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icloud music library will not update/display on Mac


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Aloha, everyone -

 

I have had this problem at the (so I'm told) senior level of iTunes support for nearly a month now, with no solution yet forthcoming. I have about 52k tracks which I own and are on an external drive attached to my iMac (frequent backups to additional drive and to Backblaze). I also have about 21k Apple Music tracks, all carefully tagged and metadata-ed just the way I like them, which, for classical music, is a chore. However, about a month ago the icloud music library simply stopped updating on my iMac - whenever I tick the "icloud music library" box in Preferences/General, I get the same old result: the activity window shows the usual steps, "Gathering information, etc" followed by "Waiting for Apple to deliver your icloud music library", but then (after at least an hour or two) I get "Genius results cannot be updated right now, an error occurred (4001)". Naturally, we (Apple support and I) have tried all the entry-level solutions over the weeks, de-authorizing and re-authorizing, signing in and out of Apple ID, turning Genius on or off (I never use it and so the default would be "off"). I even tried to download the library to a different Mac user: pretty ugly, I just got one error message after another. This error message looks very similar to the way things were a year ago, when Match was limited to 25k tracks and one's library exceeded that, but I shouldn’t have that problem at my number of tracks. And another odd thing - the whole library shows up just fine, Apple Music and all, on my iPhone and iPad. So effectively, unless I use an iOS device, I can only see and play my "owned" tracks. Anyone else have a similar issue? And a solution?!

 

Gregory

 

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Well, with Match, you'd get a clear dialog explaining that there were too many tracks, so it's not that.

 

Have you tried signing in with a different user account? Create a new account on your Mac, and sign into iTunes and see what happens. If you have the same problem, it might be something at the system level of your Mac; if not, then it's something at the user level.

 

Have you tried this? I once had Genius problems that even iTunes engineers couldn't figure out. They eventually suggested I rebuild my library, and that fixed things:

 

How To: Rebuild Your iTunes Library

 

(Make a backup of the library file beforehand, of course...)

I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville.

Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps

Co-host of The Next Track podcast.

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I used a second account a week or so ago and had horrendous results, I just got error message after error message. I just tried it again, and as nearly as I can tell, the library is now showing complete and intact on a different user account. Although all items are shown with the little cloud icon lower right, indicating they are being seen in the cloud as opposed to on my external media drive, where my media folder is located. I double-checked Preferences/Advanced to make sure my external drive was showing as the media folder location, and it is, so shouldn’t all my "owned" tracks display without the cloud icon? I kept using Match and always downloaded my entire collection, Apple Music and all, to the external media drive, mostly to try to avoid the DRM re-downloading problem with owned tracks. I'm tempted to do your re-build, but a little torn in that supposedly the Apple engineers are in my account and working on their end, and I would be hesitant about doing something that might be at cross-purposes with whatever they're doing.

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iTunes doesn't scan the media folder you point to in the preferences; it sees nothing there, so it shows everything as being in the cloud. I think that if you consolidate the library - from File > Library - it should fix that, but it might not, and might end up creating duplicates. That's something I've never tried.

 

So what you should probably do is trash that library and start over. Create a new library, but don't turn on iCloud Music Library. Point it to your media folder, and let iTunes consolidate. Then turn on iCloud Music Library.

 

As for Apple's engineers, you could try duplicating your library, then doing the rebuild, so you'll still have the original library intact.

I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville.

Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps

Co-host of The Next Track podcast.

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So, thank you so much for the help - I did create a new library & point it at media folder, but for some reason it only displays about 150GB of stuff, between half and a third of my collection. I tried consolidating, nothing much happened. And all albums in new library all show icloud icon, and none of my meticulous album-making (turning multiple-movement pieces into individual albums) are seen. It's discouraging, and every time I email Apple senior support, they tell me "it's being worked on" but not much else.

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Hi Gregory,

 

I don't have quite as serious an issue, though in some ways it sounds similar, and I am following your saga with interest because I think the solutions being suggested and tried may be the same ones I need to follow, though I haven't begun. Frankly, I only have so much attention to pay to Apple Music problems when my computer life is going ok overall, but they have been around since the beginning last summer, and it's frustrating to live with them month after month. So I'm on the lookout for people who have solved similar problems and what the route was; in the meantime I thoroughly sympathize with your plight.

 

The most striking overlap between your situation and mine is your account that things work for you on other devices, but not on your main machine. Cover art and music-substitution issues aside (big aside), I am entirely satisfied with my Apple Music experience at work on iTunes for Windows, where I can listen to anything I please without issue, either from a "For You" playlist, from a streamed album of my choice, or from my home library thanks to iTunes Match. The same things are available to me on my MacBook at home, and various iOS devices.

