Erase iCloud Music Library contents to solve playlist duplicates and other problems?

Question

Erase iCloud Music Library contents to solve playlist duplicates and other problems?

I was looking forward to Apple Music, so of course I signed up on June 30 and bought a family plan with the 3-month trial. I updated my devices to iOS 8.4 to use Apple Music, and updated my iMac's iTunes application to 12.2. So far so good.

Then, I turned on iCloud Music Library on all 3 devices. Bad idea.

First, I found a majority of my playlists had been duplicated, triplicated, or quadruplicated. For example:

Mozart

Mozart1

Mozart2

Mozart3

The contents were the same, but now I had three times as many playlists in iTunes and on my devices.

If the playlist's name originally ended in a number, the renaming was funny:

Level 42

Level 43

Level 44

Level 45

This was a nuisance, but then I discovered the contents of several playlists were missing songs, or the order of my songs was out of order. This was a bigger problem. I had deleted all the duplicate playlists in iTunes on my Mac, but I wasn't about to reconstruct all the messed up playlists. At least I didn't notice problems that some other people had reported, like wrong album artwork, iTunes playing the wrong song/artist, corrupted metadata, DRM added to songs without DRM, etc.

I turned off iCloud Music Library on all my devices, but the problems didn't get fixed there. I had to restore the previous iTunes Library.itl file in the iTunes folder, then relaunch iTunes to get everything back the way it was. Then I had to sync my devices to iTunes, and they were likewise restored to their former state. But I lost iCloud Music Library functionality, limiting what I could do with Apple Music. Couldn't save music to my device without iCloud Music Library enabled, for example.

The next day, I turned iCloud Music Library back on, just on my iPad. The same problem reappeared--duplicate playlists, wrong contents. I turned iCloud Music Library back off, synced to iTunes, and back to normal.

I figured iCloud Music Library must have stored my playlists (and music) and when I turned on iCloud Music Library the last day. I guessed when turning on iCloud Music Library on several devices, the playlists from those devices got copied to the iCloud Music Library, creating duplicates or worse. The next day, choosing to MERGE the data on my iPad with the iCloud data, it created duplicate playlists, and when the iCloud Music Library had more than one playlist with the same name from the previous day's debacle, then I would see triplicates or quadruplicates. Doesn't explain why some playlist contents changed, though.

So then I thought that things might work properly if I were able to wipe the iCloud Music Library clean and start from scratch. But there is no clear way to do this.

I tried to erase the iCloud Music Library by doing this: I renamed my iTunes folder to something else (so I could get it back later), then opened iTunes again and turned on iCloud Music Library. All the playlists (and duplicates) and songs were automatically populated. Then I deleted all the playlists and songs, and when given the choice, I chose to delete the same data from the iCloud Music Library. I turned off iCloud Music Library, quit iTunes, then about 45 minutes later, I went to my iPad and turned on iCloud Music Library. Same problem, with maybe fewer duplicated and triplicated playlists, but still some playlists had the wrong items or items in the wrong order. I turned off iCloud Music Library, and on my Mac went back to the previous iTunes folder. Launched iTunes, synced the iPad, back to normal again.

My question: How can you reliably and completely clear the contents of the iCloud Music Library? if I can do this, I might be able use ONE of my devices with the iCloud Music Library without creating duplicates and messed up data. I am suspicious, though, that adding second and third devices (including the Mac) will cause the same problems again. In the meantime, I cannot use the iCloud Music Library, which limits the usefulness of Apple Music.

Apple needs to make this iCloud Music Library more intelligent and reliable, without creating problems for people with more than one Apple device.

Posted on Jul 2, 2015 9:37 PM

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Answer 1

Rysz

Level 8

44,391 points

Jul 2, 2015 9:55 PM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

Ssorry to hear about all the problems you're experiencing.

See if this article is of any help: http://www.macissues.com/2015/07/02/how-to-fix-corrupted-itunes-libraries-after- enabling-apple-music/

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Answer 2

Jul 3, 2015 1:24 PM in response to Rysz

Thanks for the reply Rysz, and for the link. My post is rather long and you may have missed it, but I did something very similar to get my iTunes library back to normal. Still hoping there's a way to erase the iCloud Music Library or get this to work as expected.

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Answer 3

Jul 3, 2015 2:58 PM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

I just discovered the problems caused by enabling the iCloud Music Library are more extensive than I realized. I did a back up using Retrospect software, and it backed up half of my entire 100GB iTunes music library, most of it music files, meaning that half of my music files have changed since last week, before this debacle. I looked more carefully at some of my music, and noticed that several albums are missing music tracks, and the missing tracks appear elsewhere in a different album with the same or similar name, and the same cover artwork. There's no telling how many more errors exist in my library.

