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iTunes music library

6 months ago or so, I synced my iTunes music library up with the iCloud.


I really can't exactly remember the sequence of events, but I used to have all my music on my laptop / iPhone - and with several thousand tracks, the memory used to be virtually always full. So somehow there became an option to send to the iCloud. i did so, and note now i have a lot more capacity on my iPhone as not all tracks are downloaded, so plenty of capacity.


However, when i listen to my music now (e.g. a compilation album), the track that plays is not my track! I have many weird and wonderful collections of music, of which I am very familiar with, so am acutely aware of when a slightly different version of a song is played (the artwork shown is also different).


Anybody any ideas what has happened, and how I can get my original stuff back?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 3, 2016 5:25 AM

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3 replies

May 3, 2016 10:38 AM in response to LlamaBreath

You are probably using iTunes Match or Apple Music. When you do that the service compares your file with what is in Apple's collection and if it finds what it deems to be a copy of that track it does not upload yours but substitutes Apple's copy instead. Of course this is not always identical to what you have. It could be from another album, a remastered copy, an unplugged copy, etc.


You should, of course, make your own independent backup of your entire iTunes library on a separate drive before using this service and in particular before deleting your only copy of music. Your original files are on that drive. Depending upon to which service you actually subscribe there may be ways of tricking the service into not matching your copy but instead putting your copy in your user space in iCloud.

May 3, 2016 3:43 PM in response to LlamaBreath

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7163823 - If you have signed up for Apple Music or iTunes Match you won't have the option to manually manage or sync music to a device in iTunes. Music syncing is done through iCloud and all your eligible music should appear there. Movies can still be synced.


A bit more about this, and some options- https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7194995 and: Move content from iTunes on your computer to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201593


and a workaround - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7202449?answerId=28842873022#28842873022


My understanding is Apple Music matches by name and artist alone. Try changing the name on a track so it doesn't correspond to anything Apple has and see if it is uploaded.

iTunes music library

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