This is way a first for me.
Added an album to my Apple Music Libraty by way of adding 15 tracks of the same album, exact same meta data (except track titles, of course). The Automatically Add folder shunted them off to their album folder on the drive.
Apple Music shows ONE track only.
I can add the album to a dedicated play list, and can navigate using Show In Finder, by way of
Get Info from tracks in the play list. But Apple Music show absolutely no sign of these tracks in the usual manner.
They don’t show in the Album, they don’t show as individual tracks in Song view
Only one track shows in Song listing, Only the one track show in Artist view.
This is completely new phenomenon to me.
I force quit Music, forced, as it were, the Library by File > Update Cloud Library
Maybe … Do I need to delete the tracks and import them again as files from a folder on the drive?
I could use some help… none of this makes any sense, and has never happened before … with the exception that sometimes when purchasing an album from the iTunes store it takes ages for the full album to appear in the recently added
P.S. I don’t know why this should be a sync issue, … … the files exist On the drive itself
P.P.S … so I did a manual import
deleted the play list of the tracks copied the tracks to the desktop, then did a File > Import > Desktop Albufolder All the tracks except the one that was already showing in the Library
Partial success … in the manner of ONE more tracik shows … Do I have to import the tracks one at a time??
P.P.PS
I am now able to see all the tracks in the album, however, clicking any of the tracks plays
one track, the same each time Track one … this is the most bizarre phenomonen I have witnessed in this flag ship APP
Apple Music, the streaming service? Or Music.app, the macOS application that manages your local music library (and also acts as a client for the Apple Music service)?
If the former, I can’t help you.
If the latter:
Did you remember to set the track numbers to be unique values in the metadata?
How are you viewing the library? I recommend “Songs” view, so you can then pick appropriate columns for sorting. I normally like to sort on “Albums by Artist by Year” (click on the “Albums” column header a few times to select this one.
Did you check the “Compilation” box in the metadata? You should only use this if the album consists of tracks by different artists, because it will cause Music to ignore the Artist and Album Artist fields and sort it with other compilations.
Did you supply an Album Artist? Don’t do that if all the tracks are by the same artist.
Make sure you didn’t accidentally give the tracks metadata values that differ in whitespace. That will make them appear different to the app. Especially for the Album and Artist fields.
Check the Sort-by fields (Sort-Album, Sort-Artist, etc.), on the “Sorting” tab of the info. If these fields have values, Music will use these instead of the other fields.
I’ve never experienced this, so if it is the case now, it’s a bug. I normally import tracks by ripping CDs. I assign all the metadata for the disc, and then I import it. Then I set the Sort fields and artworks, since I can’t apply them to CDs.
In this case an AIFF album from Bandcamp, I did think about if the metadata might be off some how.
But I rarely (never?) have issues with files from Bandcamp.
I bulk edited the files in the Music app, to no avail.
For what it’s worth How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? by Big Red Machine
Apple Music still shows only tracks 1,8 and 13.
The only access I have is via playlist, or manually clicking the files in the Music folder
Apple Music shows the play list across devices.
In Recents however, it shows the aforementioned three tracks.
I probably will try re-editing the metadata in what ever app I have from the App Store .. can’t remember the name of it at the moment.
I checked and edited out any of those separating typed data points.
Deleted “Mixed” and annotated all tracks in one lump edit with the same data points
I have put track number edits too … Apple does not even show 12 of the tracks in my Library,
only in the playlist, and oddly I can navigate to the files on the computer from get info in the playlist list… but like I said otherwise Apple Music otherwise does not recognize they exist
oops, forgot to mention:
the system with the problem at the moment is Mac OS 26.5.2 (25F80)
Minor Update
So, I downloaded again from Bandcamp, before adding to Music, on my system
Mac OS 26.5.1 (25F80)
Before adding to Music, checked/edited in my App Store app Metadatics.
Everything checked fine anyway, I deleted come comments (link to band camp)
just to clear anything that was not related to essential meta data.
Then Imported to Music, things work ok on the system.
Some of the issues probably stem from the way Music is trying to sync to cloud … I Think
I deleted the 3 cloud versions of tracks.
I still don’t get why Music synced only three tracks and would not even acknowledge, so to speak, the other 12 tracks.
As of now the full album resides on this computer I am writing from.
I will copy these files to the other system OS 26.5.2 to see if it clears the problems.
And then try to sort out the cloud syncing part
@jmhbpc
I haven’t added tracks to Apple Music from Bandcamp for awhile so I don’t have much insight there. But one thing I have noticed over time with all input methods is that the “compilation” checkbox on a song’s Info popup can cause albums to appear incomplete. A frequent source of the problem is the Gracenote database that is used by Music to identify music. Since a lot of the album/song lookup data is crowdsourced, contributors’ personal organization schemes affect a lot of the listings.
I see the same thing with Gracenote/CDDB meadata. Far too many people use the “compilation” flag for greatest-hits albums consisting of reissued tracks all from the same artist.
