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iPhone music library missing after iOS upgrade

I recently loaded a lot of music onto my iPhone from iTunes. Afterwards I did an iOS upgrade 11.2.1. After the upgrade I went into the music app and the library was empty. On further investigation I discovered that iTunes was reporting my "Other" storage at around 22GB. So, it would appear that the music is still there taking up a ton of space, but the Music app has lost track of all of it. Attempts to remove with iTunes (by unselecting all the music it thought the phone had and "sync"ing) has not helped. Things like rebooting and toggling settings in the music app have also not helped.


Is there a way to fix this without doing a factory reset? Any help appreciated.

iPhone 6s, iOS 11.2.1

Posted on Dec 15, 2017 4:36 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 16, 2017 11:27 AM

Hello yxq,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

If you are missing music on your iPhone after updating to iOS 11, take a look at the steps in the resource below to address the issue:
Get help with iCloud Music Library

Fix common issues including missing music, missing artwork, and duplicate playlists.

iCloud Music Library is a feature of Apple Music and iTunes Match that allows you to access all of your content from any of your devices, as long as you're signed in to those devices with the same Apple ID and have iCloud Music Library turned on.

Before following any of the steps in this article, make sure that your iCloud Music Library is set up correctly and that you have the latest versions of iOS, macOS, and iTunes.


If you can’t see iCloud Music Library on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

First, restart your iOS device.

If you still can't see it after the restart:

  1. Turn off iCloud Music Library and then turn it back on.
  2. Sign out of the iTunes Store and then sign back in.

If you do not use iCloud Music Library and normally use iTunes to sync your music to your device, let us know.

Take care.
21 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 16, 2017 11:27 AM in response to yxq

Hello yxq,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

If you are missing music on your iPhone after updating to iOS 11, take a look at the steps in the resource below to address the issue:
Get help with iCloud Music Library

Fix common issues including missing music, missing artwork, and duplicate playlists.

iCloud Music Library is a feature of Apple Music and iTunes Match that allows you to access all of your content from any of your devices, as long as you're signed in to those devices with the same Apple ID and have iCloud Music Library turned on.

Before following any of the steps in this article, make sure that your iCloud Music Library is set up correctly and that you have the latest versions of iOS, macOS, and iTunes.


If you can’t see iCloud Music Library on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

First, restart your iOS device.

If you still can't see it after the restart:

  1. Turn off iCloud Music Library and then turn it back on.
  2. Sign out of the iTunes Store and then sign back in.

If you do not use iCloud Music Library and normally use iTunes to sync your music to your device, let us know.

Take care.

Dec 24, 2017 10:43 AM in response to yxq

I have exactly the same problem having upgraded to 11.2.1 this morning.


I do not use iCloud music library, I had just synced my entire library to the phone via iTunes. Now the phone is showing an entirely empty library, songs are shown as available for download, playlists are entirely missing.


The storage settings on the phone are saying 100gb is taken up by my missing music, so where is it??

Dec 28, 2017 3:38 PM in response to jeffd55

Same issue -- I do access music from the Cloud. iTunes continues to sync new downloads to AppleTV 4 but after updating to iOS 11.2.1 cannot access my music from iPhone 8. Library only shows music previously downloaded to phone, nothing available from Cloud. Literally happened overnight and I have performed all the "tricks" listed above and online. Frustrating to say the least - obviously a bug Apple isn't admitting yet.

Jan 7, 2018 12:15 AM in response to yxq

Just joining this up with another thread:

iCloud music library disappeared from iPhone after iOS 11 update. iCloud is turned on/off and I have signed out several …

There is a fix identified in this thread that works for me! If you switch on ’Mobile data’ for ‘Music’ this triggers the library to update on the phone. You can then switch it off and download any new music via WiFi.

Let‘s hope this glitch gets sorted with the next update.

Dec 16, 2017 3:33 PM in response to jeffd55

I do not use iCloud Music Library. I use iTunes just for sync'ing music to my device and my iTunes library consists of my own CD collection which I've ripped and added to the iTunes library over the years.


Various attempts to use iTunes to clean up storage -- for example by unchecking all music selection and "applying", trying to "sync" while connected to iTunes with no music selected and even connecting to iTunes on a new computer and sync'ing -- have managed to reclaim some of the storage that was being attributed to "Other" in iTunes. It has gone down from 22GB to about 10.5GB, but I can't get it down further than that.


