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 EdTheWright,

    EdTheWright EdTheWright Jul 1, 2015 5:58 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 5:58 PM in response to Zackadelic

    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.

  • by jkwuc89,

    jkwuc89 jkwuc89 Jul 1, 2015 6:07 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 6:07 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    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.

    Screen Shot 2015-07-01 at 9.07.16 PM.png

    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.

  • by jayelevy,

    jayelevy jayelevy Jul 1, 2015 6:08 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 6:08 PM in response to Zackadelic

    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

     

  • by Msalmeri,

    Msalmeri Msalmeri Jul 1, 2015 6:16 PM in response to Zackadelic
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 6:16 PM in response to 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.

  • by Clayton Rhoades,

    Clayton Rhoades Clayton Rhoades Jul 1, 2015 6:23 PM in response to jkwuc89
    Level 1 (62 points)
    Apple Music
    Jul 1, 2015 6:23 PM in response to jkwuc89

    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.

  • by Clayton Rhoades,

    Clayton Rhoades Clayton Rhoades Jul 1, 2015 6:26 PM in response to jkwuc89
    Level 1 (62 points)
    Apple Music
    Jul 1, 2015 6:26 PM in response to jkwuc89

    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.

  • by Al10,

    Al10 Al10 Jul 1, 2015 6:33 PM in response to Al10
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 6:33 PM in response to Al10

    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.

  • by jkwuc89,

    jkwuc89 jkwuc89 Jul 1, 2015 6:37 PM in response to Clayton Rhoades
    Level 1 (24 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 6:37 PM in response to Clayton Rhoades

    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.

  • by Clayton Rhoades,

    Clayton Rhoades Clayton Rhoades Jul 1, 2015 6:48 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (62 points)
    Apple Music
    Jul 1, 2015 6:48 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    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.

  • by citychris76,

    citychris76 citychris76 Jul 1, 2015 7:07 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 7:07 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    I had the same problem with wrong album artwork being displayed and my playlists were duplicated.  I simply turned off iCloud and used my backup to restore.  Not sure if I'll use Apple Music again because the setup time is ridiculously long and I really don't need my music in the cloud since I've got a 128gb iphone.  I was super pumped about the service but now I'm pretty much over it.  Disappointing.. 

  • by jctez,

    jctez jctez Jul 1, 2015 7:22 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 7:22 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    thanks for all the info on this post. wondering what to do here. I turned on apple music/icloud music on my iphone and ipad. then last night updated itunes and it was loading all night. this morning I find everything a mess, but only in music app on devices, my itunes library on my mac seems fine. on my devices it took my hundreds of rare and live tracks and replaced them with the released studio versions, or left them blank. as with everyone else, my artwork is just a mess. I have never used itunes match. So my question is, since my itunes library, over 20K songs and proper artwork etc is fine, what should I do? I'm afraid if I turn off icloud music it will mess it up. Yay or Nay? I just want this apple music crap gone. It is not finished, ready for release nor is it for true music affecionados. I am going back to Google Play, uploading everything and keeping it all there. For those of you on Macs, check out ''radiant player'' it is an awesome google play desktop app for your mac, with different skins and other features. not stuck to google music web player. it is awesome. if someone could tell me next move, how do i get rid of apple music on my devices without screwing up my itunes library, that would be much appreciated. thanks.

  • by tikilab,

    tikilab tikilab Jul 1, 2015 7:31 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (42 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 1, 2015 7:31 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    This has been happening for over three years with iTunes Match, which is the old name for iCloud Music Library:

     

    iTunes Match Changing My Album Tags/Metadata Without Asking

    will my metadata change in iTunes match

    iTunes Match vs. Play Counts

     

    According to another user here:


    Apple Music/iTunes Replacing My Album Artwork


    these are direct quotes from Apple Support:

     

    "When the iCloud Music Library is enabled this will sync the album artwork from iTunes."

    "The iCloud Music library places your music into iCloud which does update the album artwork to what appears in the iTunes store."

     

    That would be fine if it stayed in iCloud, but Apple insists on reaching into your personal hard drive and permanently changing your files without your explicit permission. This is just wrong. I hope everyone here gives them feedback (http://www.apple.com/feedback/) and reports this problem far and wide, because just reading the posts here won't motivate Apple to do anything about it.

  • by Clayton Rhoades,

    Clayton Rhoades Clayton Rhoades Jul 1, 2015 7:37 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (62 points)
    Apple Music
    Jul 1, 2015 7:37 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    I have been on the phone 48 Minutes with apple.  Guy is nice but clearly has no idea how to resolve this problem.  Doesn't even know about all of these new features and I am educating him about it.  Waste of my time.  They are opening a case and want to research it.  Yawn.

  • by Andy_Mark,

    Andy_Mark Andy_Mark Jul 1, 2015 7:47 PM in response to Tuff Ghost
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 7:47 PM in response to Tuff Ghost

    I Have this problem too, but interesting fact some or all new files in ~/iTunes/iTunes Media/Apple Music protected 

    I trying solved this problem with TimeMachine

  • by Meg4Roney,

    Meg4Roney Meg4Roney Jul 1, 2015 7:51 PM in response to Meg4Roney
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 1, 2015 7:51 PM in response to Meg4Roney

    I meant .itl, sorry

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