This is proof that many of my music files were changed and/or damaged by Apple's implementation of the iCloud Music Library. 😠

Restoring my entire iTunes folder from last week's backup is the next order of business.

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Answer 4

Jul 3, 2015 4:34 PM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

After restoring, I noticed one of the affected albums still had trucks were still split up into two groups, so this instance wasn't caused by the iCloud/Apple music issue. Nevertheless, half of my music tracks did change since enabling iCloud Music Library on all my devices, including my Mac, and there is no excuse for Apple's technology to change 40+ GB of music files on my computer!

I'm a big fan of Apple. But their iCloud technology for Apple Music is not ready for prime time.

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Answer 5

Rysz

Level 8

44,391 points

Jul 3, 2015 9:11 PM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

I've seen the issue of splitting albums into multiples here, too, and I do not have iTunes Match or iCloud Music, so that can't be the only cause.

It seems that with every major iTunes revision, Apple makes adjustments to the rules for how to group albums together. First it was just by Album title. Then the Album Artist had to be exactly the same. Now... well I'm not really sure :-/

My current workaround is to select all the tracks that belong together in a single album, Get Info, then add some dummy letter like X to the album title. After closing Get Info, the tracks will be listed as one album, but you have to do it all over again to now delete the dummy letter. Adding the letter seems to force iTunes to rewrite the metadata, which resolves whatever tiny difference causes the albums to be split.

A major pain. Let Apple know here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

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Answer 6

Jul 4, 2015 2:37 AM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

Hi,

Have you tried deleting the playlist from the first device you enabled Apple Music on.

I enabled Apple Music on my iPhone first (probably the same as most people as iTunes 12.2 was late to the party).

I have a theory that only the device that puts something in the cloud can delete it from the cloud. My reason fro this is that each time I delete a playlist in iTunes it gets replaced from the cloud as it was my iPhone that put it in the cloud.

I suspect I would have had far fewer issue if I enabled Apple Music on my Mac first as

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Answer 7

aryht

Level 1

24 points

Jul 4, 2015 6:15 AM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

I have read somewhere in the iTunes Match forum (but can not remember the exat thread), that you have to go through the delete process as you described it for several times, before really everything is erased in the iCloud music library. You can check the process by deleting on the Mac, than enabling the sync on an iOS device and see what still shows up. If deleting is complete, the iOS library should stay empty after re-enabling syncing with iCloud music library. I have not tried it myself yet, but it might help you.

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Answer 8

Jul 7, 2015 5:31 PM in response to aryht

Thank you Aryht, Magoo_mch, and again Rysz, for your replies.

When I have time, I plan to try to erase everything from the iCloud Music Library according to your recommendations. Then, I will probably enable the Library again on only one iOS device (my iPhone), and not involve my iPad and Mac. I'm hoping this avoids the problems I encountered, although it certainly isn't an ideal solution because only my iPhone would be able to download music for offline listening.

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Answer 9

Jul 8, 2015 7:13 PM in response to magoo_mch

So, I was able to delete all music from the iCloud Music Library (took several tries) in iTunes, but no such luck with the actual playlists. Whether I delete just a handful, or the whole bunch at once, whether I wait several minutes between batches or not, the playlists still come back when I turn off the iCloud Music Library and then turn it back on again. All the playlists repopulate.

I don't think it has to do with which device was enabled with Apple Music first, because easily half of the playlists are not on my iPhone and iPad. I enabled one of those 2 devices first.

if anyone has suggestions on how to get rid of all the playlists in the iCloud Music Library, I'm all ears! 🙂

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Answer 10

Aug 6, 2015 9:15 AM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

I created a new iTunes library and turned on my iCloud music library. The similar duplicate playlist problem recurred and I deleted every single song and playlist from the iCloud music library. But somehow it does not get erased and they all come back with the duplicates.

I wish we find a solution to this.

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Answer 11

Aug 6, 2015 7:53 PM in response to cyrus.dubash

I found that I had to delete all the playlists using iTunes on my Mac easily 10 times if not more, selecting groups of maybe 10-20 at a time to delete and then pausing for several minutes (like 30) before deleting the next group. I did this until I got about 10 remaining playlists, which I could never get rid of. Then I used my iPhone to delete the last 10 playlists, and again after several tries, I eventually succeeded.

