I have a weird problem, and searching all over Apple’s Discussions, Support pages, and even Reddit hasn’t turned up an answer. The problem exists on my iPhone, Mac, and iPad.
I have a few albums where Apple Music refuses to let me download the complete album. Let me offer this example. U2’s Rattle and Hum has 17 tracks. If I look at the album in my music library, tracks 4, 8, 14, and 15 are missing (I’m making up track numbers here). I can scroll to the bottom of the tracks and click on Show Complete Album.
Voila! Apple Music shows me the complete album with all 17 tracks. I can delete the album from the library and add it back again, and the same problem arises. I can download the specifc tracks: downloading appears to work, but in the library the track is missing. I can click on Show Complete Album again and play the missing track (apparently from Apple’s servers), but if I go to the album in my library the missing tracks are still missing.
I’ve tried File > Library > Update Cloud Library, but that didn’t help. I’ve turned the library sync off and on again, no success.
It almost feels like my Apple Music “file” (kind of like a profile or FBI file on a person) has some corrupted data in it, but heck if I can figure out how to get it to clean that up. Because it’s happening on every one of my three devices it feels like the problem is on Apple’s end.
Any ideas short of abandoning this AppleID and creating a whole new one to move all my Apple One subscriptions to?
Wild guess, but make sure you don’t have the setting on for explicit lyrics. At least on one of our cars, there was one song that wouldn’t play, and was grayed out in the track list, and that was why. Your situation sounds different, though, if you can play but not download.
Another guess is that it might be related to licencing rights across different geographies. Rattle and Hum is an album containing material written both by The Beatles and Bob Dylan plus a performance by B.B. King, so these are possible complications. However, since you can still play the tracks, it seems unlikely.
I’m using Tidal, streaming from Sweden, and I regularly have errors on my playlists with “you can’t stream this track in you location” errors for music that has played before with no issues. Sometimes, I can find the exact same track on a different issue of the same album, so there little logic to track availability from a consumer PoV.
I have had tracks disappear that I ordered from Apple and from CDs I bought and ripped. I spent a long time trying to track down why, and mostly couldn’t. In some cases it was a licensing international rights issue. For the sound track of The Secret of Roan Inish, it was a rights issue, for sure.
Sometimes I could download but not stream, like you.
Most of the time, despite contacting Apple, I couldn’t find out specifically why. I suspect but do not know that sometimes it’s a meta data error which results in media appearing unlicensed, I am guessing based on what I know of other digital licensing systems.
I just assume it’s a licensing/rights issue, and now, I buy the CD (or DVD or Blu-Ray or codex book) if I want it for sure, as permanently as possible.
I am not sure in my example that it’s a licensing/rights issue, but some meta data error may be at work. It’s not the end of the world, and a little meditation will help me let go of the need to find the reason. Have a good weekend, everyone (if you’re reading this on Friday)!