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icloud music library will not update/display on Mac


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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?! :eek:;)

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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....?

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First, 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.

 

As for the media folder, it should be empty. I wonder if you consolidated the library at some point when it was pointing to the folder in your home folder. If new files are going to both, that's just plain weird...

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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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.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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.

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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?! :P

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  • 3 weeks later...

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.

 

 

jgw1867%20copy.jpg

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Interesting. Have you ruled out all network possibilities? Any ad blocker or security software? (I haven't re-read the entire thread... I don't recall the many steps you've taken.)

 

I'm in the midst of an iCloud Photo Library problem, where, even after an Apple engineer rebuilt my library, two of my devices don't show thumbnails of all my photos (many of them are just gray squares), and I can't download photos on those devices. There's no logical reason why two devices should not work, while two other ones do work.

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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  • 1 month later...

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

 

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No idea, but it's clear that something in the OS is preventing iCloud Music Library from working. A few thoughts:

 

Do you have two-factor authentication turned on for your iCloud account?

 

Any security software?

 

Any third-party drivers at all that might affect network activity?

 

Have you tried booting in safe mode to see if it works?

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'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.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

We approach, what, 9 or 10 months. Haven't heard from them since Halloween, which seemed like an appropriate day. I am thinking of sending the Apple support folks & brass something like "you are cordially invited to a get-together on April 1st, 2017, to celebrate the one-year anniversary of iTunes Support case #1080111280. Nothing fancy, maybe just hors d'oeuvres and some wine. Casual-dressy. Bring your own tech". Although do we think that might be construed as just the tiniest bit sarcastic?

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  • 1 month later...

"Look upon my works, ye [Apple] mighty, and despair!" OK, maybe a smidge over the top.....but I think I finally got my iCloud Music Library to work, at least close enough to be vaguely functional. Going back to ancient history, I had always received "Error 4001" and a shutdown of the update, when trying to update IML, so that I could never access my ~18,000 Apple recordings, which I had lovingly tagged and edited over the years. Anyway, I tried (yet again) creating a new library - this time I got one which revealed some 2,600 tracks in "waiting" status, which could not be changed with any of the simple ways: File/Library/Update IML, etc. I managed to individually delete them and then re-add them, from the media folder on my external drive. So I now have a library which displays (and will play) all my owned tracks as well as the Apple music tracks, for the first time since April of last year. (The last time I heard from iTunes Senior Support & the "Customer Experience Team", with a prompt from Eddy Cue's office, was Nov 11 of last year. They're completely AWOL.)

 

As I look at it more carefully, virtually all the tracks display the cloud logo, in spite of the fact that the large majority of them are my "owned" tracks, in Uploaded, Purchased, or Matched status. They are all located where they should be, on my external drive, where I keep all media files (also backed up weekly to Time Machine, a second external drive, and ongoing offsite at Backblaze). So I feel fairly confident that "cloud" status does not put them at risk of disappearing, but it is a little unnerving that iTunes is only reading them from the cloud, not from my physical drive. (When I play a track, I can see the faint display bar quickly moving left to right, obviously downloading, in advance of the darker display bar as the track actually plays). If I hit the cloud-download button on an album, the tracks then duplicate themselves on my external drive, and with nearly 700GB of music, that's a lot of potential duplication.

 

The OCD side of me is still not happy that it doesn’t "look right", but it does function (no thanks to Apple Senior Support), and for that I am relieved. Goes without saying....thanks, Kirk, for your help along the way with all this.

 

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Are you sure that iTunes is pointing to the correct folder? Seeing those cloud icons is just wrong; you will get dupes if iTunes is downloading them.

 

What happens if you select a track and press Command-Shift-R? Does a Finder window open on your music drive?

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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