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

IT seems that turning off iTunes Music on my iPhone has brought things back to where they need to be on my device...at the expense of my playlists

And it is OK.

DON'T TOUCH .itl (etc.) FILES! Do not be a pc-windows-like ******. Do not manipulate on iTunes preferences files.

To BRING EVERYTHING BACK just use OPTIONS IN USER INTERFACE OF APPS (in iOS and iTunes) to disable:

1. iCloud Music Library
2. Apple Music

on every device and in iTunes on computer(s). No easier and simplier way.

You will have the old way on iOS Music (+Radio only from new ads) and in iTunes on computer.

My music was "backed up" to two different computers, which were running two iTunes in addition to iPhone and iPad, so now my music and backup music is all synchronized to being twice as mangled as it would be?

...yay!

So this has happened to me as well and I'm just noticing. My oldest backup in Time Machine was July 9 and I went back to that .itl and my stuff is still f'd up. Even worse, as I play stuff it changes in front of my eyes! Watch this video I made:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qEHBcEx4a-8

So am I just screwed?

As I start this post while streaming one of my all time favorite albums, Jimmy Smith's "Organ Grinder Swing", I'm looking back on my experience with Apple Music over the past month and deciding what I like about it. Here goes.

I absolutely love the "New" section because I can stream pretty much anything I want just like this Jimmy Smith album, and the quality is outstanding. I'm pulling up albums that I remember from long ago, and boy do they sound great. It's great fun too!

I love "For You" as well because the recommendations are spot on for me, and I occasionally find something new. It is a treasure trove of music that I really like.

I still find the iCloud to be a problem, but I have pretty much decided to avoid it at this point. Unless I can control the music that is potentially being matched from my own computer, I am just not willing to trust my carefully edited, lifetime music collection to anybody's cloud. As I usually purchase and download the music I really like anyway, I'll just keep doing that and syncing it with my 128 Gb iPhone 6 Plus until things change.

So, at this point, I have made my peace with Apple Music.

So this has happened to me as well and I'm just noticing. My oldest backup in Time Machine was July 9 and I went back to that .itl and my stuff is still f'd up. Even worse, as I play stuff it changes in front of my eyes! Watch this video I made:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qEHBcEx4a-8

So am I just screwed?

Thanks a lot Zackadelic!!!!

It worked for me!

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/08/06/apple-music-11-million-users/

Cue notes Apple is "releasing updates as fast as we can" to address bugs and other issues with Apple Music amid duplication and mislabeling complaints.

I loled

How many of those 11 million people have a destroyed iTunes library now and don't even know it? (11 million is a relatively small number, considering that it is for free.)

If you sign up for Apple Musicon your iPhone, there is a prompt about whether to enable Apple Music iCloudLibrary.  Even if you select NO, it will enable it by default, and your library will be toast.  After two hours on the phone with support (who confirmed this is set by default), I restored to a June 29 backup of my iTunes Library.itlfile after disabling everything to do with Apple Music on both my Mac and iPhone to restore my own artwork and songs.  I will not go anywhere near Apple Music again.

Without a backup prior to turning on Apple Music, unfortunately, yes...

I agree. When I turn on iCloud library it deletes song/albums from my phone. Please fix Apple. Steve Jobs would never allowed such garbage to be released.

Leave Steve out of it, it's tacky of you to invoke the dead.

Back whenever iTunes was first made available for Windows, I got it, imported my music collection, and watched iTunes completely screw up track names, files and folders. A later version (or at least discovered later by me) had a checkbox for NOT allowing iTunes to "keep my collection organized", which is the only thing that made it usable for me.  So even in Steve Jobs days, iTunes could screw up your music. This problem isn't occurring for the first time, and it probably won't be the last.  As I see it there are two factors at play:

1. Music identification is actually somewhat of a hard problem. Identical tracks can belong to more than one album, and if you are into rare recordings or local artists, it is worse than useless.  The classical music market has lately been driven by compilation albums, which means that any normal album you import may fragment into several compilation labels. How many third party apps are there that claim to fix your iTunes? Some apps other than iTunes do better or worse at this.  The only solution is to add items slowly and make corrections manually, and then NEVER allow an app to change information.  As a result, I have multiple apps that I use to access my music, but none of them get to change files or folders, except a tagging app when I want it to.

2. It is in Apple's DNA to control the user experience more than most in order to make things "just work" for most users. This is often a good thing, and one of the benefits of tightly controlling hardware and software integration.  It causes headaches in other areas (not being able to get apps approved, etc.). The control of music probably works well for the average user, and is a headache for audiophiles with unusual collections.  There is a dance that Apple does: release a tightly controlled experience, and then make options available to give up some of that control for users that have different needs or know what they are doing. Eventually, they find the sweet spot in the Larry Wall Philosophy: "Easy things should be easy, and hard things should be possible".  Apple has made two mistakes with Maps and Music, and they are based on the same problem: You cannot develop a service overnight, and expect it to be as usable as a service that has matured over time with many user interactions, issues and bug reports.

I've been doing some testing of Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Google Play Music, etc. Apple Music, even without the issues on this thread, was simply confusing to me in what it did with the UI on devices and iTunes.  When I started playing with Spotify, I thought "Oh so THAT is what they are trying to do". I may keep whatever free options are available for all of the above (which are similar, except for Pandora), but I finally went for the paid option with Spotify, because:

1. Spotify is easy to use and understand, and makes sense out of the box.  It also will play or sync local files without touching them, but in 80-90% of cases, it already has the music I have and more.  That is only a slight edge over the other services that are similar.

2. Spotify is now integrated into the djay app on iPad.  That was the kicker for me that pushed me over the edge. Other services will probably be integrated into DJ apps eventually, but right now, Spotify has it, and that was more valuable than a bunch of other features.

I think you are misunderstanding the point of iCloud Music Library. It's not so much that it "deletes" songs from your phone. Rather, by flipping this switch, you are telling the phone whether to show content you've manually placed on the phone, or the contents of your cloud library. In Music Library mode, your phone will give you access to everything you're keeping in the cloud, which should also include the tracks you manually placed on the phone (assuming you tell it to "merge").

Chaging the .itl file did help me, but only for a little while. Once I started playing the (previously) corrupted files, they would start disappearing, one by one, and again, the corrupt file would have mislabeled art work, play the wrong file, etc...

The link below SEEMED to fix the issue, but once I went into my folders, files are still DRM protected (they were not previously), mislabeled, plus all the artwork is missing. Like 90% of it. Playing the music is the same. All files need to be relinked, etc...  I have 145GB of music, and now it's all messed up. Somehow the files have even corrupted the backup I had of all my music.

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