Repairing the chaos which is Apple Music

TidBITS Talk
1

Hello, all.

I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions related to an Apple Music clean-up or reset.

Most of my music is on a shared drive, attached to a networked Mac Mini. I’m sure there are many issues I could document, but one in particular drives me nuts, which is that when I try to play music from my library, the location references in the metadata is completely wrong. I mean, it’s not even close - typically, it doesn’t even point to a music file at all. So far, I’ve been documenting the Playlists I use (there are many) and I’m tempted just to start over.

The background of my chaos is that my original set of music was created from my CD collection (I have hundreds), and then later I subscribed to Match (and still do) and then still later, I subscribed to Apple Music (and still do).

At some point (and it may have been after I upgraded to Catalina, but I cannot assert that with certainty), the Apple Music library got all screwed up.

Any suggestions on the best way to clean up the mess? Or should I just start working on a new mess?

Thanks in advance for any help (even if just to advise me to give up).

1 Like
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This article on Apple’s support site is probably your best bet as a starting point. In a nutshell, you’re going to need to rebuild you music library database. I suspect your music files are all there, it’s just that Apple Music has forgotten where they are. Good luck! (I should add that I’m not yet on Catalina, so cannot advice you much on the Music app as I’m still with iTunes on Mojave.)

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They are definitely all there. I frequently play them with my local Plex server and there are no issues finding and playing them with Plex.

Thanks for the article referral. I think it might be one I’ve already read, but I will check it out. Hope springs eternal. :slight_smile:

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It has been a nightmare for me on Catalina. Music has really screwed things. I, like you, have music from over the years from CDs I owned with scanned covers and much of it has plain disappeared.

Dear oh dear oh dear Apple!

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Fortunately, from everything I’ve read, I didn’t upgrade to Catalina, I bought a new computer with Catalina and moved everything over via Migration Assistant (if that’s still what it’s called). All, or at least most, of my album art seems to have been moved correctly. However, it’s a bit hard to tell, since Music doesn’t have a nice Album column with artwork, to use as the lefthand column in Songs view. Very annoying indeed.