I was going to post some lyrics from an obscure song, or at least the song’s title and artist, in response to someone else’s post. I wanted to ensure I had the right song, so I opened Apple Music to play myself a snippet. It’s not there. I looked for the album. Not there. I had a couple-thousand songs in iTunes, but now there are only 100 songs in Apple Music - which I don’t use because A) I don’t like it as much as iTunes; B) I noticed things like images were missing, which made me suspect it was changing things I didn’t want changed, and I didn’t want to lose anything I have on my iPod, and C) I’m not buying any more music anyway. I can’t find my library with Finder.
Where did my songs go?
Is there any way to retrieve them?
I really don’t want to dig out 200 or 300 CDs from the storage unit, and re-upload them.
I don’t see a significant difference on the “Music” interface on my phone. (iPhone 14 configured from a backup from iPhone 8) My iOS is up to date. I open the Settings then “Music” and I see two headings, “Apple Music” and “Library”. I turned off “Show Apple Music” and it has a blue option “join Apple Music”. I think I might have a freebie membership from buying the phone (i.e. click here so in a year we can start charging you", just like Disney streaming).
“Library” option shows all the music downloaded from iTunes on my PC via USB. I only downloaded 16GB, using a palylist on my PC, and assorted genre playlists. “Show all purchases” is on, “automatic downloads” is off.
At the top, I’ve turned off “Allow music to access … cellular data” since I have no need to download, let alone via cellular.
I tried moving my music from the PC iTunes to my Mac(s) but gave up because quite a few did not copy across, and figuring out which hundred or two did not copy out of 30+ GB would be a pain. (I assume some filenames were invalid under MacOS) So unfortunately I have not been using Mac Whatever-is-music-now…
(Currently stymied because moving from Win10 to Win11 iTunes and Airport Exrpress manager no longer find the Airport Express on my network, which feeds my multi-room audio system. Fortunately iPhones still find it, so I’m using my phone as a music source. Ah, technology).
I don’t know what iTunes Match is. Yes, I have a couple of new Macs. When I got my 17-inch MacBook Pro, I had all files copied form my Power Book. When the 17-inch died (won’t start because a transistor or something failed, and it can’t be replaced on 2010/2011 models), I had all of the files transferred to the new 15-inch. When the 15-inch needed repaired, I had all of the files copied to the 13-inch spare/work computer.
I think the iTunes theft ‘upgrade’ to Apple Music was done on the 17-inch during an update, but there’s no way to find out. I’m pretty sure I still have iTunes on the PowerBook, along with my music files. Assuming it will still start up, is there a way to transfer the files from there?
iTunes Match should be included with your Apple Music subscription. Basically it replaces all of your music files with the online Apple versions of those songs, up to 100,000 songs, and anything they don’t have, they upload from your computer, so you can then delete or archive the actual music files and don’t need them taking up storage on your machine.
Sorry if this an obvious question, but have you signed out of your Apple account and signed back in?
I’d been signed out since I discovered Music was doing weird stuff, so that I wouldn’t inadvertently connect my iPod and lose everything on it. I signed on yesterday.
In that screenshot, you’ve literally selected “Songs” from the “Library.”
You’re saying that the white box under “Music Media folder location” is blank?
Do a search in the Finder by pressing and holding the command key and then the F key. In the search window that pops up, go to “Kind is Any” at the top left and click on “Any” to change it to “Music.”
Do you see your all your music in the results? Just the 100? Something else?
And ‘Songs’ only has 100 songs, not over 2,000. That’s all there is. See post #6. There is nothing useful in Library.
There is no ‘Kind is any’ in Finder. In any case, I’ve entered ‘music’ and various file names in the search box in Finder, and there is nothing found. As far as I can tell, 2,000+ files are just missing from my computer.
When searching, once you’ve started entering any text in the search bar, you get the option to save the search and/or click the plus symbol to add limits to the search. “Kind” is one of the options.
Is it possible that in the time before the switchover from iTunes to Apple Music that you enabled iTunes Match or iTunes in the Cloud, either of which could result in your music being matched, with the local files being deleted and replaced with cloud versions of same?
