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Some Apple Music Subscribers Experiencing Library Syncing Issue Across the iPhone and Mac

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Apr 12, 2001
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Over the past few months, some users have been unable to sync their Apple Music library between their iPhone and Mac, seemingly due to a bug.

iOS-17-Apple-Music-Feature.jpg

Affected users receive the following error message in the Music app on the Mac:
Genius results can't be updated right now. An unknown error occurred (18004).
Click to expand...
There are complaints about the issue across the Apple Support Community, MacRumors Forums, Reddit, and elsewhere on the internet.

The underlying cause of the issue is unclear, and it's not entirely clear if a fix will require software updates, or if Apple can implement a server-side fix. We've reached out to Apple for comment, and we'll update this story if we receive a response.

This issue comes after another Apple Music bug related to playlists was fixed last month.

Article Link: Some Apple Music Subscribers Experiencing Library Syncing Issue Across the iPhone and Mac
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/04/apple-music-library-syncing-issue-18004/
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erikkfi said:
Unreliable sync was the reason I gave up on Apple Music during a 90-day trial a couple of years ago. You know what service never gave me that problem? Every competitor I've ever tried (Pandora, Spotify, Deezer).
Click to expand...
Exactly this.

I was burned by Apple Music in the transition from iTunes to Apple Music — my carefully curated music library literally — yes, literally — destroyed.

An 800GB+ music library that had been carefully sorted in albums and playlists. Mangled.
partial albums uploaded. Lossless files replaced by lossy.
Cover artwork? Pffft. Mixed and matched… missing.
Artists mixed up and ignored.

Broke my heart.

Unless there is a major rebuild from the foundations up, I will never be tempted to again.

Why other services could achieve it and the giant Apple cannot is a mystery.

And yet, how often do we hear that Apple really cares about music. "It is in our DNA" they say… yeah sure.
 
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Good sound quality on lossless, crappy service however. I am left with Spotify, since my entire Apple Music Library is gone, and it's not possible to add music. I also think Apple TV+ is bad. All of my music from 2010 and earlier as a Spotify user is still there, 15ish years of songs and playlists and likes. Apple has not been able to pull it off.
 
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arkitect said:
I was burned by Apple Music in the transition from iTunes to Apple Music — my carefully curated music library literally — yes, literally — destroyed.

An 800GB+ music library that had been carefully sorted in albums and playlists. Mangled.
partial albums uploaded. Lossless files replaced by lossy.
Cover artwork? Pffft. Mixed and matched… missing.
Artists mixed up and ignored.

Broke my heart.
Click to expand...

I have never subscribed to Apple Music because of stories like this one. And syncing to my iphone has steadily become more and more of an ordeal—so much so I often just drop new material onto the phone with WALTR PRO, an app that exists to basically do what Apple can't be bothered to figure out.

Disgraceful that the people who invented the iPod can't do music and playlist transfers. This shouldn't just work—it should be seamless.

It's awful.
 
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Apple under Tim Cook:

1. See an existing service.
2. Make an inferior knockoff.
3. Push out iOS updates that add the inferior knockoff to everyone's phones.
4. Adjust app store rules to handicap the original service.
5. Notice iPhone sales are falling because there's no compelling improvement. Don't let shareholders know. Just raise prices to hide it.
 
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MacRumors said:


Over the past few months, some users have been unable to sync their Apple Music library between their iPhone and Mac, seemingly due to a bug.

iOS-17-Apple-Music-Feature.jpg

Affected users receive the following error message in the Music app on the Mac:There are complaints about the issue across the Apple Support Community, MacRumors Forums, Reddit, and elsewhere on the internet.

The underlying cause of the issue is unclear, and it's not entirely clear if a fix will require software updates, or if Apple can implement a server-side fix. We've reached out to Apple for comment, and we'll update this story if we receive a response.

This issue comes after another Apple Music bug related to playlists was fixed last month.

Article Link: Some Apple Music Subscribers Experiencing Library Syncing Issue Across the iPhone and Mac
Click to expand...
I had the same issue, started around 14th November on one device a new MacMini M2 Pro. It then stopped syncing across all of my devices, Macbook Pro, Macbook Air, iPhone, iPad on 16th December. Spent 4 hours on phone with Apple tech support, who basically passed me around different departments, each trying different things. In the end they pushed it to the next level engineering team, logs files on all devices had to be sent and as the log was created I had to open Music app up to get the error. Once the error shows up you have to sign out of Music app or get it again otherwise it just flashes up that its trying to sync. I spent Christmas using the Spotify free trial and was resigned to using it. Nothing from Apple, chased every week, then on 31st December suddenly everything started working again. Its been fine since, although Apple tech support say the engineering team are still looking at the issue. Not great and I'm pushing for compensation since its a paid add on.
 
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How is this a news story? Apple Music, iTunes, library syncing, artwork dropping, track name changes, etc have been an issue for years. The biggest POS Apple has produced and quite an embarrassment as a 14 year old programmer could create this. I have had so many issues (still do) that I gave up on anything useful with it.
 
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Also has anybody else had an issue where the Apple Music app on Mac won't allow you to keep "Automatic Downloads" checked? I have checked the box repeatedly, hit OK, and then when I re-open settings it's unchecked. Very annoying bug.
 
A fun issue exists with the iPhone not syncing after the Preparing To Sync step.

It’s related to the MDCrashReporter, which can be found in macOS under Activity Monitor. Quit it (or force quit it) and the iPhone sync resumes immediately.

It happens and is replicable every single time on the latest iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma.

Furthermore I purged my Mac at the beginning of the year and completed ripping my entire CD library in lossless just because it’s been potato quality for two decades - and sounds way better in the car now!

Why do I tell you that? Well, nuking your library and furthermore your entire Mac isn’t enough to solve this issue. So don’t waste your time.

The problem doesn’t exist with the same library on that same Mac when syncing to an iPad on the latest iPadOS 17.
 
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I still just wanna know why when I search out an album on Apple Music and play it, if the same album is also already in my library from a previous iTunes Match of a cd rip it(whether remastered or not) it will randomly play tracks from that which come in at radically different power and volume levels than the Apple Music counterparts
 
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Been using iTunes forever, and am an iTunes Match/Apple Music subscriber. The only real problem I have is that when I add new music to the library by dragging it into a playlist they get removed and I have to add them back in.

Music syncs fine between two Macs, my iPhone and iPad.

To be honest, I'm not sure what iTunes Match does for me anymore. At some point I legalized all my mp3s via match, but I think it's the same as Apple Music sync...but more reliable?

52,000 songs, 465GB.
 
Unless it’s changed recently, you can’t even properly backup a Music library so if something glitches, you’re stuck. Lost a good chunk of my library due to library corruption and restoring from backup did nothing.

went back to an older iTunes library to rebuild from and re-installed it using retroactive. No issues at all since.
 
My 60GB library and playlists got borked by Apple Music last year. It's still sitting on my drive, waiting for a long meeting for me to dive in and start re-organizing it.

But once again, this underscores my belief that Cupertino can't run a stable cloud service to save its life.....it's like the more built-in, cute, or proprietary it becomes, the worse and/or more unreliable it gets.

The only thing I use iCloud for is iPhone backups and Messages (but even that's wonky at times). Otherwise, I won't sync ANYTHING through/with Apple.
 
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