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Music - Missing Features, Bugs, Issues & Troubleshooting (Sequoia)
- Thread starter ErikGrim
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So only a bug with SoundCheck there is but custom artworks and everything else seems fine? How much is the Music app changed? Like can I still create playlists, drag and drop there the albums and upload it to iPhone? Is it all the same as on Ventura? I'm so used to that Ventura one that I'm afraid it could drive me crazy if the music app would make me unable to drop my bandcamp files with custom artworks and upload it to iPhone especially how organized I have it.
Sorry for the late response. I've been out. I don't think you will lose the music that's in the Music folder, but I'm not sure about the art work. I have too much time invested in the metadata of my music that I'm unwilling to take any chances. Doing what I do has kept everything working correctly for me through multiple operating systems, iMacs and system rebuilds.
When Apple split iTunes into Music, TV and Podcasts with Catalina, everything went to pot for me. It's been five years now. But I took several months and re-ripped all of my CDs using dBpoweramp Music Converter, then corrected all of the metadata with Tag Editor. I set up a new Music library, imported everything in and finally made all new playlists.
Considering the number of negative messages over the years regarding Music, I've come to the conclusion it's a POS. But I don't know what to do about it.
I'll give you but one example. I have a lot of Beatles albums. Most of them were imported at the same time. Some of the albums went under \Music\Media\The Beatles and others under \Music\Media\Music\The Beatles. On the 2009 Remaster of Abbey Road, 16 of the songs are in one folder and one is in the other.
It's goofy.
Yes, but that bug is ONLY with AIFF’s. If your files are WAV or mp3, then SoundCheck works just fine.
If you’re using WAV, which doesn’t officially support album artwork, then I could see any update to the Music app potentially causing a problem (this is why all my music is AIFF format, as album art is in the metadata. This might not apply to you though.
Besides that, no, I honestly haven’t noticed much difference between Music in Ventura vs Sequoia. I think I had to change a setting to show certain things on the left sidebar that weren’t there by default. Other than that, it’s been fine for me.
FWIW, I organize my own files, and don’t let Music organize my library. I use mp3Tag and format the hell out of my files to make great use of smart folders in Music and Serato DJ.
Here's one that nearly put me under the table.
I ripped a new album with dBpoweramp and got the metadata correct and evened out with Tag Editor then imported into Music. I'm running Sequoia 15.3.1. With "Recently Added" highlighted in the sidebar, I double clicked the album, and Music only showed about half the artist's names. What??? Many other albums showed artist names, including albums I'd ripped a couple of years ago. The blanking program had corrupted 40,000 songs? My blood pressure just tripled.
No, looking at the songs with "Get Info" or "Songs" shows everything as it should be. But clicking on "Albums" in the sidebar shows nothing. I said Music was a POS. I was too kind.
I ripped a new album with dBpoweramp and got the metadata correct and evened out with Tag Editor then imported into Music. I'm running Sequoia 15.3.1. With "Recently Added" highlighted in the sidebar, I double clicked the album, and Music only showed about half the artist's names. What??? Many other albums showed artist names, including albums I'd ripped a couple of years ago. The blanking program had corrupted 40,000 songs? My blood pressure just tripled.
No, looking at the songs with "Get Info" or "Songs" shows everything as it should be. But clicking on "Albums" in the sidebar shows nothing. I said Music was a POS. I was too kind.
This is intentional. They want you to abandon your local library, and subscribe to their "service". I haven't used Music since Monterey. Still using iTunes on my Mini, and Mac Pro since they are stuck at High Sierra/Mojave. Using Foobar2000 on my Air, and the phone.
The album art/orphaned song bugs were annoying, but the deal killer for me was no shuffle by album on the phone. I will never subscribe to Apple Music. I work in an area with very little cell service so it's not an option. Even if it was I'm not using up my data allotment just to listen to music that I've already paid for at lower quality.
Hell I still use my 6th gen iPod! Don't know what I'll do when it finally dies.
The album art/orphaned song bugs were annoying, but the deal killer for me was no shuffle by album on the phone. I will never subscribe to Apple Music. I work in an area with very little cell service so it's not an option. Even if it was I'm not using up my data allotment just to listen to music that I've already paid for at lower quality.
Hell I still use my 6th gen iPod! Don't know what I'll do when it finally dies.
