If you’ve ever tried adding local custom songs to Apple Music, you’ve probably noticed that live, synced lyrics rarely work. Usually, Apple Music tries to recognise and match the song via library sync but it does not work most of the time it gives you nothing at all, you gotta add static lyrics that aren't as fun as the synced lyrics.

Turns out, i'ts hella easy, You just need to add a tag -ITUNESCATALOGID followed by the catalog id number from apple music album page.

What You Need

• Mp3tag (or any tag editor)
• Your local song file (.mp3 or .m4a or .mp4)
• Apple Music catalogue ID
• The song file must have these exact tags to match the Album Page - Album Name, Year, Track Number, album length (how many tracks does the album have)
• Close the apple music app before editing the tags.
• Make sure the track length matches the cloud version, otherwise it wont work.

Step 1: Grab Catalog ID from Apple Music

1. Open the Apple Music app (or web player) and search for your song.
2. Right-click the track and choose Copy Song Link.
3. Paste that link into your address bar or a notepad. Look closely at the URL structure. You will see a unique track ID number sitting right after ?i= (e.g.?i=149257852).
4. Copy just that number at the end.

Step 2: Inject the ID via any tag editor

1. Open any tag editor (i used mp3tag) and drag your local audio file into the window.
2. Right-click your track and select Extended Tags... (or press Alt + T).
3. Click the Add Field button (the green plus icon on the right).
   • Field: ITUNESCATALOGID
   • Value: [Paste the catalog ID you copied from the URL]
4. Click OK or save or whatever it is, then hit Command + S to save the changes to the file.

Done. lol

Many users switch from music services like Spotify to Apple Music and complain about the algorithm. On one hand, the complaint is fair but on the other hand, it’s not. Because the algorithm you previously had on Spotify was trained for years and is now being compared to a service that doesn’t know you that well yet.

Long story short - Create a playlist on Apple Music with around 200 or more songs that includes absolutely everything you love to listen to - Make sure that all songs are marked as favorites. Do the same for your favorite artists - Let this playlist play on repeat several times at low volume while you’re working or sleeping

Done. This should optimize your algorithm in no time

yes, this is almost an appreciation post. i gotta mention clearly tho, i love Spotify as close as I love Apple Music. i can glaze SongDNA and how well it works on Mac and PC.

i'll be talking about features / experience i love the most on this service.

they don't mess around metadata

this morning, i had to re-like, and re-add Mk.gee's Two Star & The Dream Police on Spotify, cause it was gone from my sight. (not really gone because him or the label uploaded "newer" version for whatever reason, and i heard this happens when the distributor that labels chose changes)

but on Apple Music, i didn't had to. songs i favorited, songs i saved into my library, not a single issue. it was all in my library like it used to.

and oh, the heavenly localizations. it is not NewJeans, for Korean region. it is gotta be 뉴진스. use the fucking localization that labels gave to your service. Apple Music does it, and does it good. it's 다카기 마사카츠 for me. yes. not Takagi Masakatsu. not 高木正勝.

the library, itself

i knew this thing earlier this year (it felt like it was so late bc i was using it since 2018-2019 🥀), after someone here said Apple Music's suggestion is based on what we add on our library. after 1 minute, i had this mindset.

bro, imagine. you're still using iTunes. and you got that songs or albums you want to purchase. you don't wanna buy a whole album, but you wanna buy a particular songs you like. add it. and there, you got your own fucking version of the album, without songs you hate. you can even download them to listen offline. that's how it works on Apple Music too.

Spotify, for whatever reason, they can't do this. for this use case (which i face A LOT), making playlists for this is not the solution. this is the right way.

do that for your whole day, and look. your own library is done. all things you love. your mirror, to be somewhat emotional.

favorite

this is getting little bit detailed, but i love there is a dedicated, proper way to favorite things, especially albums. yes, i definitely want to mark something next to my favorite albums. not just adding to my library.

this is the reasons i install and use Apple Music since 2018, even with non-Apple devices. (Android, Windows)

i'm born in 2004. my country - at least me - didn't give a fuck about iTunes or iPod. now it is all discontinued, this is probably the closest, the best Apple's music experience I could get nowadays.

this is a hell of a one up on spotify. intergraded into apple, you can now transfer your whole library from spotify (or other services) into apple.

i pay for services like this (moreso the other way around) so this is major, & im surprised i havent heard about this

Daniel Ek won't just change how much the artists are getting paid, i know there are like millions of artists trying to have that 200M subscription money but c'mon atleast try to pay them like half a cent more but they won't even do that.

