Comments/Questions - "iTunes Music Library" service on 2 Macs

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Please pardon the detail... I hope someone can explain this....

What exactly does iCloud Music Library store? I can confirm that my personal song files have indeed been uploaded to iCloud Music Library as I can play them on my iMac when the files are on an external disk on my MBP. When I stop using iCloud Music Library on my iMac the songs (song files) do become unavailable. I have home sharing turned off so the iMac has to be getting the songs from iCloud Music Library.

But I'm confused as to my iTunes "Library" which is "iTunes Music Library.xml" on each Mac. Is that stored on iCloud Music Library also? I seem to get conflicting indications on this. If I add a playlist on one Mac (iMac) it IMMEDIATELY shows up on the other Mac (MBP). That indicates to me that both machines are sharing the same library.xml file (on iCloud?). However, when I look at the library (xml file) on each Mac I see from the timestamp that each library (xml) has been updated. Also, de-bunking the "library.xml" in iCloud thought is the fact that I can't keep number of plays and date last played synced. I can go thru iterations of logging out of iCloud Music Library, turning it on/off, restarting iTunes, etc and get the play and date sync working but then I notice that at some point the sync is lost again. if both machines were using the same library they would have to stay in sync.

It almost seems better to me to run family sharing (share on local network) on the main iTunes machine. This provides the option of syncing plays or not. But even at that, the "slave" machine has to have iCloud Music Library on else those songs don't appear, even if they are downloaded on the main MBP.

SUMMARY... it appears to me that iCloud Music Library is storing song files in iCloud but not the actual library xml file. Yet, the item description on the iCloud Music Library option says "Store your Apple Music songs and PLAYLISTS in iCloud so you can access them from all of your devices."

It appears to not only store your Apple Music songs but also your own personal song files also. But does it store Playlists but not parameters such as "Plays" and "Last Date Played"??
 

IWT


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Hi and good evening.

This article may shed some light:

https://www.imore.com/icloud-music-library-ultimate-guide

I have used iCloud music library since it was called iTunes Match.

From my experience, it does store your playlists in that if you restore your music from there either on your main Mac or on any other iDevice which is switched on in settings to download music from the iCloud, then your playlists are preserved.

I must add for clarification that I do not subscribe to Apple Music, only iCloud music library.

Hope my experience and the article help you understand this complex business. It certainly isn’t intuitive.

Ian
 
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I really appreciate the reply. Thank you. I had actually found and read that article. It was very informative. I have learned that only my personal music files themselves upload to iCloud library only if there is no match to songs in Apple Music. If there is a match, then my files on disk don't play, the matching song from Apple Music plays. It also appears that the iTunes db (.itl file in iTunes folder) says on each device and is NOT uploaded iCloud Music. The db's are supposed to sync. I can see this when a song ends on one Mac and the .itl files timestamp updates on BOTH my iMac and MBP. Likewise, add a smart playlist on one and the timestamp updates on the other as well as the smart playlist itself appears. Sadly, from searching the web, I see that for a great many users Plays and Last Played don't always update. I have that problem myself. I can get Plays and Last Played to work by signing out of iCloud Music on all devices and restarting apps and then logging in again. It randomly works but then quits updating again at some point.

Thanks again for the reply.
 

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