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

Kim Hill1 wrote:

 

Are you saying that your album art has not been disrupted? Did you invest "an enormous amount of time and effort" in it?

 

If you've curated a lot of your album art, and Apple Music hasn't messed it up, then you're in the minority.

Yes, most of my album art was either scanned by me or downloaded in high quality, partly edited, cropped, and embedded into the files. While that's not something you get done quickly in one afternoon, I've invested way more "time and effort" into adding extensive metadata to all my tracks.

Anyway, none of that data has been touched by Apple Music - it's all intact and correctly synced to my iOS devices (except that I can't see the "Comments" and "Long Description" tags on iOS, so I don't know if the information is actually there... but it's still present in iTunes).

I don’t know if I’m part of the minority or if there are tons of people out there like me, happily using Apple Music, and they’re just not posting about it online. I really don’t know.

Big Brother is monitoring these posts! That's right. I have posted two items seeking info, and Apple deleted them because they didn't like them. That's all the more reason to move on.

I just want to rethink something. I personally would like to retry something. If you sign in to Apple Music and the Cloud, don't you have two libraries: the one when you're signed into iTunes that includes all the Cloud stuff plus your old library and the one when you're signed out that is your original library? When I first signed in, I immediately went from 20 genres to 35 and saw all kinds of changed art work appearing. However, if I'm correct, the Cloud stuff is not actually on your computer unless you download it. If you want to view your original library, all you have to do is sign out of iTunes, right? If you want to see everything, including the Cloud stuff, you just sign in.

If what I'm saying is true, Apple may not be destroying any iTunes libraries as all the stuff they are matching is just in the Cloud. And it all exists along with your old library. They are not removing anything from the library on your computer. Everything in the Cloud, including songs uploaded from your computer, exists only for streaming or downloading as needed. If this is true, maybe nothing is getting messed up after all.  Somebody please clarify this for me. If what I'm saying is true, it may be worth trying it again. Is it possible we have rushed to judgment?

I am trying my best to be positive here.

<Edited by Host>

nope. they replace them with DRM tracks. Some of them at least, some have reported all. Meaning you have to go thru all your tracks and look at ''Fairplay" in the track info. If it is marked ''2" they made it DRM. You no longer own it or can do anything with it, even though you PAID for the track.  Also, Apple is deleting posts on the forums about this right and left. Instead of making an announcement and apologizing and fixing it they are keeping it under wraps and deleting forum posts. Check the Spotify posts on this forum. Ppl are saying they have been deleted right and left. They also troll and post positive comments too how it all "works fine." I wanted it to work too man. I wanted one place where I could stream and have all MY music in one place. AMusic is not it. Google is for now. Even if Apple say it is fixed I am not trusting it. Not with my photos or my music. I moved to Adobe for my photos and Google for my music. Lesson learned. 

WOW! I am sooooooo disappointed.

jctez wrote:

 

You no longer own it

You never did own it, stick to reality. You bought a license to listen, you did not buy the music.

excuse me? I certainly do own it. In the sense that I can use those files elsewhere. If you are talking about licensing to use publicly etc well yeah duh but none of us are talking about that ,so perhaps you should stick to the thread. The cds I purchased I own. If I buy a cd and rip it to itunes and my hard drive, and they replace it with DRM files I cannot do anything with those files. Can't even play them on another device or computer or use them in another program.

Believe what you like, the RIAA get the last word on 'ownership' of music, not you.

move on troll. not what we are discussing here.

You're so cute when you're wrong.

Hi,

Just want to give some feedback about what worked for me.

I have a 60 Gb iTunes library which is mainly composed of albums ripped from cd. All albums had correct artwork etc., no duplicate tracks etc etc, I would say it was a very clean library. I was an iTunes match subscriber till September last year but didn't continue the subscription.

I activated iTunes music on my mac and activated iCloud library which resulted in mixed up artwork, wrong songs playing etc.

I have an old iPhone so I haven't activated iTunes music and iCloud music library on iOS before activating it in iTunes on my mac.

The iTunes 12.2.1 update didn't fix anything for me.

I put back the previous .itl file but this also didn't clean up everything.

After this I followed the apple support doc :

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

even after doing this some tracks weren't right, so I restored both the .itl file and my complete iTunes music library from time machine to a point before the first time I activated iTunes music to be sure everything was like it used to be. All was good again and I wasn't planning to turn iCloud music library back on again.

Out of curiosity I decided to create a new empty iTunes library (click option when opening iTunes and choose create library, and put it somewhere different from your other library. When iTunes opened and ask me to activate iCloud music library I chose "yes". I was signed in with my usual apple account so my newly created empty library started to populate itself with all my music that was synced with iCloud, probably a result of being a former iTunes match subscriber (although I reset the iCloud music library as described in the support doc mentioned above). Then I selected all the tracks in my new iTunes library and deleted them. I don't remember what the pop up window said, but it was probably something like "do you want to delete these files from iCloud" so I did. My new iTunes library was completely empty again. I quit iTunes and "option"-opened my regular iTunes library and reactivated iCloud music library and let it do it's work (i thought if something goes wrong again I ll just restore again from time machine and never activate iCloud music library again) I wasn't home so I have no idea how much it took to sync my library with iCloud

But now everything seems okay, all artwork is correct, all tracks are playing correctly, I can add music from iTunes music to my library,...

I guess the combination of resetting the iCloud music library (support doc) + deleting all the iCloud tracks from a new iTunes library did the trick for me.

thats cool man. glad it worked for you despite a huge hassle that should not be happening, much less paying for it in the end.  Did you check the tracks to see if they were DRM ? Curious to know. Track/Get Info/Fairplay if marked 2 then they were replaced with DRM tracks.

Hi jctez,

Most of the tracks (there is a mix of mp3 and AAC files) now are "matched" or "uploaded" and have the iCloud status "Apple music" but don't have "FairPlay 2" marked. The tracks which I added from iTunes Music are "Apple Music AAC audio files" and do have "FairPlay 2" marked.

So as long as you don't delete local tracks I don't think there should be any issues with DRM.

Of course when you delete local tracks from your mac and then download those again tracks from apple music you'll end up with drm protected tracks. Seems logical to me. If you want to re-download them drm-free i guess you should get iTunes match.

I only have albums ripped from CD so i can't say what it does to music purchased from the iTunes store....

Thank you for posting this - i have just over 150,000 songs and this really messed up my library.  So frustrating.  Do we know who to write to in apple over this?

As a choreographe and dancer I have a number of special playlists as well as my personal lists. Now I have a big much of play lists that list one track but play another.

This his has completely trashed my library not to mention caused a huge amount of turmoil in classes and work sessions.

Thank hank you very much Apple for completely dicking up my work!

TIme to start cleaning up your mess. No way in the world I'll be using iTunes Music or Match, ever!

Let's keep this thread going, everybody, until we come up with some solutions. Personally I don't think you'll ever be able to trust a Cloud service to match and upload your music libraries. I would only deal with a service that would allow me to upload my music the way I want. There are just too many problems associated with trusting a Cloud service to tamper with your music library. You must stay in total control of your hard earned and edited music libraries. Otherwise, you are just looking for trouble.