Music - Missing Features, Bugs, Issues & Troubleshooting

[B/D]

Excuse my English.

I'm fed up with the Catalina Music app.

The album artwork disappears at completely random intervals, and the worst of all is that since the last version (1.0.6.10), every time I add a disc to the library, I get a cloud error in some of the songs I just imported, and Mac Os tells me that "The song can't be played because the original file cannot be found", do you want to find it? ", and I have to manually reselect the affected tracks from my Mac SSD and add them back. Utterly baffling, and it happens to me with almost every album I add to my music library. It seems to be no pattern whatsoever to determine which songs will get corrupted after being imported.

I have searched the Internet and it seems to be happening to more people, so please Apple, update the app ASAP for the love of God.

Oh, and of course I still can't force the upload of the songs that gets mismatched with some brickwalled remaster that apple sells... we've been dealing with this **** for years.

How easy would be for Apple to have the best music service, one that transparently combines its streaming catalog with your music in the cloud, but they insist on ruin it by using a completely erratic and meaningless matching algorithm in 2020. Just let me upload a copy of my songs as they are and respect all my tags and covers, I do not ask for more.


This is a terrible piece of software, and a dreadful user experience.

 

[Jack Neill]

I reply you in other thread. Complementing, you need iTunes 12.9.5.5 to be compatible with Music. There is this guy that claims to make a Mojave and Catalina install for non compatible Macs: http://enosafo.website2.me But is a paid version.

You can try a Windows 10 or some Linux in this old macbook, however, the "iTunes" for Linux is non official and Windows is, you know, still Windows... welcome back to the 90's...

Just use DosDudes tool to get Mojave or Catalina on a unsupported Mac. Go to the Mojave forum and grab the tool. 100% free, easy, safe and DosDude is well respected. Over 18K posts in that thread.

macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Thread

macOS 10.14 Mojave on Unsupported Macs Machine Support Video Card Support Pre-Metal AMD video cards (Radeon HD 6xxx series and older without acceleration, Radeon HD 4xxx series and older with acceleration.) Pre-Metal Nvidia video cards (GeForce 5xx series and older, i.e...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[a-m-k]

At least one song will not play and this is the fie information for the song. I don't know how to correct it.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[ErikGrim]

At least one song will not play and this is the fie information for the song. I don't know how to correct it.
View attachment 955746
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Try deleting the track and redownloading it from the cloud.

 

[a-m-k]

I am 99.9% sure it was corrected. I did something (which I can't remember right now) and I just checked the song and the song plays as it should. I haven't had trouble with Apple Music today as far as I know. I haven't listened to it much today. I've been busy with life.

 

[ManUtd08]

I've been pretty reluctant to upgrade to Catalina due in part to some of the issues with the Music app. Is it still difficult to manually manage your music via the Music app? or has that been fixed?

 

[B/D]

I've been pretty reluctant to upgrade to Catalina due in part to some of the issues with the Music app. Is it still difficult to manually manage your music via the Music app? or has that been fixed?

Is still hell on earth, unfortunately. With the recent release of Mac Os Catalina 10.15.7, the Music app has not been updated, and remains in the 1.0.6.10 version, with all it´s problems (missing and dissapearing artwork, suddenly corrupted songs...).

If you use it ONLY for management and playback of the Apple Music catalog, it works quite well. But when you add local music into the mix, try to upload it to the cloud and combine it with the Apple Music catalog, crazy things start to happen.

 

[ignaciobarrena]

My Apple Music is displaying wrong language since 10.15.7. I've set everything in spanish but the Para Tí (For You), Explorar (Browse) and Radio along with AM Playlists are in english.

What the hell Apple

 

[B/D]

I´m from Spain as well but not from Catalonia, however Apple Music right now appears to me in Catalan both in IOS and Mac Os. Yesterday it was fine. I don´t know what is going on... ?

 

[ignaciobarrena]

I´m from Spain as well but not from Catalonia, however Apple Music right now appears to me in Catalan both in IOS and Mac Os. Yesterday it was fine. I don´t know what is going on... ?

Lo he reportado al Apple Support, a ver que me dicen...

 

[B/D]

Lo he reportado al Apple Support, a ver que me dicen...

¡Gracias!. ¿Podrías reportar también que en la versión actual de la app Música, cuando importas contenido a la biblioteca, aletoriamente se corrompen algunas canciones y el sistema te dice que no se encuentra el archivo original y que si quieres buscarlo, obligandote a importarlas otra vez?

Eso y el viejo bug de que el algoritmo de matching de las canciones no distingue bien entre diferentes remasterizaciones, y a veces empareja tu copia con la de la Itunes Store cuando debería subirla.

Una opción de "forzar subida" en la biblioteca musical de Icloud vendría genial para cuando el algoritmo se equivoca al "matchear" canciones.


Gracias de antemano. @ignaciobarrena

 

[ignaciobarrena]

Anyone having problems with Music app refusing to play anything after sleep mode? It happens quite often, the progress bar is stucked an nothing plays, I have to restart de music app.