 

Where it all falls down is on the iMac that hosts the actual iTunes library. While I can play my own music, Apple Music playlists or albums just click through: the pointer goes track1, track2, track3... done. No sound, done in 7 seconds. I haven't heard a single non-owned track since I subscribed.

 

So, again, not as painful as your total lack of access, but similarly frustrating in that I can't use my main machine for any new music. After all, it's the one that's hooked up to the good sound system. And as I said, I'll be interested to learn what combination of turning off and on, reinstalling what, etc., will eventually result in a satisfactory resolution. I've read plenty of Apple forum posts without success.

 

All best wishes,

David

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Thank you David, for the moral support, and thank you, Kirk, for the time & suggestions. It seems apparent that my "tcook" email is being ignored just as my last 5-6 emails and phone messages have been, at the senior support level. I'm mulling sending physical FedEx letters to the software-oriented folks on this page - http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/ - thinking that such letters might be less easy to ignore and less apt to slip through the cracks. Seems outrageous I have to even consider this, but Apple has gone collectively stone cold silent about my problem for weeks, and I don't know what else to do.

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If I do send such FedEx letters, I would consider, at the conclusion, cc-ing you/Macworld, Dalrymple, Gruber, MacLife, the iMore folks, et.al., everyone else I can think of, just in case someone in the Apple brass might actually be momentarily concerned that this little bitty problem could gain more visibility than they would like in the Apple-sphere. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" - Justice Brandeis. ;-)

 

I will not, of course, cc your name (or any others) if you think it would be counter-productive for you, or would cause you any professional angst or endanger any professional relationships...

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No, fine with me. I don't think it'll make a big difference.

 

This said, I have a call set up with Apple PR to discuss some Genius issues this week. I'll raise yours. Even though it's technically not a Genius problem, the fact that it displays a dialog that mentions Genius is something they might look at.

I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville.

Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps

Co-host of The Next Track podcast.

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<< I have a call set up with Apple PR to discuss some Genius issues this week. I'll raise yours.>>

 

Exceedingly kind, thank you. One might think that "error 4001" (not 4010) ought to tell them something, especially because I can find no similar occurrence of it on the usual community forums or elsewhere online, at least not since last summer, when the Match limit was 25k tracks. I'm headed out of town until the end of May, so that gives the iTunes senior support folks two more full weeks to respond - if not, that will get this up to *2 months* that they have had my account in "troubleshooting mode", with their own newly-created password access. If no response by the time I get back.....the FedEx letters will be flying into Cupertino. :mad:

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  • 3 weeks later...

So, I'm back in town - while I was gone, a rep from Apple's " iTunes Customer Experience team" emailed, wanting to know if I had performed the steps the support people had asked of me, and it it had worked. I immediately replied, of course, that I tried those things several times, nothing worked and that I had said so repeatedly, and that I was still frustrated that no one would follow up or return my emails or my voice messages. That was a week ago tomorrow, and I have never heard from *that* guy again, either. Grrrr.

 

In the meantime, I tried rebuilding the database, per Kirk's suggestion above - I had held off doing so, back in the olden days when I still thought maybe senior support might actually be working on this. The result is curious - first, I noticed that many (not all, by any means) of my albums reverted to their original form, i.e. several classical pieces within one album listing, rather than the separated pieces I created upon acquisition. I also noticed that even though I continue to have, in Preferences/Advanced, the iTunes Media folder location pointing to /Volumes/Media external drive/iTunes media (my always-connected external hard drive), if I go into any given individual song file, hit "get info" and look at the "file" tab, every piece shows its location as /Users/_____/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/, as if the media library is still looking back at the default media location rather than the drive I have it pointed to. And if I go to Finder, locate Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music and do "get info" on that folder, I'm seeing a volume about a third or a fourth the size of my actual music library, even though I don't seem to see any "missing" music, just music that has reverted to its original structure. Still no Apple music to be found anywhere, of course, other than on my iPad & iPhone. Curiouser and curiouser. :(

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....and, I now notice that all my apps are gone (not gone-gone, they are just back in cloud status, waiting to be downloaded again) and all my movies are gone. I can navigate to the external drive and see the movies there, but for some reason, despite Preferences/Advanced pointing to that external media folder, the reality is that the media folder being displayed is the one in the default Music/iTunes/iTunes Media location - my movies are not showing because they're not in that folder.

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I would suggest a few things.