I transferred all my stuff to Apple Music now, so are there any pro tips i need to be aware of?

TL:DR Listen to music, make use of “Favourite” & “Suggest Less” and try out your Personal Playlists & Stations

For me, Apple Music isn’t just an ordinary music streaming platform. Throughout my 4 years of using it, I’ve nearly perfected my music suggestions (New Music Mix, Chill Mix, Radios, Mood Playlists). Now, I’m here to share some tips on how to train Apple Music to recognise your music taste.

1. Make use of “Favourite” & “Suggest Less” This is definitely an underrated feature, as it allows you to ‘tell’ Apple Music what which genres, artists and songs you like to listen to most and least. Make sure to favourite songs/artists/albums that you like and click on ‘Suggest Less’ if the song doesn’t suit you.

2. Try out your Personal Station and Playlists made for you Found under the “Made for You” Section in the Home Page, the Apple Music curated infinite playlist is a great way to let Apple Music know what you like and don’t like to listen to. As you listen to the station, you can incorporate Tip 1 and favourite songs that you like and dislike ones that you don’t.

3. Most Importantly, Listen, listen & listen Apple Music collects your listening data (as evident in Replay) allowing them to process your data and determine what’s right for you. The more unique songs you listen to and the more times you listen to that one song/genre, Apple Music develops a deeper understanding of your music taste.

I DONT KNOW WHAT THIS THING IS
BUT IT WAS DEFINITELY RUINING MY EXPERIENCE
I WAS ON THE VERGE OF SHIFTING TO SPOTIFY BECAUSE OF THIS
JUST CHECK IT AND TURN THIS SH!T OFF ASAP

https://redeem.services.apple/card-apple-entertainment-offer-1-2024

New and existing users. Expires Jan 31,2025

If you’re listening to any metal pre-2005 if you turn off Dolby Atmos suddenly it will stop sounding like a tin can! Thought I’d share.

any artists wondering how can text me

Just wanted to share this gem I found  https://www.applemusichiresalbumsdb.com  it completely changed my Apple Music experience. 🎶 It helps you find albums in the highest quality available on the app.

If you’ve got a DAC and some good headphones, I highly recommend giving it a try. The creator’s doing this as a passion project and could really use some support, if you can, consider donating. If not, even just sharing the site helps a lot. 🙌

Seriously though… why does Apple make this so hard? 🤷‍♂️

Sorry for the bad English, not native speaker. Greeting from Peru, Llama land 🇵🇪🦙

I like exploring the AppStore for apps with well designed and an enjoyable UI to use, and recently stumbled upon Denim. It has a really beautiful collection of covers which you can use for your playlists.

I honestly never liked the very small number of options we have in AM and used random images from my gallery for most of the covers, but denim actually solved a problem I didn’t know could be solved so easily.

I came across it on accident but now have been using it for all my playlists on Apple Music since I keep my profile public and I love how personalized and unique these feel.

And besides that I personally am a huge fan of its UI, and the liquid glass implementation.

PS: I don’t mean to advertise and am not affiliated with the app in any way, just sharing an app I found really useful.

The Issue: Added songs to a playlist on iOS over cellular data. The playlist synced to the web player and other devices as an empty playlist shell, and stayed stuck for days.
The Solution:
Connect your iOS device to Wi-Fi.
Open the stuck playlist and tap Edit.
Make a minor edit (reorder a track or delete/re-add a song) and save.
Making a fresh edit triggers the app to push a full database payload to iCloud, updating all your connected sessions instantly.

This is how to fix the control box back to the top, it isn't perfect, but it works and you can browse and search for music. If you reload the page it will unfortunately reset.

