Genius suggestions have disappeared for most of my library

Question

Level 1

6 points

Genius suggestions have disappeared for most of my library

Hi,

At some point in the past two or three weeks, iTunes Genius has stopped giving me suggestions for a large proportion of my library. This is affecting some albums and songs that I've regularly used in the past (and recently) to create Genius playlists, and affects some extremely famous/popular/classic albums. For example, there are no suggestions available for any of the tracks on the following albums:

The Velvet Underground and Nico
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
In fact, hardly any David Bowie albums now give suggestions but, bizarrely, some very uncommon albums such as the Never Let Me Down EP (not the album) and David Live still do
Dare! (Human League)
Everything by the Beatles except the Please Please Me album
And many, many others

When I try to create a Genius playlist from any of these (thousands of) tracks, I get the message "Genius is unavailable for the song <xxx>".

I've tried the following to fix this:

Updating Genius (Store --> Update Genius)
Deleting my Genius file in the iTunes folder
Turning Genius off and on again (a bit complicated, as I subscribe to Apple Music, so I first had to switch off "Show Apple Music" and "iCloud Music Library" in preferences)

I'm using iTunes 12.3.3.17 on Windows 10.

Any help gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

Windows 10

Posted on Apr 20, 2016 11:05 AM

Reply

Answer 1

KevinCal Author

Level 1

6 points

Apr 20, 2016 11:19 AM in response to KevinCal

A quick update on this: although Genius recommendations aren't available in iTunes, they are available on my iPhone. I've just tried to create a playlist based on Five Years from the Ziggy Stardust album on iTunes on my laptop, and no results. However, when I do the same on my iPhone, it comes up with a very nice playlist. So, this does seem to be limited to iTunes.

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Answer 2

KevinCal Author

Level 1

6 points

Apr 20, 2016 10:22 PM in response to KevinCal

Another update (I've been playing around): the Genius suggestions re-appear when I disable iCloud music library and then update Genius. Unfortunately, I can't then see my iTunes library (and obviously none of my Apple Music purchases) and none of the suggestions include anything from the iCloud library.

So, this seems to be a problem with the interaction between Genius and iCloud.

(BTW, the iTunes Library Genius files in the two cases - iCloud on or iCloud off - are wildly different. With iCloud off, the Genius file is 540MB. With iCloud on, the file is 120MB.)

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Answer 3

kgunn91

Level 1

4 points

Apr 22, 2016 12:25 PM in response to KevinCal

I'm having the exact same problem. I have determined that Genius is working fine for the songs I own and are stored on my computer. However, Genius is not working for any of the 14,000 songs I have added to my iCloud Music Library through Apple Music. I tried the same steps - turn off iCloud, delete the Genius file, completely logged out of iCloud and back in. Apple Support suggested I create a new user on my Mac to see if that would work - it did not. I also tried it on a completely different Mac with the same results. This tells me it is an issue with iTunes/iCloud rather than my system. Like the OP, I am able to create Genius playlists on my iPhone. Hopefully Apple will sort this out soon; this is my favorite feature of Apple Music.

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Answer 4

milleron

Level 1

44 points

Apr 22, 2016 3:41 PM in response to KevinCal

I'm having the same problem. I'm a subscriber to Apple Music.

No matter whether I arrange My Music by song, artist, or album, there's not a single solitary genius suggestion. Every single song I click on has the Genius menu grayed out, but in grayed-out text it says "no Genius suggestion." Occasionally, if I turn iCloud off and on, Genius suggestions may appear very briefly, along with an entry on that context menu to "start Genius," but almost instantly, both options vanish, the former by reverting to grayed-out "no Genius Suggestions" and the latter, by simply disappearing from the context menu. Then I right back to finding "no Genius Suggestions" as the only entry for every song in my Library.

What in the world is going on??

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Answer 5

kgunn91

Level 1

4 points

Apr 30, 2016 6:04 PM in response to milleron

I was able to revert back to a previous version of iTunes (back to 12.2.2.25 from 12.3.3.17). Genius works as it should on the older version. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that Apple screwed up Genius with the latest iTunes update. Very disappointing for a company with Apple's stature; it seems like they have some quality control issues. Hopefully they will get it sorted out with the next iTunes update.

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Answer 6

FrateTAC

Level 1

32 points

May 2, 2016 4:53 AM in response to kgunn91

Same problem here, iTunes 12.3.3.17.

Genius suggestions disappeared for ALL the song in my iCloud Library. Seems work quite well on my iPhone.

Apple, are still you there???

Reply

Answer 7

kgunn91

Level 1

4 points

May 10, 2016 6:06 PM in response to kgunn91

Thought I would share my latest developments. I stated earlier that I had reverted back to an older version of iTunes and it was working fine. Well, apparently iTunes automatically updated back to the latest version 12.3.3.17 and everything is still working! Maybe deleting iTunes and doing a clean install was all it needed. I'd be curious to see if this works for anyone else.

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