Here's an example of what I see in iTunes. Plug in device and iTunes says 10.5GB used by "Other". Go to "music" screen (where nothing is checked) and uncheck the sync music to device box. It then shows in usage at the bottom that I'll gain almost 10GB. Then I click "apply", it does it's thing, but then the usage bar jumps back up to where it was. So it seems to think there's something to be cleaned up, but nothing gets cleaned up. Not sure how much sense that makes, but this "other" storage got really large when the library suddenly became empty, so I'm assuming a lot of that music is still on the device but the music app has lost track of it, and it can no longer be reclaimed.


I also tried a fresh device backup in iTunes to the local computer and then did a restore-backup. Afterwards, there was no difference in storage usage. BTW, when I look at the device storage on my iPhone (settings -> general -> iPhone Storage) I see this 10.5GB is listed at the bottom as belonging to "system" (as opposed to iTunes calling it "other").

Jan 1, 2018 12:24 PM in response to boxcarr

I have the same problem. I recently updated a iPhone 6 from iOS 9 to iOS 11.2.1 and my iCloud library is now empty. I use iTunes match and have tried all the normal sign in/out, toggle off iCloud and restart stuff. I may have to go back to manually managing music for my iPhone, which kinda ***** because now I have to download it to my computer first from the cloud. Frustrated!

Jan 10, 2018 9:11 PM in response to rayworth15

IOS upgrade to 11.2.2 unfortunately did not improve my situation. Nor did the suggestions in the link above. My iPhone is clearly confused about what's going on. iTunes and the phone still report about 10GB of storage in other/system. And I still see in iTunes that if I add an album to the phone, that my free storage immediately increases by 10GB. As if it just noticed, "hey, there's 10GB in space used by music that shouldn't be here." I click apply, new album gets sync'd, and the storage bar immediately jumps back to where it was before I had selected a new album to sync.

Feb 21, 2018 8:32 PM in response to yxq

So, I updated and had this issue today, tried a number of the solutions suggested here with no success. I synced my phone to remove all music, backed up my phone to iTunes and tried restoring from that (no success), then gave up and performed a factory reset.


Then I tried restoring from the backup after the reset and the music files were no longer listed as taking up space on the phone. I still need to resync my music from iTunes, but otherwise haven't had to make any other changes and phone appears to be working as usual.


Hope that helps!

Apr 3, 2018 9:05 PM in response to yxq

Glad I found this thread, as I just encountered a similar problem, but much broader. I upgraded from an iPhone 6 to a 7, and just finished restoring to old backup to the new device. First I noticed that there wasn't any music on my phone anymore (though like others in this thread, it still seems to be taking up as much of the memory as before). More alarmingly, my music is no longer visible in iTunes _on my computer_. I keep 230+ gigs of my own purchased music on an external hard drive, and it's still on that hard drive, but somehow the process of migrating to the new phone has caused iTunes to forget about all of it.


Experience tells me that the solution lies in Preferences under the Advanced tab. Sure enough, I had to change the iTunes Media folder location because it had reverted to an address on my computers hard drive and not the external drive. I think I remember that my next step from there is to choose the organize library function from the file menu, but I can't quite wrap my head around whether I should choose consolidate files or reorganize files. I'm always nervous when it comes to my music assets, so rather than accidentally think my way into doing it wrong, I thought I would solicit some advice on how I should proceed.

Jun 27, 2018 3:26 PM in response to jeffd55

Am I being stupid. ‘If youcan’t See iCloud music (which I can’t), restart and then turn off iCloud music which I still can’t see because if I could I wouldn’t have need to re-start. Just come back to Apple after 2 year break. Realised made a mistake. Like all companies get too big, too many highly paid managers who trying to justify huge salaries by doing anything, whether it works or not. Too many cooks spoil the broth. Think i’m Going to have to download every single song I’ve purchased from iTunes as disappeared. Usual term for taking someone’s property is robbery i think.

Oct 7, 2018 10:46 AM in response to fritzio

I had the same problem. I have an iPhone 8. There was a recent update and after I did it, my music was gone. The icon was gone too. After I tried to download all my music and I was unsuccessful, I got several messages telling me to go to the apple app and restore it from there. It was simple. All I did was click on the icon(the music note) on the top left side of the page and all of my music came back, immediately.

It was frustrating because I spent 45 minutes prior to the restore attempting to re download all my music.

iPhone music library missing after iOS upgrade

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