Thanks

 

[Alwis]

The Music App is one of the worst pieces of software I have ever seen and the changes in in Catalina did not improve it.

My problems in the last days:

- importing an album via Homesharing fails with error -5504
- changing the composer and some other field dies not work, the old information is restored after closing the dialogue
- changing the genre does only work when selecting the genre from the drop down list, not when entering it with the keyboard.
- the name is horrible when searching for help on the internet

And to top this: There is still no Music App feedback section on the Apple Web site, still only iTunes. I really would like to know, which software is used by the Apple software team, it clearly can not be the Music App...

 

[Burningtime]

The Music App is one of the worst pieces of software I have ever seen and the changes in in Catalina did not improve it.

My problems in the last days:

- importing an album via Homesharing fails with error -5504
- changing the composer and some other field dies not work, the old information is restored after closing the dialogue
- changing the genre does only work when selecting the genre from the drop down list, not when entering it with the keyboard.
- the name is horrible when searching for help on the internet

And to top this: There is still no Music App feedback section on the Apple Web site, still only iTunes. I really would like to know, which software is used by the Apple software team, it clearly can not be the Music App...

I forgot how utterly annoying it is to search for "Music App" help online when both the app and the streaming service are called Music.
And it drives me crazy when I change information on an album or track and it just reverts back to the original info anyways.
This entire Music App is a bag of trash.

 

[Jack Neill]

I moved my entire Music library to an external drive (540GB) to use on my MBA and predictably half the artwork is missing. Pulling up the same iCloud library from the main drive all the artwork shows.

I miss the old Apple..

 

[sevenseconds]

Ok my insights on this mind boggling mess that is Catalina and Music artwork. I'm one of those who keeps my media files on an external hard drive. Had to reinstall Catalina, pointed the same library to the external hard drive and all the artwork was gone. 100K songs+ gone. I've tried all the "hacks" to get this to work, installed Retrospective and used iTunes (works but doesn't interface with your Mac in quite the same way as Music does), deleted stupid SQL files, etc. This has worked for me:

1. Create a new Music library (option click on your Music app)
2. Import all your same music files into the new Music library and start over. You will lose "Date added" info. To me, it's worth the tradeoff of losing that and getting my artwork back.

Now, all kinds of edge cases that Apple doesn't account for exist. If you have slightly more than 100K songs, you will not be able to even turn on "Sync Library" if you are using Apple Music. You MUST get your library under 100K songs to turn on that feature. Once you do, THEN you can re-add extra songs in.

I also had the atrocious experience of seeing all kinds of random files duplicated so I'd see "03 See You Again 2" next to "03 See You Again" over and over. I recommend Doug's Dupin to sort those out. I'm ALMOST back to normal again. Wanting to get this all squared away before the Big Sur upgrade. I'm still a believer in the ecosystem, even if it creates massive headaches for those of us who use it to the fullest extent. Argh.

 

[Lnds500]

I can't download songs in Apple Music but I can stream them? Any idea?

I get error -54 saying that I should check if my internet connection is working

EDIT: I repaired my permissions on my iTunes folder and it seems to be working again.

 

[Insidious]

After a year of thinking I was better off with Mojave, I decided to finally update my 2012 Mac Mini to Catalina. This forum thread scared me out of updating due to all of the problems with the Apple Music app. I use iTunes extensively in my day job, managing a music library of over 100,000 tracks. I don't bother with album art or any cloud features, nor do I subscribe to Apple Music, but I still have concerns about bugs that could potentially mess up the library. I'd be pretty screwed if a track magically disappeared, granted I do keep backups. And I am glad to hear the column browser made a return and Doug's AppleScripts can still be used, though I still worry!

Thanks to your suggestions, I updated to Catalina and installed iTunes with Retroactive. I haven't even tried the Apple Music app, but my library loaded up in iTunes just fine as if I were on Mojave. I also feel like iTunes is running a bit faster for me on Catalina. So it looks like I'm all set for the time being! I do hope the Apple Music app will eventually be improved so I can move my large library to it. If any of you have the same concerns I do, Retroactive will solve your problem!

*Edit* I do have a question though. If I open the Apple Music app, will it automatically load my iTunes library? I'm thinking about using Music for my own personal music collection while keeping my work library exclusively linked with iTunes. I know I can hold Option when starting Music to start a new library, but I guess what I'm asking is will Music create a separate library file without attempting to import or overwrite my existing iTunes library?

 

[Alwis]

For me, Music imported my iTunes library when I started it for the first time in Catalina. When I remember correctly, the iTunes Library files where not deleted, but there there is no iTunes anymore. So creating a second library would be your only option.

Today I tried to import new music files to a second Mac using private sharing. I can open the shared library, but when selecting to import files I get the very helpful error message "5504"... This has been a problem for quite a while and I am tired of figuring these glitches out.

 

[ErikGrim]

*Edit* I do have a question though. If I open the Apple Music app, will it automatically load my iTunes library?

