actually called "I Surrender". Yet when I play an Armin Van Burren song "I Surrender' from the For You tab it shows that I already have this song on my iPhone or iTunes - and this is completely wrong!

This shows that Apple does not check all the relevant fields in metadata - actually not even the basic fields like Artist...

and the wrong icon showing that I supposedly have this song on my iPhone

OK, I now have my iTunes library on my MacBook restored to pre-'Music' normality. My Music app on my phone still has the playlists messed up.

So what I need to know is this: if I try to sync now, what will happen? Will the correct iTunes library overwrite the messed up phone, or vice versa?

i'd rather not have to restore the phone from back up, and I would quite like to keep the new Music app on my phone (but with iCloud library turned off), but I don't want to risk the phone sync / iTunes update destroying my playlists like it did yesterday!

H I tried your workaround. The artwork that was removed from purchased music is still blank and missing. What doesn't make sense is it's not missing like when you just have the musical notes it's just a grey box.

Csound1 Jul 3, 2015 10:12 AM

Re: WARNING: iCloud Music Library just destroyed my Mac's iTunes Library in response to gyrorx8

I have a very large library of non commercial source material all now in IOS 8.4. No changes occurred to my library, I assume that this is how it is intended to work.

(Quote from page 14 of this discussion)

Hmmm, I am wondering why all the problems only happening to normal users that are not Apple employees / are not Level 8 with 43,345 points ???

the same happened to my iTunes library. I imported 600 own CD's and it is a lot of work to scan the classic music's missing covers. Apple needs to provide with a fix asap, instead of fiddling around myself!

Here's how I fully recovered from a destroyed iTunes Library and to a working state of how  Music was intended to be used.

Lessons learned:

1) No longer is watching a keynote sufficient. I have to read blogs, support articles and call Apple support in order to get things fully understood and working.

2) iTunes Match is, for the most part, replaced by what  Music does, but one important piece is not. Downloading DRM free versions of tracks on other devices.

Step 1 - Disabling iCloud Library

In iTunes Preferences under General uncheck 'iCloud Music Library'. I also, following some other folks advice disabled the option to automatically download Artwork. I'm not sure, but the thought of giving iTunes control over not just filling missing artwork but potentially overwriting existing... No.

Step 2 - Deleting my entire iTunes folder

Emptying the trash right after it. This looked like it gave me enough disk space for the next step, the Restore. However, it did not! When I tried to copy the iTunes Folder from my Time Machine backup, Finder reported it had 'Not enough disk space'. At that point, I ran Disk Utility to Check the disk. I got errors and a prompt saying I should do a repair from the Disk Util run from the Recovery Partition. This was on a MacBook Pro with a 1 TB SSD, a little over a year old. Did that, and then magically there was enough disk space to copy in my good iTunes Folder from the Time Machine backup.

Step 3 - Restoring my iTunes Library from a Time Machine backup

I chose to not simply run Time Machine to go back, but rather first made another copy of the backed up iTunes folder. In my case this was hundreds of Gigabytes copied over WiFi, but - for the sake of making me feel better - worth doing. There are KB articles on the topic of remotely mounting a Time Machine backup file. One thing to be very careful is to NEVER modify or delete any of the content of a Time Machine backup, just simply copying it over to another drive (or in my case another Mac).

Once the copy process was done, which took a few hours (the 4 hours of sleep I granted myself in the process on Friday), I Option (alt) clicked iTunes, which prompts to create or open a different Library. I chose the one I had copied in from Time Machine. Took a while watching the spinning wheel but ultimately it opened my Library and it was all fine.

Step 4 - Creating a clean Library

I did this on another Mac (brand new iMac 5k) but this should - provided you have enough disk space - be possible by switching between libraries by Option-clicking the iTunes icon and choosing the respective (old and new) library. In my case, on the new Mac, I created a new, empty Library and first subscribed to iTunes Match, then enabled the iCloud Music Library. I deleted everything that popped up (thousands of tracks that were already imported during the initial disaster), and just left purchased songs untouched.

Step 5 - Exporting Music and Playlists

Going into my old Library, no iCloud Library enabled still, I copied all Music to my new Mac, by simply dragging and dropping into a Finder window where I had the new Mac's drive mounted. Of course if you do this on a single Mac, this step is obsolete. As far as exporting Playlists, I export them as XML.

Step 6 - Importing Music and Playlists

On my new iMac running the clean new Library, and iTunes Match and  Music iCloud Library enabled, I import all Music. I do this with just a couple of thousand tracks each, wait for the cloud upload and a clean state, then continue with the next. I am not done yet, but things look really good. Once all my tracks are imported and uploaded to the Cloud, I will import the XML Playlists and I should be done.

Step 7 - Cleaning up my iPhone Music Library

I noticed that when I enable iCloud Library on my iPhone, even when I chose the option to 'Replace Music with iCloud Library' it doesn't do what I expect. It still has my previously synced Music (from iTunes via cable or Wifi Sync) in addition to what's in the Cloud. So I disabled the iCloud Library again on my iPhone. Opened my old iTunes Library on the Mac and removed the check box for synching Music. This cleared the iPhone. I then went back into settings and enabled the iCloud Library again. Now all the content of my iCloud Library shows up, I can choose to make tracks or albums, or entire Genres, available offline. This part already works great, and as I'm importing more Music into my new iTunes Library and the Cloud gets populated it all shows up on the iPhone pretty instantly.

Very disappointing along the way:

A f****d up iTunes Library (thank you Apple for Time Machine)

Missing DRM-free Music, aka. lack of explaining what iTunes Match still does

Subscribing to iTunes Match took two days and maybe 50 attempts and several calls with Apple Support until it worked

Getting a clean iPhone is not as simple as it looks

It just works - No.

Use the feedback, the more people complain the faster apple will get things patched, fixed, or changed. Things like this have happened before.

Hi Frank,

I had the same problem with the disk space and solved it with a clean install and TimeMachine recovery. What the **** is going on...

How to recover the free disk space of deleted files?

Kind regards,

Markus