Note you have to start with a new (empty) iTunes library on the Mac, and you have to remove all your music from the iPhone (uncheck sync music in iTunes), before enabling iCloud Music Library for either one, otherwise all your music will be copied back to the Cloud and you have to start all over again. Once you've successfully emptied the iCloud of all music and playlists, you can disable iCloud Music Library on both the Mac and iPhone, and then go back to using your regular iTunes library and sync music back to your iPhone using iTunes.

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Answer 12

Aug 6, 2015 8:45 PM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

So once this is done we cannot use icloud music library again? Do we have to continue to manually sync the music from from iTunes onto the iphone in the earlier way itself?

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Answer 13

Aug 6, 2015 10:54 PM in response to cyrus.dubash

You can use the iCloud Music Library again if you want. Did you have problems the first time around? What happened? If you enable iCloud Music Library, would your problem happen again?

My hope was, by deleting all songs and playlists from the cloud first, I'd be starting from a clean slate and that might prevent problems that I experienced the first time around from happening again.

My problems were this: I enabled iCloud Music Library on my iPhone and iPad, choosing the merge option. Several hours later I enabled the iCloud Music Library in iTunes. After iTunes was "matching" songs for several hours, I noticed many of my playlists were duplicated or triplicated. Deleting the duplicates didn't seem to work as they would always repopulate. Worse yet, the next time I did a backup using Retrospect software, it became clear that about 40-50GB of my nearly 100GB of music (song files) on my Mac had changed since enabling iCloud Music Library on all my devices. Somehow using Apple Music and the iCloud Music Library were changing the song files on my hard drive, which was inexcusable. Fortunately I was able to restore from an earlier backup to get all my song files back to their original state, and I turned off iCloud Music Library to prevent it from happening again. In preparation for my next attempt to use iCloud Music Library, I wanted to erase all songs and playlists from the cloud, hence this thread.

Agsin whether or not to enable iCloud Music Library is up to you. I imagine many people have had smooth sailing while many others have had problems. Some people have irreparably lost data and didn't have a backup, which is a sad state of affairs. It appears that people who are subscribers to iTunes Match (or used to be) have had a higher frequency of problems. I, myself, never subscribed to iTunes Match. For my part, I'm waiting and giving Apple time to work out some of the bugs. Next time I might not choose Merge on my iOS devices, selecting Replace instead. That should prevent some playlist duplications I hope. I don't know how or why my song files changed before and that's more concerning.

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Answer 14

Aug 7, 2015 12:56 AM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

Gosh this is so Confusing

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Answer 15

Nov 24, 2016 4:42 AM in response to Anthony M Kassir MD

I have had the same problem and it is maddening. After corrupting my playlists in a sync (multiple playlists with different numbers after the name, such as 1, 2 or 1&2, and each having different numbers of songs), I made the mistake of deleting what appeared to me to be the "new" numbered lists, thinking that the unnumbered playlists were my "old," good playlists. That assumption was wrong! In fact, you have to check all of the lists, whether numbered or unnumbered, to see which one has the most songs, and I believe that list is the "original" pre-corruption list.

I then spent an hour on phone with Apple tech who had to restore a backup iTunes library (with correct playlists), then download my recently purchased songs from iTunes that were not in that prior library. He told me that the problem was having "iCloud music library" turned on (go to settings on device, music app, and you will see "iCloud music library") on one of my devices but not the other. I turned it off on both iPhone and iPad. My playlists were now back to normal on both devices. That solved the problem until I realized there were four songs that weren't syncing to iPhone and that showed up quickly on every sync attempt in the view window at the top of the screen. In an utterly and profoundly stupid attempt to solve that problem, I turned on "icloud music library" in iTunes. When I synced my iPad, the playlists were again thoroughly corrupted, although this time I knew better and systematically deleted the "bad" lists only AFTER viewing the contents to see which list had the most songs.

This is a huge problem and my solution now is to make sure iCloud music library is turned off on all devices as well as in iTunes (for the latter, go to preferences, general and make sure iCloud music library is unchecked).

I cannot understand how apple can keep pressuring users to use the iCloud for music when this kind of fundamental syncing problem exists. And I don't have the technical ability to even begin to understand what is causing the problem or how I might avoid it in the future. Maybe if I had iCloud music library turned on on both devices as well as iTunes, then synced, then purged the duplicate playlists (if they occurred following the sync), it might be a one-time corruption and thereafter would be stable. But I'm not willing to try it, especially since I don't even understand what good it does me to have iCloud music library checked.

Would appreciate any insights from others having a similar problem.

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