I know. I get so tired of that crap.
I spent about 15 minutes the other day digging through the iTunes Store via the TV app on my Mac trying to find out if a show's new season was out. I finally gave up and logged into 14 year-old Mac mini running High Sierra, then went through iTunes to the store and found my answer in probably a minute. The whole time I was thinking, "Apple is making this hard so you'll watch nothing but what's on Apple TV+."
Years ago the feds made the movie studios give up their ownership of theaters. I'm generally against of government intervention in private business, but it might not be a bad idea here.
Check that your main library is correctly set to Music and Keep Media folder organised is checked
Then File -> Library -> Organise Library...
Uncheck first box, check second box, hit OK.
I absolutely hate iTunes organizing my library. I have a handful of folders for my files:
Anyway... no updates on SoundCheck being broken with AIFF files in the latest version of Sequoia. Major bummer.
- Purchased digital files
- Encoded from vinyl
- Imported from CD's
Anyway... no updates on SoundCheck being broken with AIFF files in the latest version of Sequoia. Major bummer.
Do you suggest me upgrading from Ventura to the newest MacOS? I have 110 GBs of local files music. And I always just drag a file / album or single on "recently added" tab and then create a playlist name that playlist after the album and put the album file into that playlist. That's how I do it, if it's all the same on newest MacOS then I might risk it. Do I need some Time Machine backup?
If you do a normal update, you shouldn't have to do anything. If you reformat and install the OS from scratch, you should be able to restore via Time Machine with no problems. But if you are going to reinstall everything program by program then:
Copy your entire Music folder to an external.
Also copy "~/Library/Containers/com.apple.APMArtworkAgent/Data/Documents" to an external.
After you Mac is up and running copy the Music folder from the external to your internal and copy the artwork above to your new Library.
Everything should be fine either way you go. I've done it multiple times multiple ways.
Could you provide it to me with screenshots? I just want to make sure I would do it alright, also where do I find such file so I could copy it to my external hard drive?
I always back up my music to external SSD, so I should put there also a copy of artworks right? To be sure they won't disappear?
My Music folder is in my Home folder and looks like this:
You copy it to an external. If you open my Music folder, if looks like this:
If I look in Previous Libraries, there's nothing there. I could probably delete, but I don't.
Your main Library is in your Home folder. If it's not visible, do this:
The option to show the Library folder only appears if you are at the home folder.
So:
press Command-Shift-H to open your home folder; go to View->Show View Options (or press Command-J); check the box to show Library folder.
Find the Containers folder and open it. Then find:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.APMArtworkAgent
Mine looks like this:
Inside it has two items:
Copy "com.apple.APMArtworkAgent" to the external drive.
After you rebuild your system and before you open the Music app, copy Music and com.apple.APMArtworkAgent from the external drive back to the locations on your internal. I'm not sure if there will already be folders there with the same names, but just overwrite them. Then open the Music app and everything should be just like it was.
I don't know why starting with Catalina, I think, Apple started moving the artwork to the AMPArtworkAgent folder, but they did and it's a pain.
I have nearly 40,000 songs for which I setup the metadata including the artwork. I also have several hundred playlists. So I want to make sure when I do a rebuild everything goes back like I had it. I've done it a bunch and so far everything has worked fine.
Thank you for this explaining, now that I can see what it can and should look like I feel more confident of upgrading and following your steps! It means a lot thank you
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
YMMV, I've had a finely curated large collection of music I meticulously keep up to date...
As far as the rest of your stuff goes, I think macOS updates and upgrades tend to get a bad wrap. There's long been the thinking that by the time you get to a "point" 3 or 4 update, things are in a good place, and that semi-recently that's just not been the case.. I'd disagree with that. My 2020 M1 MBP and 2018 Intel Mac mini are running great. I'm gonna stay on 15.3.2 after 15.4 comes out just to "be safe" in case there's issues reported, but the posts I've read seem to be very positive.
Namely, many of the picture icons in iOS mail automatically customize, like Amazon will show the Amazon logo DoorDash will show a utensils next to the email. This doesn't seem to have made its way to MacOS even though categories did.
Or is it a bug on my end? Would have been nice.
Wrong thread, oops.
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Funny thing is that they are doing something, as I see the Music app build number going up with each beta. However, I haven't seen any user experience improvements or new features in ages... so not sure what they're working on.