If you open Apple Music at any time with option down, you can select your current iTunes library and it will build a Music library from its current state. It's a one way operation though so any database changes you make in Music won't translate to iTunes and vice versa.

 

[Navvier]

On the latest Catalina I sometimes face problem when I can't play anything in Music app after mac wake. Music restart helps...

 

[Alwis]

The app did not improve in Big Sur:

I still can not change the genre and some other metadata for songs, it will always return to the previous value. For the time being I change the metadata with an external application but this can not be s solution for a functionality that should simply work...

Sharing music to an other computer stil, does not work, the computer sees the second music library but when trying to import titles only an error is shown. My workaround for that is to drag & drop the music via screen sharing.

And an UI issue, that really annoys me since Catalina, as I always forget about it: The music sharing is activated in the system settings, but for it to work the "Music" app has to be started. For all other sharing services there is a background process and no need to start an other software. I think this is highly inconsistent, either move the setting back to the Music app or implement a background process ti eliminate the need for the app to be active.

 

[bobbmd]

Hello- I asked this on another thread-- I finally upgraded from El Capitan to Catalina on my ancient late 2012 Mac Mini i7 with 16GB RAM with a new Samsung 4TB SSD. My iTunes library will not play anymore-- all 15000+ songs 1100 CDs that I spent the better part of 3 NFL seasons feeding my CDs into my Apple CD ripper one at a time are desparacedoed(SIC)! The album art the songs the albums are still in 'MUSIC'(beautifully arranged) but if I try to play an album or song it says "can't be found do you want to locate it?" Where the hell is my library so it can be played? If I go to ROON all my ripped library is there (I think) BUT in Audirvana 3.5+ the old legacy iTunes library(the 'player' black box) is empty now. It is not the end of my music world as I have hundreds of playlists I have made on TIDAL and Qobuz(in HiRes not apple lossless or AIFF) pretty much duplicating my CD collection and more, but I would like to have the option of listening to all that hard work I did once upon a time in a galaxy far far away!!
Also my old mini runs very warm to hot now is that because of Catalina(CPU usage)-- and I can hear the fan run for the first time ever-- is this bad or mean impending doom?-- or do I just need to get the innards and the fan cleaned out of dust and 'stuff' or the fan replaced? And Catalina will not let me put the mini 'to sleep' so it is on all the time 24/7.
Thanks bobbmd

 

[Insidious]

Hello- I asked this on another thread-- I finally upgraded from El Capitan to Catalina on my ancient late 2012 Mac Mini i7 with 16GB RAM with a new Samsung 4TB SSD. My iTunes library will not play anymore-- all 15000+ songs 1100 CDs that I spent the better part of 3 NFL seasons feeding my CDs into my Apple CD ripper one at a time are desparacedoed(SIC)! The album art the songs the albums are still in 'MUSIC'(beautifully arranged) but if I try to play an album or song it says "can't be found do you want to locate it?" Where the hell is my library so it can be played? If I go to ROON all my ripped library is there (I think) BUT in Audirvana 3.5+ the old legacy iTunes library(the 'player' black box) is empty now. It is not the end of my music world as I have hundreds of playlists I have made on TIDAL and Qobuz(in HiRes not apple lossless or AIFF) pretty much duplicating my CD collection and more, but I would like to have the option of listening to all that hard work I did once upon a time in a galaxy far far away!!
Also my old mini runs very warm to hot now is that because of Catalina(CPU usage)-- and I can hear the fan run for the first time ever-- is this bad or mean impending doom?-- or do I just need to get the innards and the fan cleaned out of dust and 'stuff' or the fan replaced? And Catalina will not let me put the mini 'to sleep' so it is on all the time 24/7.
Thanks bobbmd

Wow, awesome, large SSD you got! I have the same computer and my fan usually only kicks on when Time Machine is going or the computer is indexing. I'm sure your fan is fine, but it never hurts to clear out the dust. I noticed the missing music bug when I tried out the Music app too. It's not a solution to the issue, but I highly recommend ditching the Music app and using Retroactive to reinstall iTunes. As for your sleeping issue, go to System Prefs > Energy Saver to turn sleep back on.

 

[bobbmd]

Wow, awesome, large SSD you got! I have the same computer and my fan usually only kicks on when Time Machine is going or the computer is indexing. I'm sure your fan is fine, but it never hurts to clear out the dust. I noticed the missing music bug when I tried out the Music app too. It's not a solution to the issue, but I highly recommend ditching the Music app and using Retroactive to reinstall iTunes. As for your sleeping issue, go to System Prefs > Energy Saver to turn sleep back on.

@Insidious thank you but the page "what is your most important iTunes feature" which one do i click and i clicked iTunes 12.9.5 and hit continue do i just wait for something else to happen? Yeh that SSD is super i have a great apple approved repair store in new hartford/utica ny and my tech does all the computer repairs and setups for colagte university he recommended that samsung ssd and installed it
thanks again bobbmd