Apple Music issues after iOS 18 Update

So, has apple been getting back to anyone about this?

I have an iphone 11 running 18.0.1, and apple music has been VERY consistently borked.

When shuffling a playlist consisting of downloaded music, native on the phone, Music will crash just past 30 seconds into the first song. I restart Music, hit play, and the song picks up again at 30 seconds on the dot, and then the playist runs fine.

Until the next time i start it, in which case it crashes again in precisely the same way.

I've tried reinstalling the music app, reinstalling itunes on the computer, replacing the playlist, even reloaded my music.

Alas, nobody has answers for me.

18.1 is available now with no pretense of affecting the music app. It’s mostly AI stuff as others predicted. I turned off automatic updates, seeing no need to update for features largely available in newer phones (I’m using an iPhone 12, putting my plans for a new one on hold indefinitely until the dust settles) and being a little gun shy now about being the first guy on the block. I’ll continue waiting for a more promising approach to addressing the problems we all are experiencing (and it continues to puzzle me that there are so many different problems being experienced by different users).

Thanks for the possible solution. The problem with Apple's bugs is that they do not affect everyone in the same way. In other words, a new update comes out and people have all sorts of issues from the update. Handfuls of people have the same issues, but not everyone else does.

I have synched my iphone and ipad pro directly with my music library now and they still come out corrupted. Some albums have triplets of the same songs while there will only be the single song (correctly) within the same album(s).

In addition, so many albums are missing a large majority of the songs even though they remain in the albums that reside on the Mac itself. You go looking for a specific song on your iphone or ipad and you notice it's not available.

I don't even bother calling Apple anymore. They act as though no one knows how to do basic troubleshooting. Of course, not everyone knows how to do it and I'm not denigrating those folks, but when I tell Apple that I have already done what they are saying to do, I don't want to do it over again.

I'm currently looking for a high end music server/streamer for my audio system that I can load all of my music on to and then hopefully use that to transfer to my ipad/iphone.

Apple's bugs sometimes cause HUGE problems, and this is one of them since music is important to me and many other folks.

Cheers and good luck.

Very well said. They seem to have an excuse for everything, until they can’t anymore. I’ll never go back to WindBlows, but Apple isn’t making me very secure with them anymore.

I am in fact looking for a streamer/server now to replace iTunes. iTunes is taking way too much of my time these days in order to just simply listen to what I want, when I want.

Yeah it's still brutally slow and takes forever to show that it's already been added to the playlist.

So obviously the latest update did nothing - one more chance for Apple to address, or I say everyone cancels their Music subscriptions. Maybe that will finally get their attention!

Yesterday, Nov 27, 2024, I was manually syncing music from my Music Library on my MacBook to my iPhone and it was working fine. Then my phone said it needed an update, so I let it do that, then music syncing quit. I can find the music in my Library and on my computer in Finder, but when I try to drag it to my connected phone, nothing happens (it used to start syncing and a circle appeared and gradually filled in as the sync progressed, no more...) Its like the phone is not really connected to the computer, but it is in the Devices list....

I also tried the sync function, and I checked that Music knew where my music files were in Finder. Also fails to sync anything.

Apple used to be so reliable, not very much any more.

I was able to fix the issue by exporting the music files on my MacBook, the re-importing the same files into iTunes. Bottom line: music on iOS 18.1 is glitchy and the techs don’t always know what they are talking about.

Me too. Possible that the installation is still running in background which keeps it from doing its normal functions. I have three devices. One says it's got 18.1.xx, and I get one of my emails about every couple of hours. I get about one email per hour on that one, far lower than the normal rate. I caught the other two cued up and ready to install, so I stopped those installations, and the devices still work. But this is all speculation based on the small amount of information. Apple should inform us about such, but looks like they won't.

Since the upgrade my playlists keep repeating songs when connected to the car by cable. So it will play 5 songs then revert back to the start and play the 5 all over again. Even if I shuffle the songs it still does the same.