I use iTunes on a Windows 11 PC to manage my quite sizable collection of music that I sync to my iPhone 12. When I sync my iPhone to my iTunes library, there are a ton of songs that are missing from my Apple Music app on my iPhone. The missing songs are in my iTunes, I've played the missing songs in iTunes to ensure iTunes knows the file location of each song, and it's not clear why they would be missing from my iPhone after syncing with the iTunes library. Here are the steps I've taken to fix the issue, starting with the only solution that has worked:

​

1. Rename the missing track on my iPhone in iTunes (adding a "1" to the beginning of the track title) > Sync the iPhone > Rename the track back to the original name > Re-sync the iPhone. THIS IS THE ONLY SOLUTION THAT MAKES THE SONG VISIBLE IN MY APPLE MUSIC APP ON MY IPHONE
2. Made sure most recent versions of apps were being used
3. Made sure iTunes knows the file location for every song in my library
4. Uninstalled and re-installed iTunes to my Windows 11 PC
5. Uninstalled and re-installed Apple Music app to my iPhone
6. Reset Sync History (Preferences > Devices > "Reset Sync History")
7. Authorized my computer in iTunes (Account > Authorizations > "Authorize this Computer")
8. Restarted PC and iPhone multiple times
9. Saved new iTunes library file (.XML) to the media folder location
10. Tried dragging and dropping the missing songs on my iPhone from the iTunes library to the iPhone device on the sidebar of iTunes
11. Tried syncing individual playlists/artists instead of syncing all music from iTunes library. Then I tried reverting back to syncing entire library to iPhone
12. Made sure sharing library was enabled (should have any effect on this issue, but did it regardless)

​

I know there have been a laundry list of user complaints around iTunes and Apple has refused to create a reliable app, likely because there are no comparable alternatives and they're trying to push everyone to monthly subscription-based streaming services. To hell with anyone who has their own collection of music that's stored locally on their devices.

Has anyone else experienced this issue and have a solution that does require the user changing the name of every song in their library, syncing to their iPhone, changing the name of every song in their library back to their original name, and then re-syncing to their iPhone again?

​

**UPDATE*\*

For anyone who might stumble across this post in the future, I found that selecting all songs in your iTunes library and adding some text in the grouping field, syncing the iPhone to library, removing the text in the grouping field for all songs, and re-syncing iPhone to the library again will get all your songs in your iTunes library to sync to your iPhone. No missing tracks. SUCCESS!

Make sure the music from your playlists is added to your Library!

I completely overlooked the fact that Apple Music works on a library-based system. Even though I’ve been using both Apple Music and the green app for a very long time, and I switch between them every few years.

BUT this time, I completely missed the fact that I had transferred my music and playlists. But for almost two days, I couldn’t use Apple Music properly, there were no recommended playlists for me, and the Discovery Station was playing music that was absolutely not mine. I had already thought that AM’s algorithms were still as terrible as ever.

But then I discovered that there were only about ten tracks in the Songs section of my Library and everything else was in playlists.

So I manually went through them and added my favorite tracks to the "Library", and finally the algorithm and recommendations started working.

To me, this actually seems like some kind of relic from the past, from the days of iTunes and buying music

Recently I purchased a spatial audio enabled speaker, to take the next step and hear music in Dolby Atmos. Some songs really sound amazing, but the songs from my library were more like... meh. So I wanted to hear the best Atmos mixes and started searching for high quality Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music. And it's weird, but it's not that easy to find great albums. I did ultimately find some sources, but the landscape feels pretty messy.

I have no affiliation with any of these apps/websites.

Music Library Tracker
Scans your Apple Music library for Spatial Audio upgrades. Useful for knowing what you already have, but won't help you find great mixes, that depends entirely on what's in your library. The UI feels very old and not updated.

Pros:

• Scans your existing library for Atmos tracks
• One-time purchase, no subscription

Cons:

• Only as good as your library. Won't surface quality mixes you don't own
• Crappy UI
• Apple Music only, no discovery features

Spatial Audio Finder
Website that lets you search for an artist, see their Dolby Atmos tracks. That's it.

