icloud music library will not update/display on Mac

[Gregory1498576213]

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

 

`

[Gregory1498576213]

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.

[Gregory1498576213]

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.

[Gregory1498576213]

OK, now my phone calls and emails are just being ignored. And this has been in iTunes support's hands for nearly 6 weeks. Anyone know a fool-proof way to kick things up the corporate ladder a few notches, try to rattle someone's cage on the upper floors?!

[Gregory1498576213]

Good advice, thanks. Message sent. We'll see, I'll report back with any news.

[Gregory1498576213]

Well, 48 hours in....and no "Cook minions" have responded. Not even an auto-generated "we'll get to you shortly". I fortunately haven't had to deal with Apple support very often, but this one is pretty bad.

[Gregory1498576213]

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.

[Gregory1498576213]

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...

[Gregory1498576213]

<< 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.

[Gregory1498576213]

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.

[Gregory1498576213]

....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.

[Gregory1498576213]

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.

[Gregory1498576213]

<< 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....

 

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

 

Gregory

[Gregory1498576213]

<< 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.

[Gregory1498576213]

I finally heard from the "Customer Experience" rep again, who, to his credit, apologized for the delay. Here's what he had to say: "I’ve reviewed your conversation with Kirk McElhearn. It seems as though you are not seeing the 4001 error message at the moment. [incorrect, but whaddya gonna do?] In regards to keeping your meticulously curated content the way you want them to be, we are working on a overall fix for such. In your conversation you state that you do have backups of this available. When a fix becomes available, we will advise you to start over fresh with your library and re-import the tracks/albums. We will make sure that we do not ruin the time spent editing your metadata for this content. I do not have an ETA as to when this fix will be available but rest assured that our team is working on it. As soon as I have additional information I will provide you with an update."

 

I am a bit skeptical about the "rest assured it's being worked on", of course, but at least they finally responded. He also credited my account for one year of iTunes Match and a couple of months of Apple Music, a rather substantial gesture, so there's that. I expressed appreciation for this latest, although two and a half months to get there, well, it does seem a day too long. I'm beginning to think I will just go Kirk's route, keep my personal library on its own external drive with no Apple Music in sight. And then, I've always wanted a Macbook Air, maybe for the Apple Music library? No, wait a minute - Apple messes up my music and my solution is to pay them another $1,000?!

[Gregory1498576213]

Meant to run this by......in all of this, I keep noticing that my users/_____/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media folder is approximately the same size as the external drive which iTunes is pointed to - shouldn’t that iMac folder be essentially empty, rather than the same size? Every time I add a new album, it goes into the external drive's iTunes Media folder as it should, but also, it appears, to the one within the iMac. I'm sure I'm somehow misunderstanding the architecture here, just seems curious, I thought one of the reasons people move their library to an external drive is to free up space on their Macs....?

[Gregory1498576213]

interesting comment from them about this being fixed. This matches rumors about major changes to iTunes that should be previewed at next week's WWDC.

 

So, from what I saw from WWDC yesterday, and from what Kirk has posted about the forthcoming changes, it appears to me that the changes are largely cosmetic, rearranging things and changing fonts, rather than deep structural changes to fix deep structural problems. I've continued to mess with my library, trying this and that, but it seems to me the bottom line is (at least for the legions of people who are also experiencing prob's similar to mine), that the only certain fix would be two separate entities/apps - one for Apple Music and one for the owned library. It's the combining of the two that seems to be insoluble. But surely Apple wouldn't go to separate apps, as it would proclaim de facto defeat and be humiliating for the company......although what I and like-minded people are going through now is pretty humiliating for them, too.

 

So now I'm stuck with my Apple Music tracks on my iPad only, which means they are playable but not editable as I add them - doing my usual album-splitting and tagging is easy on the Mac, but since I can't have them there......grrrr.

[Gregory1498576213]

So, the 3 months of Apple Music subscription which the "Customer Support Team" refunded to me, has just run out. I'm now back to the prospect of paying. I sent a note to the rep who had been emailing me, saying essentially: if there really is a solution around the corner, people like me might be willing to keep paying. If, however, that solution is more of a talking point than a reality, well, why would I pay for a service I cannot use and (apparently) will never be able to? But if I give up the subscription, all the 100's of hours I spent tagging and indexing my 20,000+ Apple Music tracks will go up in a puff of smoke. I sent that July 1. It's Jul 7, no response.

[Gregory1498576213]

Interesting. I took some small measure of hope from Kirk's last, and then (after more prodding from me) the "Customer Experience Team" rep just sent me this: "We are very close to a resolution on this end that will not corrupt your previous metadata changes. Please stand by for an update shortly."

 

Hey Kirk - you're not working for Apple under a pseudonym, are you?!

[Gregory1498576213]

Nope.

 

hahaha, ok, well.......let's hope your reporting/insight into a new Apple Music/iTunes marriage, combined with the optimistic but fuzzy stuff from the senior iTunes folks yields a beautiful new bouncing, baby music app.

 

Or, ok....at least something that *works*!

[Gregory1498576213]

So, just in the interest of following up, I finally heard from the iTunes "Customer Experience Team" today, that I should try enabling icloud Music Library again, that their "fix" should work. (presumably they refer to the same matching fix Kirk has written about). No luck, I still get error message 4001, as I have since last March. I had all but given up the idea of having Apple Music & my "owned" content existing in the same space, for all the reasons that have been so well discussed, but thought that *if* the DRM and matching issues are a thing of the past, maybe it's now safe to contemplate giving iCloud Music Library another chance. Anyway, nothing has changed, for me anyway.

 

 

[Gregory1498576213]

This many months later, I suspect I'm the only one left who has any interest in this (unchanged) situation, or even remembers it. I hound the " iTunes Customer Experience" guy every two or three weeks, asking about any progress. He keeps telling me "they're working on it" That's been the official line just under 6 months now.

 

Anyway, the latest thing they had me do (at least there was *something*) was create a log file, open iTunes, and then attempt to update IML. The log is below - I'm not remotely capable of understanding this stuff, although I can't help but notice the line about 5 down from the top. Although, comparing it to the times, it seems the "disabling" of IML refers to its disabled state at the moment I opened the iTunes app, not to what happened shortly thereafter, when I tried to re-enable IML. Anything here that jumps out at anyone?!

 

Gregory

 

[ATTACH=full]138[/ATTACH]

[Gregory1498576213]

I've tried it with 2-factor and without. I did have Adblock but turned it off a few months ago, no luck. No third party drivers. I've consolidated, I've deleted and reinstalled iTunes, I've reinstalled El Cap, I've tried safe mode, none of it makes any difference. I keep thinking the "error 4001" would mean something to the Apple folks, otherwise why go to the trouble of assigning numbers to errors? I rebuilt my library a few months (one of your good suggestions) and I'm trying it again, as we speak. I'm about 6 hours into it and am about halfway there. (Time to go to bed). I also got the message below a few hours into the rebuild, which I don't remember from before, but, well, we'll see what it looks like in the morning.

 

 

[ATTACH=full]139[/ATTACH]

[Gregory1498576213]

Hi, everybody! Nothing new to report, it's just been a while, so thought I'd check in and say hello. We're at the 7-month mark of "Senior iTunes Support", the "engineers are working on it". Nuthin'.

 

Grrrrrrrr.

[Gregory1498576213]

tell me about it.