 

First, you can always just move your current library file to another folder, rebuild the library, and, if necessary, replace the rebuilt library file with the file you put aside. Nothing is permanent as long as you save the files as backups.

 

For the file paths: I'd run Library > Organize Library, and then the Consolidate Files option in that dialog. That should fix the file paths.

 

The volume size is interesting; iTunes wouldn't have removed files, with the exception, perhaps, of removing some Apple Music files. Maybe there's some sort of cache folder that got deleted?

 

As for apps and music, just drag them back into iTunes. Or perhaps consolidating the library will fix that.

 

Sounds like there really was something messed up in your library file. Do you have any personal information in your library that would pain you to lose (ratings, play counts, last played dates)? Because I would almost suggest starting over with a new library. You could manually export all your playlists (you have to do it one by one) and import them into the new library. You could save ratings by creating smart playlists by rating, copying their contents into dumb playlists, and exporting them. When you re-import them, you then manually rate all the tracks in each playlist in one go.

I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville.

Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps

Co-host of The Next Track podcast.

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I did the consolidate, then turned off my monitor and went to bed. The next morning, I saw that it was *still going on*, with "copy______" going on three or four seconds per track, rather than the whirring blur I'm used to seeing when consolidating. So now, as it turns out, all of my movies and most of my music is duplicated on the external drive I use for my media folder, it's about twice the size of normal. I should be able to just take my *other* hard drive, which I use for weekly Super Duper backups, and clone that media folder and swap it out for the duped-up one that's being referenced now, right?

 

In the meantime, I also just went back to the previous itl file, which did restore all my albums to the edited, curated state I had them in before. As for starting over with a new library, I don't care a whit about ratings, I have never rated or "loved" a single track, so no prob there. I would want to keep playlists, and many of my smart playlists are based on plays, so I'd hate to lose that aspect. What I would hate to lose most, as mentioned, is all the 100's of hours of works I've put in over the years, reducing larger classical albums to their individual work components, i.e., with a 3-symphony album, I have meticulously edited that so that it shows up as three separate albums, all of which can be viewed in album view.

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Ouch.

 

So what I'd do is manually export each playlist - from the File > Library menu. Export them in XML format, and you can reimport them into iTunes.

 

Create a new library, and drag your media folder - sans duplicates - onto iTunes, and let it add everything. Then import the playlists, one at a time.

 

The split albums won't be affected; they are based on the tags themselves (I do the same thing for much classical music, saving each work as an "album.")

 

This _should_ sort things out, but given your problems, I'm hesitant to be over-positive. :-)

I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville.

Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps

Co-host of The Next Track podcast.

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<< The split albums won't be affected; they are based on the tags themselves >>

 

Ok....but when I tried creating a new library or rebuilding the old one before, the result was that the "split albums" were sometimes in place but sometimes reverted back to the original album structure. This is my hesitation right now, and why yesterday I went back to the older .itl file, as it seems to "remember" my years-old curating.

 

You're the indisputable "iTunes Guy", I regret that I seem to be becoming the "iTunes Problem Guy" - if you can ever maneuver me into getting this fixed once and for all, I will need to know which sponsors to buy from or whom to send a check to....:cool:

 

Still not a peep from the many iTunes Senior Support folks who have checked in (and out) over the last two months.

 

Gregory

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You don't have iCloud Music Library or iTunes Match turned on, right? Or do you? For the split albums, as long as those aren't turned on, nothing should change because you've set the tags for them to be split.

 

As for "iTunes senior support," um, yeah. That's pretty par for the course, from what I hear. I tend to get better support when things go to that level, because I contact people at Apple directly.

I write about Macs, music, and more at Kirkville.

Author of Take Control of macOS Media Apps

Co-host of The Next Track podcast.

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<< You don't have iCloud Music Library or iTunes Match turned on, right? Or do you? >>

 

Well, I have had iTunes Match since the beginning, and added icloud music library along the way, making very sure to always have every single track stored locally (and backed up on more than one drive) in order to avoid the re-downloading issues and DRM issues you have chronicled so thoroughly. It all worked well, up until the beginning of April, that's what triggered this whole thing. Something went south at that point, and ticking the icloud music library box in Preferences is what would give me, two hours later, the Error 4001.

 

I may continue to experiment with a new library but only if I know I can get back to the current .itl file which retains my album-splitting. I understand what you're saying about that being in the tags, but when I tried the new album a few days ago, I came up with one which lost a good deal of the album-splitting, not all, but a lot.

 

And I may have to settle for not having my Apple music available to me on the iMac (those tracks are avail on iOS devices), but I spent 100's of hours getting *them* edited to my liking too, so it's highly frustrating.

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