Restore Backup Missing Music?

[minimejer05]

So I got my iPhone 11 Pro Max on Friday and am absolutely loving it — the cameras, the speed and responsiveness and that awesome frosted/matte backing.

One major inconvenience I ran into during my restore from backup really ruined my day for me.

Back story — I’ve always had about 30-40GB of music on my iPhones from my CD collection over the years. A few months back, I finally pulled the trigger on Apple Music. When I did, it blended my own music with Apple Music just fine — I always download the songs to the device and never stream, when it comes to Apple Music tracks.

Anyways, Friday morning I did a full backup of my iPhone X to my Mac. Got home with 11 Pro Max and restored from that same backup. But I noticed that it didn’t transfer ANY of my music. After a little digging, I found that it displayed mostly everything through the Music app, but with the cloud next to albums/songs. So I had to manually redownload all 30ish GBs of music. Also, some CDs that I once had before won’t show up, because they’re not available on Apple Music.

Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone have any idea what I did wrong? Going forward, I really don’t want to ever have to waste 3-4 hours manually downloading all of my songs again.

I’ve come to terms with probably not trying to mix my actual music with my Apple Music stuff, but is there not a way for the Mac backup to keep track of what Apple Music you have downloaded so that when I restore it puts them all onto new device?

 

[Just_Me_D]

Not that I’m aware of. Looking back, I wish I had kept my cd-ripped music on an external drive like I do with my photos because it frustrates the heck out me when I find an old song that I like and discover that it was re-recorded.

 

[kataran]

I keep redundancy with my music

Have two flash drives and my laptop hard drive as back ups with the two flash drives at different locations

 

[HofstraJet]

Most of my music is ripped. I never merged it with Apple Music as I'm afraid of what will happen if I cancel Apple Music - somehow I feel I will lose my files.

When the automatic transfer works, I then have to sync with iTunes to get all of my music back. When it doesn't work, I just do an encrypted backup with iTunes and restore from there, which then does a sync and sends all of the music to my iPhone.

 

[BreakingKayfabe]

Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone have any idea what I did wrong? Going forward, I really don’t want to ever have to waste 3-4 hours manually downloading all of my songs again.

I’ve come to terms with probably not trying to mix my actual music with my Apple Music stuff, but is there not a way for the Mac backup to keep track of what Apple Music you have downloaded so that when I restore it puts them all onto new device?

Unfortunately you have to redownload the music even if you backup/restore from iTunes. I basically just made a smart playlist on iTunes named “All” and I hit the download button to that playlist on my iPhone to let every song download once again.

I only had to do this once and never had to fumble around again.

https://www.iphonelife.com/content/tip-day-how-make-all-your-music-available-offline-apple-music

 

[Tartarus]

Most of my music is ripped. I never merged it with Apple Music as I'm afraid of what will happen if I cancel Apple Music - somehow I feel I will lose my files.

If you keep the physical files on your Mac/Computer on the hard drive, cancel Music, those physical files will remain there. Only music you’ve added through Music will be deleted, your ripped music will be safe.
But like @kataran suggested, make a backup anyway, just in case. I did.

 

[minimejer05]

Unfortunately you have to redownload the music even if you backup/restore from iTunes. I basically just made a smart playlist on iTunes named “All” and I hit the download button to that playlist on my iPhone to let every song download once again.

I only had to do this once and never had to fumble around again.

https://www.iphonelife.com/content/tip-day-how-make-all-your-music-available-offline-apple-music

Thank you for this! Will try this next time!