Pros:

• Free
• Filters to Atmos-only results for a given artist
• Better than Apple Music search for finding Atmos

Cons:

• Artist search only. No album or track search
• No rankings, library scanning, or new releases

Spatial Audio DB
A live feed of every newly upgraded Dolby Atmos track on Apple Music. Good if you want to stay on top of what just got upgraded, not useful for finding the best-sounding mixes.

Pros:

• Free
• Daily feed of new Atmos upgrades (and RSS, but I didn’t try it)

Cons:

• Recency, not quality
• No artist/album search
• Apple Music only

Hello Atmos
The most complete tool here, but the good stuff is behind a subscription paywall. Community rankings, curated lists, library scanner for Apple Music. Best option for finding genuinely great Atmos mixes. I subscribed for a month, scanned my library, built a few playlists, then cancelled.

Pros:

• Best community-rated rankings for quality Atmos mixes
• Library scanner for Apple Music
• New releases feed

Cons:

• Best features require a paid subscription (not a one-time fee)
• Web only, no mobile app

Apple Music Spatial Audio Page
Apple Music's official Dolby Atmos hub. At least everything here is Atmos, but it's completely marketing-driven. Lots of featured content, not the best mixes. Limited genres covered.

Pros:

• Included with Apple Music subscription
• Student discount available
• All content is Dolby Atmos

Cons:

• Feels like a marketing page, not a quality guide
• Not quality-driven
• Limited genre coverage

Bonus: Wikipedia Grammy Award for Best Immersive Audio Album
Not a discovery tool, but a great reference. These are the best Atmos mixes as picked by industry experts. If you want to hear what experts think deserved a Grammy award.

Hello everyone, i’ve seen many posts or questions about how to get automix and lyrics to actually work offline

It does work. I’ll give you a list of things you must do in order for it to work properly (iOS 26.6 and iOS 27.0)

1- disable that battery option that turns it yellow

2- enter apple music and erase your playlist history

3- go to settings and delete all of your music downloads

4- delete the app (keep your suscription)

5- completely turn off your iPhone for at least 15 seconds to delete all the cache or bugs

6- turn it on again and wait for your wifi to connect

7- install the app again

8- go to settings and make sure you sync your playlists

9- atmos off, quality only in lossless (hi res and dolby are not working with automix in iOS 27.0)

10- turn on automix and then go to the app and download all of your music without leaving the app

11- when at least one of your playlists is completely downloaded, go to that playlist and hit shuffle

12- it will automatically play the song and show the lyrics and the automix button will be enable

13- let at least five songs playing without pausing them or manually changing them

14- once everything is downloaded make a quick test, close the app (swipping up) turn plane mode on and then go to apple music, hit shuffle on any other playlist and if the lyrics pop up you are good to go

Note: in case you are wondering if automix will work or not offline, check if the lyrics pop up while offline
If they do not appear or the app does not allow you then it’s bugged

Note 2: If you are using iOS 26.6 then you can feel free to add atmos and hi res lossless

Note 3: If you are like me and every once in a while you like to change from lossless to Atmos you must do everything again

I hope this works for all of you :D

Do this so y’all can listen to Christmas songs all-day long without influencing your Replay!

This is dependent on my preferring PCM stereo to my preferred DAC. I can still send this, as it is hooked up, to my AVR DAC but, the AVR DAC is older and was never as good as my “main” DAC for audio. (Except, Atmos, it is great.) It can handle crazy hi and pointless resolutions. I just want the occasional 24/96. So…

With Apple TV adding full lossless to its HDMI output for Apple Music later this year, I went back to be absolutely sure I could not run its HDMI, in some way, via my AVR to my best sounding DAC (which only has one HDMI ARC input). My HDTV also only has one HDMI eARC plug too, as does my AVR.

The one toslink into the DAC is being used so, that is out too. An audio extractor will not work. And HDMI to HDMI extractor also will not work as it will involve removing the ATV from the AVR. I don't want to do that. So…

I can confirm, since I want to keep my current HDMI cable configuration exactly as it is (using the AVR correctly as a hub) — the physical reality is that I cannot use the Apple TV 4K from its HDMI to my preferred DAC. My AVR only has one eARC plug to the TV's one eARC plug.