Which is incorrect, because that flag is only meant for albums consisting of tracks from different artists - ignoring that field and only grouping tracks by the Album field. Its intention is so these albums will be kept together - without that checkbox, each track would be sorted as a separate album because of the different Artist fields.
When used on an album with tracks from a single artist, the album will end up in the “Compilations” category, instead of with everything else by the artist.
And when some tracks have it and some don’t, you’ll find some tracks with Compilations and some with the artist.
yep, got that, however in this case I had altered any annotation in the artist boxes that might have differed from the main. In fact I edited the album on the whole, … still only 1 to three tracks ever showed up.
I can try to do some snapshots on that system later.
Plus, Music usually handles this by at least logging a track within a different folder, like compilation, or different artist name.
In this case the tracks were no where to be found in the App, only by verifying that Finder could navigate to them,
and Music could only register them when I dragged those files onto a playlist … and they still showed up anywhere else … such as Recently added or such.
As of now, on Music 1.6.5.10 on Mac OS 26.5.1 things are working better after editing meta data in a third party app.
The problem still remains on my home system Mac OS 26.5.2 … still TBD resolve on that computer.
Just a quick follow up
Editing tracks in a meta data editor seems to have done the trick.
Does not seem to be a Mac OS version issue.
I say “editing” with a bit of skepticsim … All I actually changed was to remove
a reference to BandCamp in the comment section of each track.
There was no other observable detailing that needed correction.
Here was ther procedure: “Edit” tracks in meta d editor (on a diffeent system > store on cloud > dl to computer at home
delete any reference to the album on computer (3 tracks and a play list) > import downloaded tracks > voila
still no clue why Music could not even “see” 12 of the album tracks …
Just want to add a data point for anybody trying to troubleshoot the problem discussed in this thead: in Apple Music 1.3.6.14 (macOS Ventura) on my Mac, tracks I’ve purchased from Bandcamp that contain a Bandcamp URL in the “comments” field of the Info popup (examples: Visit https://threelobed.bandcamp.com, Visit https://bardopondmusic.bandcamp.com ) are all properly displayed without any editing.
I only made the mention, becuase it turned out that the meta data for all the tracks were observably fine, I just went through the motions, and then Apple Music could “acknowledge” as existing on the original problematic system.
I can’t really see the cause as cloud syncing, and there are no restrictions in system settings that might have hidden these tracks
What I would normally do would be download the music to the desktop and, if necessary, unpack the compressed album. Then find the music folder in the Music folder, look for the folder for the artist and look inside for the album you want to augment. Then drag the track files to that folder for the album and force a rescan.
Unless the metadata is completely haywire, the new tracks should appear, though the existing track may be held separate if it lacks common information with the metadata for the new tracks. If there is a metadata glitch, I would open Kid3 (there are other metadata editors) and drag the whole album into the window. First I would select all the tracks together and tackle the common items, like Artist and Album name. To avoid small typos or caps variations I would just type them in fresh.
Then hit save and select individual tracks and check for consistency with the track numbering, the file names and the other variables like disc numbers. Hit save again and the tracks should all appear in the right place in the right order.
I downloaded an album from a label site yesterday and it had so much superfluous information loaded into the file names I struggled to understand what was going through their minds when they named everything.
Have you actually done this? I’ve always dragged tracks to the open application window, or use Music’s File → Import menu item. Or drag/drop in the “Automatically Add To Music” folder.
If you just drop the tracks into the library’s file storage, that won’t add any entries to the Music Library database. I don’t think the app will see those tracks.
File names are (or should be) irrelevant. The ID3 tags are what Music cares about. And if you have enabled the “Keep Media Folder Organized”, the app will rename/move your tracks in order to align with those tags.
Hi David. I did say “force a rescan”. There are a few ways to do this. It was never an issue when I used iTunes. If you want to keep a tidy folder the file names should all conform to the same format and, ideally, not be too long, if you want to look at them in the Finder. The point of my note to jmhbpc was to suggest how they can use a metadata editor to get the files recognised as being of the same album, together in the same place. Even MusicBrainz can give you some weird stuff which you might want to tidy up, so I recommend having one on hand, even if you don’t use Music.
I think Drew may have meant by rescan the Add to Library function under the File menu since that can scan the whole music folder/library you point to and new files will be added to iTunes or Music then. I do this quite often in iTunes after ripping CD’s with XLD and Music works the same way and this doesn’t affect any playlists.
I don’t think to this point I ever had trouble with any manually added music.
Ironically I have had trouble with Apple’s own store items.
When purchasing an album It often occurs that only one or two tracks would appear (anywhere) in the apps Recently Added, even after downloading the files to the system … I mention that because it seems to me if the files physically, so to speak, exist in the actual drive Music folder, there should be no complexity or nuance to recognizing the files … regardless of any Cloud delay
hmmm,
well the cloud syncing at least shouldn’t get that confused IMHO
I’ve had that happen when I import CDs. If EVEN ONE track has another singer as part of a duet, iTunes makes the ENTIRE album as a “compilation”. How many additional singers should be on an album before it is considered a “compilation”, 50%?