Apple Music: iCloud Music Library Data Loss
I know that many people find the complaints around Apple Music tiresome, but I’m not complaining because I hate it. If I hated it, I wouldn’t talk about it at all. I certainly wouldn’t spend any time trying to improve my experience with it, or writing about my experience in the event my troubleshooting helps someone, or someone can provide advice to me.
The problems break down in to recommendations, UI, social, uptime, and data loss. All of these can improve over time, and hopefully will improve quickly. There is a lot that Apple Music already has going in its favor, such as editor playlists, and a vast content library at your fingertips.
I’m just going to go over issues with data loss in this post to keep it focused. Specifically data loss due to iCloud Music Library, which is a cloud service, and not your iTunes Library, which is the local data on your computer.
Chance Changes
My iTunes library has some albums that are from polymer circles people used to buy at physical stores. Those not-from-the-iTunes-store albums seem to be the central issue for people experiencing problems with metadata on their tracks changing. Album art, album versions (particularly greatest hits), tracks (live recordings vs. studio recordings), etc.
When Apple’s quiet service changes something in a user’s iCloud Music Library some of the changes affect local copies of files (my queen songs were already on the device when it reorganized the albums and album art). Other changes only affect what happens if a file is no longer on your device, or was never on the device, and is downloaded. You might get the wrong file. This happens in ways that are not always reproducible.
That’s really concerning because then you’re just rolling dice. You open the app and something’s missing, or changed, and you’ll have no idea how long it’s been that way. If that wrong data has migrated to all your backups, or if it just happened a minute ago.
Another kind of data loss is missing playlists. I first saw Anthony Waller point this out on Twitter this morning. Then I said to myself, “Oh that sucks for him, I know my playlists are there because when I opened this the other day — OMG WHERE DID MY PLAYLISTS GO?!” Indeed, all of my playlists that were not created after my iPhone was updated, and the iCloud Music Library were enabled, were gone. That left me with “Purchased”, like Anthony, an Apple Music editor’s playlist I saved, and “Star Trek” — because I’m a super cool guy.
The playlists were all still there on my MacBook Pro. When iTunes 12.2 found its way on to my Mac, I didn’t enable the iCloud Music Library like I had on my iPhone. This isn’t my first rodeo. I use my Mac as an organized repository of collected works — you know, like a library — and I thought caution was appropriate. Turns out that was a really good idea!
Exorcism
Apple has provided no way for users to revert changes that are being made in iOS, and no mechanism to recover deleted data. That really bothers me because if an automated system is going to make changes to optimize my data then it’s never going to be 100 percent accurate. Dropbox is really close to perfect these days for maintaining the integrity of my data, but they still have mechanisms to recover files and revert versions.
My iPhone would not sync with iTunes. When you have iCloud Music Library enabled on your phone, it disables it and cheerfully reminds you that all your music lives in the cloud — the place where it’s totally safe and stuff. So obviously the software engineers didn’t think you needed to manually sync anything.
- Disable iCloud Music Library on the device.
- Settings > Music > iCloud Music Library toggle.
- Backup the iCloud Music Library on your computer. Just in case!
- File > Library > Export Library …
- Sync your iPhone with your computer.
- Check both libraries.
- Optional: Don’t reenable iCloud Music Library
Some might find this too paranoid, but really it’s just laziness. I know I have the data, I’m not sweating bullets over that, I just don’t want to repeatedly have to restore things. You can use Apple Music just fine without iCloud Music Library. Most people might not know that. The tracks all download offline, the playlists work, everything. It’s just about keeping the “My Music” section identical on all the devices without user-initiated sync. That includes keeping the things you’ve “hearted” in sync to improve recommendations.
Since reactivating iCloud Music Library would probably cause random, quiet, data loss I’m just not sure it’s worth the effort. Like I said, it’s a bigger waste of my time to purge problems than to keep it up-to-date.
Kyle Seth Gray, of Twitter infamy, went about this a different way, and he’s still relying on iCloud Music Library. In spite of his problems, he prefers the ubiquity to any potential consequences.
Whether or not you turn it back on, it’s pretty clear that this isn’t an optimal user experience, and it further tarnishes Apple’s reputation with cloud services. I would really like a bright, and gleaming reputation. You know, a silver lining…
Category: text