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Songs that have had their metadata changed in iTunes have disappeared from my iPhone

I'm an Apple Music, iTunes Match, and iCloud Music Library user. Just saying that out loud, it occurs to me that this stuff is a mess and maybe expecting it all to work correctly is just wishful thinking.


I've been using Apple Music since the day it launched. Recently, like in the last couple weeks, I noticed that some albums on my iPhone were missing songs. In every case, I believe the missing songs are ones where I've edited the song title and possibly other metadata in iTunes. It's difficult for me to check whether EVERY Apple Music song where I've edited the title is now messed up, but it goes back pretty far, definitely to before I started experiencing disappearing songs.


To give you a concrete example, a while ago I added the 2pac album "2pacalypse Now." In Apple Music, that album is missing all of the features from the song titles, so I added them back in. For a while things were fine, but recently the songs where I added the features to the song title disappeared from my iPhone. Now all I see are the five tracks that don't have features, and a link to "Show Complete Album" at the bottom.


I spoke with @applemusichelp on Twitter last night and they instructed me to turn off Apple Music and iCloud Music Library on my iPhone, restart the phone, log back into Apple Music, and re-enable iCloud Music Library. Didn't work. Their recommendation then was, "Don't edit metadata for Apple Music tracks in iTunes." To which my response was, "Then why does iTunes let you edit metadata for Apple Music tracks in the first place?"


Anyone else experiencing this problem? Anyone have a fix?

Posted on Dec 9, 2015 9:03 AM

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38 replies

Dec 9, 2015 2:52 PM in response to Jeremy K.

As I said in my recently posted question, the songs haven't disappeared. They're still there, but they appear as "Unknown artist" and "Unknown album" (you can search for them browsing by "Songs" instead of "Artists" or "Albums"). It's an extremely annoying bug which I wish they fix - What I loved about Apple Music was the fact I could edit tags...

Dec 9, 2015 5:33 PM in response to SwaggerMonguer

Ah, yes, that's exactly what I'm seeing on mind. Glad to hear I'm not the only one seeing this bug.


I was just able to fix it for one album by going into iTunes and deleting the artist and album name tags, then re-entering them. The album appears whole on my iPhone again. I'll report back in a bit on whether that fix sticks or not. Needless to say, this is a pretty unacceptable workaround for something that used to work and should continue to work. Hopefully Apple has a solution in the works.


Do you remember anything that might have set this problem off? I can't think of anything that I did to cause it.

Dec 10, 2015 6:32 AM in response to Jeremy K.

I'm experiencing this very same issue as well, and have spent a fair amount of time trying to troubleshoot this across my iMac, MacBook, iPad, and iPhone.


Here's what I have learned:


I add an album from Apple Music to my iCloud Music Library - shows up on all my devices.

I can select the album or individual songs and edit everything (except the song title, I'll get to that in a moment) and everything updates and syncs just fine.

Now the fun part ...

If I select a song and edit the *song name* everything will look fine on the computer I'm using, but that song will now show up with some or all of its other info empty - unknown artist, unknown album, etc. - no longer grouped with the original album. What's missing depends case by case on whether I've edited other tags for that particular song. Additionally, the song has an empty duration (track length).

Here's another interesting fact, if I do a "Get Info" on the orphaned track on my MacBook, I can see that the file type (Kind) is no longer showing as "Apple Music AAC audio file" and now shows as a generic kind of "Internet audio stream". And even if I add the track info back into the missing tags, it will then group back with the original album, BUT it remains and "internet audio stream" file and does not revert back to an Apple Music AAC audio file.


My hypothesis is that there is a bug with the Apple servers and how they're merging updated song info with existing tag data - again, only happens when you edit a song name.


This all started on Friday for me, around the time the buzz about Apple increasing the song limit from 25,000 to 100,000 - not sure if the two events are related, but seems like a reasonable guess.


I do hope this is addressed and fixed soon, as having consistent metadata throughout my large library is very important to me - creating smart playlists, for example.


Thanks, and hopefully that all makes sense 🙂

Dec 10, 2015 7:50 AM in response to earache2112

Swagger: You're right. I could have sworn when I looked last night that the album I "fixed" looked normal, but when I looked this morning I realized that the altered tracks were missing track numbers, times, and explicit tags.


Earache: That's interesting. I don't see any "internet audio streams" in my iTunes library, but I did notice that some "Apple Music AAC audio files" have changed to "AAC audio files." Are you an iTunes Match user?

Dec 10, 2015 8:09 AM in response to Jeremy K.

Yes, I've been an long time iTunes Match subscriber.

Apple Music, iTunes Match, and editing tags have always worked for me with no problem - even during the rollout of Apple Music when many others were having problems with files and album art. I've had no issues up until this past week 😟


Here's a screenshot of what I get in the Get Info panel for a song where I have edited the name and then lost some of its metadata on my other devices:


User uploaded file

As you can see, the Kind is now "internet audio stream" and the Duration is "Continuous" - which is why no time information is showing up in our Libraries and iOS devices. And like I mentioned, if I add the missing metadata back, the Kind and Duration don't revert back to the correct values.