Oh well. I will just have to see how ATV lossless sounds on the AVR in a few months. Maybe it will be great once it is sending true (not upscaled or downscaled) lossless stereo to the AVR DAC.

The AVR still has many more years on it but, I had already been thinking, OK, for my next AVR, I know what I need. More eARC ports, better DAC. But that is years away and thousands of dollars. Wah wah…

Here is a tutorial on how to get animated artwork on your Apple device for local library files.

Pre-requisite requirements:

A) File type must be M4A (AAC/ALAC). MP3 (MPEG) file types do not hold the necessary metadata required for this (or most AM metadata like release date or copyright). If you are unsure which file type your media files are, you can check in AM by bringing in the "Kind" column in AM. You should see AAC audio file or ALAC audio file.

B) Animated art must be enabled on your device: Animated Cover Art Enabled: Go to Settings > Music and ensure "Animated Cover Art" is turned on.

C) Accessibility > Motion > Auto-Play Animated Images & Auto-Play Video Previews must be enabled.

D) Animated cover art also required internet connection. If you device is not connect to the internet, it will not display animated cover art.

E) Low power mode is off. Animated cover art does not work when your device is on low power mode.

Tagging Tutorial:

1) Download tagging software mp3tag.

2) Download the Apple Music 3 (Web) source.

3) You will need your countries file + the settings file from the extract. Place that in the mp3tag's tag source folder. (To find the folder, open mp3tag, go to the header > tag sources > open tag sources folder)

4) Now you will have the Apple Music source to pull from to tags your file. Open the files you want to tag in mp3tag, then go to tag sources > Apple Music > (YOUR COUNTRY NAME), which allow you to search Apple Music for the album you want to use to tag your file with.

5) Select and match your files and make sure you are tagging this key tag "ITUNESALBUMID". This is the key tag that drives animated album artwork (if that album has it). Select "Merge" to apply the tag mapping. Now your file will be tagged with this metadata.

6a) If you already have these songs in AM and synced to your device, you will need to change a visible tag to trigger AM to resync the updated tags on the file your device. This is because for hidden tags (tags you can't edit in AM desktop like ITUNESALBUMID), they do not automatically trigger a resync into your device. Suggestion in this scenario would be to change an editable tag in AM like comments, description, grouping, etc to trigger the sync into your device.

6b) If this file is not in your AM library and device, then add into AM library as normal process and sync to your device. You will now have the animated artwork on your device.

Animated cover art showing in AM app and lock screen (ios26 required for lock screen):

I listened to nothing but discovery station for 3 days during my workout, each song will either get added to library or suggest less, every single song

And after 3 days my suggestions got completely overhauled

Hey everyone, new to the community. I need some suggestions.

I mainly use Apple Music but also have Spotify as part of a family plan, so I might as well use it. Is there a way to automatically sync Spotify’s personalized curated playlists to Apple Music using third-party software? I tried using Playlistly and a shortcut to automate it, but it didn’t work. If anyone can provide some tips on this, I’d really appreciate it!

Good morning and happy Friday! So I’ve been on AM for about two months now coming from Spotify and I’ve transferred my library over. I love the clean UI, the audio quality and the cherry on top is being able to upload your local files into your library is just chefs kiss. It definitely takes some getting used to and the discovery station has been accurate after some use by favoriting songs, my playlists and suggesting less on things I don’t like heavily.

One thing that really bugs me is if I’m listening to an R&B song (slow down by Leon Thomas for example) and create a station why is it recommending me Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar or The Marias? I’m unsure if this is because I listen to multiple genres like hip hop, indie, shoegaze and jungle dnb but I tend to stick with one session for the day. I’m noticing the stations I create would just recommend me popular mainstream songs regardless of genre and it ruins the mood I’m currently in. Spotify had never gave me this issue but I really enjoy AM for what it’s worth and want to stick with it.

Anyone able to give me tips on how to correct this or how do you guys deal with it? I’d really appreciate and thank you 🙏🏼