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Posted: |
Oct 12, 2019 - 2:09 PM
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By: |
Jeyl
(Member)
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So, I was running MacOS 10.14 all fine and dandy when Apple released MacOS 10.15 with their newest music organizer simply called 'Music'. Since iTunes is pretty much dead and that the new music app would carry over all my stuff, no issue.
All I can say is, thank god I backed up my whole music folder from my user folder.
After running 'Music', nothing AND I MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING carried over. No music, no purchases. It was as if I installed a new computer fresh out of the box. Funnily enough, all my music was still in my user folder, its just that Apple Music couldn't read it. I tried 'option' opening and selecting the library only to get download links to my iTunes Store purchases that weren't downloaded (In the music folder in my user they were). But it gets worse.
As I've established before in this forum, I make a playlist for every CD I import. It's just my preferred way of organizing. And I also added artwork on my own, as well as ratings ect. Now I could drag the music folder into iTunes, but here's the thing. All the ratings, artwork and playlist I had made before hand are gone. All 22k+ individual tracks are all unorganized and all I have left of it is my backup that I made (Which hasn't been helpful in Catalina) and my iPhone that contains all the set ups.
So I'm in a bit of a panic. I'm facing the possibility of re-organizing my entire library into playlists that I spent over a decade building up to this day. Does anyone know of any way that I can solve this issue without having to do it all by hand?
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This is exactly what I feared. I definitely won’t be updating anytime soon. Good luck with resolving this issue, and please keep us posted.
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I'm thankful I've had relatively few issues with the upgrade (so far).
It took a long time for all my cover art to propagate, and that carried over to my phone, but unsyncing my phone and then resyncing worked and now everything seems fine and dandy in both places. Sorry you've had such a big problem!
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Posted: |
Oct 13, 2019 - 7:29 AM
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By: |
Jeyl
(Member)
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UPDATE
After three days trying to get Apple Support to help me, it turns out that restoring all my playlists, ratings and artwork through Catalina is a lost cause. It turns out that the information that is responsible for playlists were saved in a .xml file which Apple Music does not support.
BUT! There is still hope. My Dad has a Mac Pro that he hasn't upgraded to Catalina. So with his blessing, I take my music back up, load it through his unused copy of iTunes and boom. Everything is back to where it is and I breath a sigh of relief. Now, normally I would take this computer and clone it onto my computer at home, but that just wasn't going to cut it. Catalina is inevitable and if I was going to continue to continue using Macs, I had to find a way to get it working.
Thinking back to my three days working with Apple Support, it's that they really, REALLY believe everyone who is calling them is subscribed to 'Apple Music'. The first steps each advisor took was to make me open 'Music', go to 'Preferences' and select sync library. That didn't work because I was not a subscriber to 'Apple Music'.
So that got me thinking. What if I did? Upon further research, it turns out that there IS a method from which you can sync your music libraries up. It's called iTunes Match. It's a service that allows you to sync your iTunes libraries from your computer to multiple devices including other computers. So, with my restored library on one good computer, I decided to go for it...
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Posted: |
Oct 13, 2019 - 7:47 AM
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By: |
Jeyl
(Member)
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After purchasing iTunes Match (24.99 a Year), I started to get to work on figuring all of this stuff out. The good news is that iTunes Match will sync your music up to 256 kbps, which is what I've always used when I import my music. The real question was everything else. So I authorized the machine with my account and it started uploading all my music. 22k+ songs were certainly not going to be done that night, so off to bed I went.
So here I am now at my 'Catalina' machine clearing EVERYTHING from 'Music' out. Once I re-authorize the machine and sign in with my apple account, I do the step that was #1 on Apple Support's To-Do list. I sync the libraries. And at last, a ray of hope...
"To add songs and playlists to your library, you must use Cloud Music Library.
Songs and playlists from this computer will merge into Cloud Music Library so you can listen across all your devices."
Hastily, I click on 'Merge Library'.
20 seconds later, everything was back. Well, at least the essential parts were back. Playlists, play count, ratings and the tracks. I could breath a sigh of relief knowing that I didn't have to recreate everything from scratch. Couple of downsides though...
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Posted: |
Oct 13, 2019 - 7:57 AM
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By: |
Jeyl
(Member)
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Well, maybe not downsides perse, but some details I will likely have to live with going forward.
1. The music files are listed as 256 kbps. However, when I imported music through my iTunes importer, I had the settings set to iTunes Plus which were,
128 kbps (mono)/256 kbps (stereo), 44.100 kHz, VBR.
Every time I imported music from CDs, the bit rate would show it as 256 kbps (VBR). But it looks like all the music no longer has VBR... or at least no longer lists it. It basically went from
256 kbps (VBR)
to just
256 kbps
I do hope nothing got lost in that transition. Well, nothing audible at least. 
2. Everything has to be re-downloaded pretty much by hand. I tried selecting all 22k+ songs that were now added to the library and tried downloading them all, but that stalled 'Music' to the point that even Force Quit listed it as 'Not Responding', so now it's roughly 70 songs per download cycle. And of course, internet hiccups will stop all download progress so keep your eyes peeled for those.