I do hope Apple is aware of this and working on a fix, as it's making a mess of my library: 100s of songs with missing information.

Dec 10, 2015 8:33 AM in response to Jeremy K.

Sorry, just realized I should probably clarify a bit.


I'm trying to troubleshoot this with my iMac and a MacBook (plus my iOS devices) all signed into the same iCloud Music Library.


If I edit the song title on my iMac, the file looks fine on that machine. The screenshot above is the Get Info box I see when I look at the file once it syncs over to my MacBook - and now missing data, no longer grouped with the proper album. So, somehow the file is losing not only the editable metadata about a song (album, artist, etc.), but also the data about what type of file it is.


Very frustrated, as I'm spending way too much time dealing with this and trying to find a workaround. So far, no luck.

Dec 22, 2015 3:27 PM in response to Hank Ort

+1


As others have mentioned, this only seems to happen when I touch the Song Title / Name of an Apple Music track. Not all edits cause other metadata to disappear / change. I have not quite nailed down what seems to trigger this behavior and what doesn't when it comes to editing track names. I can tell you what I typically do...


  • "Song Title (Crazy Unnecessary Mix)" I will change to either "Song Title (Alternate Version)" if the same title appears more than once or simply "Song Title" if there is no other song on the album with that same.
  • "Song Title (Live)" or "Song Title (Live in the Garage 2005)" I will edit to read "Song Title (Live Version)"


Same symptoms as other - I have seen either "Unknown Artist" or "Unknown Album" as well as the "Time" information disappear. In addition, the "Kind" for the edited track changes from "Apple Music AAC audio file" to " " (blank.) Unlike others, the fields for "Kind" and "Duration" are simply missing if I do a "Get Info" on an affected track. I don't see things like "Continuous Stream" or some of the other metadata others have mentioned - the fields just don't show up.


Until this is resolved I have gotten in the habit of adding the song on iTunes, making whatever track name changes I want to make, and then editing both the Album Name and Artist Name to something and then changing it back. For example I might change the Artist "U2" to "U2xx" and then back to "U2" at which point my iOS device display what appears to be the right metadata. And if I run across some that I missed, and there has been a lot, I add them to a playlist so I am reminded to change them later when I am in front of my computer. Slowly but surely I am (re-) cleaning up my iTunes Library...


...probably just in time for Apple to fix this.


SR

Dec 25, 2015 6:40 AM in response to Jeremy K.

Changing the title of an Apple Music track deletes all other metadata, including artist information, the track number and track length. The only workaround is to change the artist, album artist, title, "track of" number (eg of 10, change to of 11) to something random and then re-enter the original metadata. As the track time isn't enterable directly there is no way to keep this on your iPhone or iPad although iTunes data isn't affected by the bug so track time stays in the data there. Any Apple Music which was downloaded from the start of Apple Music where the track name was altered will be affected when it is next played on your iPhone or iPad, even though the bug only appeared a few weeks ago, so if you have changed track names in the past be prepared to have to go back and change everything else then change it back again when you next play the music. If you only play a few tracks, the album will appear split with the ones you play where you changed the track name appearing as a separate album. You need then to select all the tracks on the album and change the metadata collectively to something else and back again to regroup them into one album. Of course, you can only change the metadata in iTunes so you can't put this right from your iPhone or iPad directly. It's a really irritating bug, but as usual these days with Apple, there doesn't seem to be any interest from support staff in registering it or making any effort to put it right.

Dec 28, 2015 9:10 AM in response to Jeremy K.

Having recently switched over to Apple Music from iTunes purchasing and CD ripping, I have experienced this issue. Much to my horror, it attacked thousands of tracks and removed the Artist metadata from most tracks I had edited the Name field for. It also removed the time length and changed the Kind to Internet Stream. I have been meticulously finding all these tracks and copying and pasting my custom metadata into newly added Apple Music tracks and deleting the corrupted ones. This is a lot of work to say the least.


To ease recovery if this happens again, can anyone recommend the best way to back up Apple Music tracks that have custom metadata? Export the Library as an XML file? Download all the tracks and store offline? Will I be able to re-import them and have them work again?

Dec 28, 2015 5:38 PM in response to ChromePlanet

Oh boy.


This might help, but I'm not sure. I realized, stupidly, as soon as I unchecked iCloud Music Library in my iTunes, that this would make everything that wasn't downloaded locally disappear (which I probably don't want to do if I'm resetting the library in a future step). So I turned it back on and waited for the items to reappear, and as feared my iTunes library now has a whole bunch of issues, like my iPhone.


Now I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I'm just going to have to go through and re-add all of my Apple Music tracks, without editing the track name this time. If anyone tries this fix (I'd be very curious to hear whether it works), make sure you have downloaded everything locally in iTunes before you turn off iCloud Music Library.

Songs that have had their metadata changed in iTunes have disappeared from my iPhone

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