Music app is an utterly broken nightmare....

[Attirex]

From the smallest to biggest issues, OS26 has been a nightmare for managing my music:

1. After updating to MacOS 26, my music library blew up, half of it disappearing. I think I restored most of it (posted previously about this), but problems persist:

2. Access to Apple Music within the app regularly disappears. Only fix seems to be deleting the Music pref file. This works for a while, but then AM disappears again. Annoying because every time I force Music to create a new pref file, I lose all my settings.

3. I often cannot add tracks to my library from AM. Get a 502 error (I can, however, stream any song, just not download it).

4. I often cannot update cloud library.

5. Shuffle is broken. The only way to enable, say, album shuffle is to do a random series of togglings on and off of shuffle, song/album shuffle, restarting Music, etc.

6. Using Remote app to control playback to AirPlay speakers is broken. If I select an AP speaker using the app, Music deselects currently selected track and stops playing. The only fix is to go to Music app on my Mac and manually select a new track, then start streaming again.

7. I have noted that AM has lost at least several albums I had previously downloaded (I have no idea how many in total). Specifically, albums I know for certain I downloaded via Apple Music are no longer in my library, and there is no indication I ever had them (ie, they are not in Recently Added playlist, etc). They are just...gone.

I have checked MacOS firewall settings, I've signed in and out of my AM settings, I've restarted this and that.

What is going on?

 

[TumbleDryer]

Not that this helps you but I haven't used Apple Music since it became one of the worst apps Apple has ever produced. The UI is horrendously unintuitive and endlessly annoying. I think you either have to go ALL in and simply subscribe to Apple Music and let it manage EVERYTHING through streaming or simply don't use it at all. If you already have a collection and then subscribe to AppleMusic Apple will invade your computer and force upon you want it wants. I had it with the TV app. I had hundreds of movies ripped from DVDs over years mixed with stuff bought from Apple and whenever Apple decided it wanted to it would mess all my artwork and settings etc. even on stuff that had nothing to do with Apple. Artwork I had created myself would be replaced by Apples stuff even on ripped content. Stuff would disappear and I had endless problems and was forever fixing things only for it to be messed up yet again. So I 'freed' all my files from 'Fairplay' signed out of AppleTV put all my files back into the app and will NEVER sign in again to AppleTV/iTunes etc as I know as soon as I do it will mess things up again. I only use the app now so I can watch my stuff on the appleTV.

 

[BrianBaughn]

What do you see when you log into Apple Music in a browser (beta.music.apple.com)?

 

[Attirex]

Pretty much mirrors the Music app interface, including the few playlists that I have, access to AM, etc. My library is there, but I can't tell how many total songs. Quite a few tracks are grayed out. Hm.

PS--noticed that two songs I added to my library and downloaded from AM last night are now grayed out. My system is haunted.

 

[eRondeau]

Oh boy, where do I even begin... I'd been using iTunes since 2003 and I loved it. I ripped my 800+ CD collection and bought thousands of songs in the first years of the Music Store. I owned around 20,000 songs and maintaining my iTunes Library became my hobby -- whenever I was bored I'd add album art, lyrics, star-ratings, smart playlists... it was pristine, I was proud of its quality, and I played my music constantly. Then last year my niece gifted me a subscription to Apple Music and everything went to h*ll. Nearly 10,000 songs and my meticulous star ratings were instantly gone, and dozens of Smart Playlists that depended on them were empty -- erasing 20 years worth of work. I never imagined Apple would let me down like this, but here we are. Looking back, the worst effect is I never even open the Apple Music app anymore because it reminds me of how upset I was when it destroyed what I used to love. For me, Apple Music ruined music.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

Oh boy, where do I even begin... I'd been using iTunes since 2003 and I loved it. I ripped my 800+ CD collection and bought thousands of songs in the first years of the Music Store. I owned around 20,000 songs and maintaining my iTunes Library became my hobby -- whenever I was bored I'd add album art, lyrics, star-ratings, smart playlists... it was pristine, I was proud of its quality, and I played my music constantly. Then last year my niece gifted me a subscription to Apple Music and everything went to h*ll. Nearly 10,000 songs and my meticulous star ratings were instantly gone, and dozens of Smart Playlists that depended on them were empty -- erasing 20 years worth of work. I never imagined Apple would let me down like this, but here we are. Looking back, the worst effect is I never even open the Apple Music app anymore because it reminds me of how upset I was when it destroyed what I used to love. For me, Apple Music ruined music.

I feel the same about Music compared to iTunes. Music is extremely annoying, specially after an OS update. I have purchased and downloaded quite a lot of songs from the iTunes Store into a couple of Macs, so at least the songs and albums are in these Macs, but just a few days ago I purchased another Mac and chose to set it as a "new" computer. Last night I signed into my "iTunes Store" and chose to download all my albums and songs, but Music is completely inactive or stuck for nearly 20 hours as follows: "Downloading 265 items..."
Those are supposed to be the last songs I chose to download

I don't do music nor video "sync", so maybe I can export the Music library I have in another Mac and import it into my new Mac? One thing for certain is that my wife and I will never buy music from Apple again. iTunes was great before Music and its incessant pushes to listen to "Music" arrived. This week I have been bombarded by the Apple TV and Music offers, none of which I care for.

 

[Attirex]

Oh boy, where do I even begin... I'd been using iTunes since 2003 and I loved it. I ripped my 800+ CD collection and bought thousands of songs in the first years of the Music Store. I owned around 20,000 songs and maintaining my iTunes Library became my hobby -- whenever I was bored I'd add album art, lyrics, star-ratings, smart playlists... it was pristine, I was proud of its quality, and I played my music constantly. Then last year my niece gifted me a subscription to Apple Music and everything went to h*ll. Nearly 10,000 songs and my meticulous star ratings were instantly gone, and dozens of Smart Playlists that depended on them were empty -- erasing 20 years worth of work. I never imagined Apple would let me down like this, but here we are. Looking back, the worst effect is I never even open the Apple Music app anymore because it reminds me of how upset I was when it destroyed what I used to love. For me, Apple Music ruined music.

Man, for a fellow music lover, that is heartbreaking but very similar to my experience (although at a much smaller scale). :-( The problem is cloud services is just screwing up everything, and I feel like I've lost control of my library. For example, I download a few tracks from AM, and then later see AM has added the entire album. Not to mention that I think other users' tracks from ripped CDs (and other non-AM sources) have ended up in my library. It's a mess.

I called Support but not surprisingly, was zero help. I need help from an Apple cloud engineer, and that ain't happening. Oh well.