It won’t let me knock off the repeat button but when I play via Bluetooth there are no problems. I’ve done all the usual stuff even bought a new cable but no change. Spoke with apple support and all I got was “this is very strange”. It is very annoying and would like try getting it fixed

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This

For whatever reason, iTunes has deleted loads of songs from albums on my Mac, which then correlates (transfers over) to my iPhone and iPad with iTunes Match, or whatever it's called these days. Manually syncing is no better for me either. If songs are not deleted, a huge portion of songs have been scattered all around my library. In other words, you pull up an album and only a few of the songs are in the album. The rest seem scattered around as individual songs with different album art. Apple can't even provide the correct album art anymore.

If I only had maybe 50 albums or so, I'd wipe everything and start over to try, but I have far more than that and I'm not about to "test" this only for it to be corrupted again. As it is, I have tried, to the best of my ability, to fix a small portion to no avail.

I have cancelled my iTunes match subscription which I've had for many years all, because of this mess now.

One of the most frustrating matters, is that it does not seem to affect everyone in the same way. Some people appear to have zero issues. Those that do, seem to have the same issues, but then many other's have different problems. With that, no one can even pinpoint what the issues are.

I'm looking for a home music server (Cocktail Audio?) now that I can rip my music directly into and then manually transfer from the server to my iPhone and iPad. It may be a hassle, but it's better than not having my music all at once where I want it as it currently is.

Merry Christmas to all of us from, Apple.......

I’ve had the same problem and every album is now called Christmas.When I go to me iPhone I cannot get the music to download.Come on Apple sort out you bloody updates and make sure they work before you issue them.

I had hoped 18.2 would solve it, but no. My battery also drains even faster - dead after 3 or 4 hours - and they now “sort” my emails into groups, and 850 have gone missing. Yes, I know, I’m a bit behind, but I can still see them on my laptop, so at least they haven’t been deleted!

I’m a subscriber (not sure for how long at this time) and, while my problems are different and less severe than those many are experiencing, this debacle is not a driver for Apple to get more subscribers. If anything, it is costing them subscribers. In fact, at least in my case, it caused me to cancel my plan to replace my iPhone 12 with an iPhone 16.

Something else I’ve noticed since 18.2 is that occasionally volume will increase or decrease when I pick up my phone to use it. Last night volume went down so low that I had to turn it up to max to be able to hear my music, then when the next song started to play it gradually got louder and louder and I had to keep reducing the volume. And my battery is draining faster since 18.2 than after 18.1

Not music related, but this “sorting” of emails is a pile of doggy do! Emails aren’t displayed, go missing, it can take ages to check and download (8 minutes yesterday, I timed it). But the emails are still there when I check on my laptop, it’s just my phone won’t display them. Maybe they don’t match the criteria for the categories Apple have decided on? I’ve turned off that new “feature” but some are still not being displayed.

I’ve just seen there’s a new update available - 18.2.1 - I’ll install it and see what it does, because whatever happens it can’t be worse. Can it?

I updated to the latest IOS update for both iphone and ipad yesterday. It made no difference. Nothing worse, but nothing any better.

I think I may have stated here before that I have tried loading new (ripping new CD's) into Music to no avail. They will show up, but they still show up with double the songs where I still have to go in and delete the duplicates. This is not OK. In addition, each time I seem to try and trouble shoot issues, other issues crop up that affect the majority of the rest of the music. Songs will duplicate again, "Recently Added" music does not show up in the correct order (yes I know how to sort it as well) and on and on.

I currently have several brands of music streamers narrowed down that I am interested in to replace Apple's Music "ecosystem". It won't be as convenient as Apple (when Apple worked) but at least I won't (I hope not) be going through all of this mess again. Everyone's time is important to them. I don't really care if Apple gets this fixed now, because I've been through this issue before with regarding this matter (several years ago, although, not as severe as this time) and I'm not going to sit around waiting for it to happen again if a software update were to fix it this time, because I know it will happen again.

This has to be an issue that is much deeper, because not every Apple user experiences it and for those that do, the issues seem to be very different for each user. What about people that are buying new Apple products today and get home and they work. What is different about them with the current software as opposed to those of us on this forum where Apple's music DOES NOT work........

Long winded rant here. Sorry, but Cheers everyone!

[Edited by Moderator]