Music - Missing Features, Bugs, Issues & Troubleshooting (Golden Gate)

[megabulk]

Songs view: sort order ("Album by Artist/Year") not respected during playback — confirmed not random, not a display bug

Running Music 1.6.5.10. I first noticed this after updating to macOS 26.1 (Tahoe) — can't swear it was that exact update vs. just when I noticed it, but that's my best timing.

In Songs view, sorting by "Album by Artist" or "Album by Artist/Year" displays the tracks in the correct order, but actual playback doesn't follow it — instead it plays in something close to Date Added order. It's consistent (same wrong order every time, not random), and survives quitting/relaunching the app and re-clicking the sort column.

Ruled out:

• Not a rendering bug — the displayed order is correct, only playback is wrong
• Not a Sort Album/Sort Artist override field issue — both blank
• Not a stale Up Next queue
• Not the old iTunes Library.itl file being mistakenly active — confirmed the modern .musiclibrary is active

Workaround that works: building a Smart Playlist with a no-op rule (e.g. "Date Added is in the last 50 years") sorted by Album by Artist/Year plays back correctly. Playing directly from the Songs view does not. So it seems specific to how playback queues get generated from the live Songs view vs. a materialized playlist.

Anyone else seeing this / found a cleaner fix? Filed Feedback with Apple, posting here in case it's useful for others hitting the same thing.

Screenshot #1: I annotated the actual, incorrect playback order (Courier, red).
Screenshot #2: This incorrect order seems similar to the Date Added, but it's not exactly the same.

 

[cc333]

Has anyone managed to make a FOSS iTunes-workalike?

I see that it's still being developed for Windows, which is something.

c

 

[dialekt]

Huge bug where dragging and dropping songs to another playlist causes beachball/hang. I can't even complete the drag and drop. The action of dragging itself is where it immediately hangs. It usually seems to happen around 30+ songs. Only way out is force quit. I ran into the not respecting view (song list etc) issue. Also I've had slow playback performance since 2023. Songs that used to play immediately and I could use arrow keys and hear instant playback no more. I tested side by side with Swinsian and unfortunately something is inherently broken with Apple Music player from a design perspective ....not sure exactly what. Can someone confirm the drag and drop bug?

 

[macrlz9]

Can someone please check if this has been fixed in macOS 27?

Column Browser results (Genre/Artists/Albums) used to also filter when searching. This stopped a couple macOS releases ago. Songs filter as expected.

 

[maxoakland]

Has anyone managed to make a FOSS iTunes-workalike?

I see that it's still being developed for Windows, which is something.

c

We should join our skills and make it happen. I could do the UI design