More updates as they occur. There's still the factor of syncing this restored library with my iPhone after everything is said and done. But so far, the heavy lifting seems to be over.
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So, I was running MacOS 10.14 all fine and dandy when Apple released MacOS 10.15 with their newest music organizer simply called 'Music'. Since iTunes is pretty much dead and that the new music app would carry over all my stuff, no issue.
All I can say is, thank god I backed up my whole music folder from my user folder.
After running 'Music', nothing AND I MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING carried over. No music, no purchases. It was as if I installed a new computer fresh out of the box. Funnily enough, all my music was still in my user folder, its just that Apple Music couldn't read it. I tried 'option' opening and selecting the library only to get download links to my iTunes Store purchases that weren't downloaded (In the music folder in my user they were). But it gets worse.
As I've established before in this forum, I make a playlist for every CD I import. It's just my preferred way of organizing. And I also added artwork on my own, as well as ratings ect. Now I could drag the music folder into iTunes, but here's the thing. All the ratings, artwork and playlist I had made before hand are gone. All 22k+ individual tracks are all unorganized and all I have left of it is my backup that I made (Which hasn't been helpful in Catalina) and my iPhone that contains all the set ups.
So I'm in a bit of a panic. I'm facing the possibility of re-organizing my entire library into playlists that I spent over a decade building up to this day. Does anyone know of any way that I can solve this issue without having to do it all by hand?
All my music transferred over but when I open the music app some albums have artwork and some do not. The ones that do not if I go into their folder and look at the tracks the artwork is their. I am assuming apple will address this send an update at some point
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Posted: |
Oct 17, 2019 - 7:28 AM
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By: |
MRAUDIO
(Member)
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So, I was running MacOS 10.14 all fine and dandy when Apple released MacOS 10.15 with their newest music organizer simply called 'Music'. Since iTunes is pretty much dead and that the new music app would carry over all my stuff, no issue.
All I can say is, thank god I backed up my whole music folder from my user folder.
After running 'Music', nothing AND I MEAN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING carried over. No music, no purchases. It was as if I installed a new computer fresh out of the box. Funnily enough, all my music was still in my user folder, its just that Apple Music couldn't read it. I tried 'option' opening and selecting the library only to get download links to my iTunes Store purchases that weren't downloaded (In the music folder in my user they were). But it gets worse.
As I've established before in this forum, I make a playlist for every CD I import. It's just my preferred way of organizing. And I also added artwork on my own, as well as ratings ect. Now I could drag the music folder into iTunes, but here's the thing. All the ratings, artwork and playlist I had made before hand are gone. All 22k+ individual tracks are all unorganized and all I have left of it is my backup that I made (Which hasn't been helpful in Catalina) and my iPhone that contains all the set ups.
So I'm in a bit of a panic. I'm facing the possibility of re-organizing my entire library into playlists that I spent over a decade building up to this day. Does anyone know of any way that I can solve this issue without having to do it all by hand?
All my music transferred over but when I open the music app some albums have artwork and some do not. The ones that do not if I go into their folder and look at the tracks the artwork is their. I am assuming apple will address this send an update at some point
Yes, I am having the same Artwork issue. I called Apple about it and the Tech told me that there are other complaints regarding the problem. They should address it soon.
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Posted: |
Oct 17, 2019 - 7:19 PM
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By: |
Jeyl
(Member)
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Yes, I am having the same Artwork issue. I called Apple about it and the Tech told me that there are other complaints regarding the problem. They should address it soon.
Oh, I forgot to mention. The iPhone's method of keeping the artwork to it's properly assigned playlist folder? It's busted. It not only shows the wrong artwork on certain playlists (It confused 'A Mighty Wind' with 'ALIENS'), but it actually re-shuffles the artwork seemingly at random. I look at the playlists and suddenly Star Trek 5 went from having 'Rambo' artwork to 'The Abyss' artwork right while I was scrolling through the playlists.
Also, UPDATE on my situation.
The iTunes Match was a savior in terms of artwork, ratings and playlists, but it's method of taking tracks from my library and bringing them over was a bust. For example, I have the 2009 'The Beatles' Stereo collection and the service outright refuses to let me download a couple of tracks across the whole set even though they were ripped from CDs. So instead of cherry picking everything, I decided to delete all the music and start from scratch. I still have all the playlists and the music I dragged back in still retain their artwork (Weird how this stuff works).
I'm actually ok with this because it allows me to scroll down through all my music and make adjustments that over time have long since bugged me. Redundant music, stupid album names (Farscape Vol. 3 had the longest album name in the history of album names that iTunes pulled from the database), and identifying which songs belonged to a completely different apple account that I need to rectify. I'm about halfway through the process, but now I'm in the area that I fear the most...
I've reached the Star Trek music. That's all the movies with their original and expanded albums, the Ron Jones set, La-La Land's Original Series box set, 50th Anniversary, TNG, DS9 sets as well as all the other remixes and whatnot. I am scared to death of this because I changed up A LOT of stuff when I used the playlists. Heck, I created a playlist for each episode in the Ron Jones set. How's that for dedication?
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