Tuff Ghost

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

I have a 13000 song library on my iMac. Installed iOS 8.4 on my iPhone this morning and had Apple Music and iCloud Music Library going...Everything was working fine on the device. Got home and installed 10.10.4 and iTunes 12.2 on my iMac. It asked to turn on iCloud Music Library and I accepted. All of the sudden it starts overwriting my album art with completely wrong art (example: Weezer showed art for a Radiohead album) on both my iMac AND my iPhone, screwing up metadata by putting random songs in albums where they didn't belong (there was a Cursive album where the first track was listed as a Foo Fighters song). Even worse, when I'd click to listen to certain songs, it would play the wrong song/artist, like the metadata was hijacked. What in the ****?  I've had this library organized perfectly for the better part of a decade and Apple Music screwed it up in minutes.

 

I was able to restore everything through a Time Machine backup and made sure NOT to turn on iCloud Music Library when I re-opened the .itl file. What a disaster. Hopefully someone from Apple reads this. Thinking it may have something to do with a iTunes Match account I had briefly a few years back. But yikes, can't believe how much damage it did in 5 minutes.

Posted on Jun 30, 2015 7:45 PM

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

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  • by Kottemer,

    Kottemer Kottemer Jul 1, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    I am also affected by this, banging my head against he wall for the better half of the day already. But i think i have found a solution - at least for me.

     

    Reading through this thread, and a couple others, i was trying different solutions. Renaming the itl file etc. While this fixed the mess it didn't actually solve the problem. Activating iCloud Music library always screwed it up again.

    In my case it was old iTunes Match information that always screwed me over. I had the subscription when it came out but canceled it about half a year ago (or even before that, cant't remember). But apparently activating iCloud Music library always looked up that old information.

     

    So i reset iTunes Match according to this thread: How to reset iTunes Match (the process proved that it was still holding the old information even though i cancelled it a long time ago) and now i can resync my up to date library (yay for backup) with the iCloud Music library.

     

    If you try this, make a backup beforehand, also important - give it some time. You might have to delete your songs a couple times. They came back a few times when i did it, like little Zombie songs.

     

    One difference i noticed right away is that now a whole lot more songs are queued for upload then before when the old iTunes Match crap was messing things up, also a lot of songs now have the "deleted from iCloud" mark. But thats an easy fix, just click on them and chose "Add to iCloud Music Library"

     

    Good luck all.

  • by stalwar,

    stalwar stalwar Jul 1, 2015 1:57 PM in response to Guzzy620
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 1:57 PM in response to Guzzy620

    Make sure you have all the songs (go through your list).  I replaced the .itl and when I looked, many songs were deleted in the upgrade/iCloud Music fiasco.

     

    I have a TimeCapsule and so I went back to 8PM yesterday.  Some albums that are showing missing songs indicate that the deletion coincided with the iCloud Music activation shortly after 8PM yesterday.

     

    Don't think the .itl replacement will solve the issues.

  • by Blue_friend,

    Blue_friend Blue_friend Jul 1, 2015 3:08 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 3:08 PM in response to Zackadelic

    Nice call. A quick and easy fix. What a weirdo move by Apple... This feature causes a disaster for anyone who didn't get the entirety of their library through iTunes. Wacky move Apple!

  • by yerauldda1872,

    yerauldda1872 yerauldda1872 Jul 1, 2015 3:22 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 3:22 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    I've been shafted by it as well.

     

    Spent 2.5 hours on to online chat. i told the problem to 6 people and got cut off 3 times and still didn't get any sort of answer at all. just basically put on hold for 20 mins at a time. asked to explain it aga. transferred to someone else, rinse repeat...

     

    As much use as a chocolate *****.

     

    My solution?

     

    I had my library backed up in Google Play

     

    I've redownloaded it and deleted the old library all together, and manually removed any music from Apple Music

     

    The integration was the main reason for trying Apple Music.

    Back to Spotify I think

  • by illidan155,

    illidan155 illidan155 Jul 1, 2015 3:26 PM in response to yerauldda1872
    Level 1 (60 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 3:26 PM in response to yerauldda1872

    bah spotify kinda suck too in its own way none of those streaming service is perfect, 

  • by Blue_friend,

    Blue_friend Blue_friend Jul 1, 2015 3:30 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 3:30 PM in response to Zackadelic

    Wait... are all the cool Apple Music features nested within iCloud Music library? It seems that if I'm playing streamed music and wanted to add one of these songs to a playlist of mine, it'll ask me to enable iCloud Music library again. I can either 'cancel' or face certain death to artwork etc.

  • by Al10,

    Al10 Al10 Jul 1, 2015 3:37 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 3:37 PM in response to Zackadelic

    You literally saved my life! Thank you

  • by Maltika,

    Maltika Maltika Jul 1, 2015 3:56 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 3:56 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    Anyone else lose all their playlists on their iPhone after the upgrade? Any idea how to get them back?

  • by AppleThree,

    AppleThree AppleThree Jul 1, 2015 3:57 PM in response to Kottemer
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 3:57 PM in response to Kottemer

    So i reset iTunes Match according to this thread: How to reset iTunes Match (the process proved that it was still holding the old information even though i cancelled it a long time ago) and now i can resync my up to date library (yay for backup) with the iCloud Music library.

    The problem with this is that if you don't have a subscription, you have to pay $25 just to be able to clear your old library.

  • by noelephantitis,

    noelephantitis noelephantitis Jul 1, 2015 4:09 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 4:09 PM in response to Zackadelic

    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!!!

  • by Kottemer,

    Kottemer Kottemer Jul 1, 2015 4:12 PM in response to AppleThree
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 4:12 PM in response to AppleThree

    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

  • by Clayton Rhoades,

    Clayton Rhoades Clayton Rhoades Jul 1, 2015 5:06 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (62 points)
    Apple Music
    Jul 1, 2015 5:06 PM in response to Zackadelic

    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

  • by Msalmeri,

    Msalmeri Msalmeri Jul 1, 2015 5:33 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 5:33 PM in response to Zackadelic

    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

  • by da fr3ak,

    da fr3ak da fr3ak Jul 1, 2015 5:33 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 5:33 PM in response to Zackadelic

    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.

  • by Meg4Roney,

    Meg4Roney Meg4Roney Jul 1, 2015 5:46 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 5:46 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    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.

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