Apple Music users are taking to Reddit to complain about an apparent data-leaking bug that is causing other people’s playlists to appear in their libraries. The problem also appears to affect existing playlists, with random songs being added or removed.
Apple Music mismatched data
This problem is likely some sort of Apple Music or iCloud syncing server problem, in which data is getting mixed up between users. There’s no evidence that any of these Apple Music or iCloud accounts have been hacked. Still, it’s jarring for the affected users when they see random playlists in their Apple Music libraries, and existing playlists seemingly edited by someone else.
Depending on user settings, songs added to playlists can also be automatically added to your library. This means that if you’re affected by this problem and have random playlists edited or added through your account, it could also impact your full Apple Music library as well.
One user on Reddit refers to this as a “truly horrific bug in the Apple Music servers themselves.” The problem only appears to affect Apple Music on iPhone, not on Mac or other Apple platforms.
There’s nothing you can do about it and it is extremely bad news. Some people have had years of playlists totally trashed – songs added or removed, playlists themselves deleted and so-on. Apple provide no easy way to back up your cloud-based content, so if they break it, it’s broken forever.
One Reddit user says their account looks like it was “reverted back 6 months.” Most of their recent content is gone and has been replaced by random content from another user:
It’s almost like my library just got reverted back 6 months or something. So much is completely gone. Multiple personal playlists disappeared and a bunch of random ones appeared. My account wasn’t hacked, I have two factor enabled and nothing else about my Apple account is weird.
I deleted the persons playlists but then realised mine were gone too. I would be so upset if those playlists are gone forever. This is unacceptable
Top comment by Potato
Ugh. I have tons of issues with music that I purchased on iTunes too. This has been going on for for years.
Albums will often show up as two distinct albums (inconsistently on different devices), with some songs split over both albums. The split albums would have identical metadata usually, though not always. Songs would also be missing altogether sometimes. Or sometimes I get duplicate tracks.
The behavior is inconsistent across devices. Removing the albums and downloading them afresh sometimes fixes the issue, but not usually. Same with resetting the whole library.
I'm not sure if it's related to having used Apple Music cloud sync in the past. I do know that in the past when I would activate and remove this feature, I'd also get issues. Some things would be better with cloud sync switched on, some would be worse.
I also sometimes wonder if it might have something to do with having switch iTunes countries previously. Or perhaps it's due to downloading music from a region that's different from my App Store account.
I have so many theories but no answers. I've contacted Apple about this repeatedly but of course they don't reply.
The problem appears to be growing in scope, with a number of threads popping up on Reddit from affected Apple Music users.
One potential fix, as outlined by Apple Music users on Reddit, is to reset the sync status between iCloud and Apple Music. You can do this by going to the Settings app on your iPhone, tapping your Apple ID at the top, choosing iCloud, then tapping on “Show all.” Here, you should see a list of different apps using iCloud on your device. Find “Apple Music” and toggle iCloud syncing off then on again.
As of right now, Apple hasn’t acknowledged this Apple Music problem. We’ll update this story if they do say anything, or if the impacted users say the problems have been fixed.
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