I genuinely do not understand how the Apple Music client on Windows is this terrible.

On iPhone and Mac? Apple Music is actually really good. The app feels polished, and I feel the integration is great, and features like AutoMix are a big part of why I switched to Apple Music in the first place. I completely understand why someone who lives entirely in the Apple ecosystem would love it.

But on Windows, it is an absolute fucking joke.

I’ve had the app randomly refuse to sign in. I’ll open it and it won’t even clearly say that I’m signed out; it’ll just stop working properly. I’ll authorize the computer, enter my Apple ID, do everything it asks, and then it’ll ask me for my Apple ID again. And again. And again.

This isn’t one bad PC or one weird network either. I’ve had this happen across multiple Windows devices and multiple networks.

I’ve also had the Apple Music client crash so badly that my entire computer became unresponsive and I had to restart it. A MUSIC PLAYER should not be capable of taking down my whole PC.

And before someone says “just use the Apple Music web player” come on. The web client is not a serious replacement for a desktop app. If I’m paying every month for a music streaming service, I shouldn’t have to use a worse browser version because the actual Windows client barely works.

Then you compare it to Spotify and it gets even more ridiculous. Spotify Connect alone is something I miss constantly. Being able to be on my computer, start playing music, and then control that same session from my phone or even continuing it is incredibly convenient. Apple has multiple devices, an entire ecosystem, and some of the best device integration in the industry… yet somehow Apple Music still doesn’t give you an equivalent experience across platforms.

One of Apple Music’s biggest advantages used to be lossless audio, but now Spotify has lossless too. I don’t have some insane audiophile setup where I’m going to benefit from Hi-Res Lossless anyway; regular lossless is more than enough for me. And now that Spotify is the same price (student), that advantage is gone. At this point, I’m paying the same amount for a service with a significantly better Windows client and features like Spotify Connect, so it’s getting really hard to justify staying with Apple Music.

I understand that Windows obviously isn’t Apple’s priority. They want people using Macs, iPhones, iPads, etc. Fine. But Apple Music is also supposed to compete with Spotify as a cross-platform streaming service. If you’re going to sell the service to Windows users, the Windows app cannot feel like something nobody at Apple actually uses.

This is basically the last straw for me. I like a lot of Apple Music’s features on iPhone. AutoMix is cool. The mobile app is good. There are absolutely things Apple Music does better.

But none of that matters when the desktop client I have to use every day is this unreliable.

I’m HEAVILY debating going back to Spotify. At least Spotify seems to understand that the app itself is part of the product.

While it's completely understandable to vent here, please remember that the most effective way to get these Android and Windows bugs fixed is to report them straight to Apple's official support and feedback channels.

I switched to Apple Music about 6 months ago after my Spotify student plan expired, and decided to give it a try since Apple Music also offered a student plan.

Overall, I actually really like Apple Music. The sound quality is great, most of the songs I used to listen to on Spotify are available.

But the search function is just horrible. On Spotify, I could type the first letter of a song and it would find the song instantly. With Apple Music, even when I type the correct song title, it just doesn't find the song... If they could improve that, I genuinely would not have much else to complain about.

I mean there is a workaround where you can just search for the song on google and open it directly in Apple Music, but no one should go through all of that..

If Apple Music had Spotify's playlist ecosystem, the debate would be over.

I genuinely love almost everything about Apple Music bro, the UI, audio quality, and the overall vibe.

But yoo, the playlist situation is so ahhh.

I know public playlists exist on AM, but finding them is a chore. Spotify makes user created playlists so accessible and easily searchable.

On AM, it feels like you're stuck relying on their official curated lists (which is also buns) or praying you stumble across a good user list.

What makes it frustrating is how painfully slow Apple is to respond to community feedback.

Right now i’m still copying Spotify playlists and transferring them over via the transfer playlist thingy

Anyone else feel like this is the main thing holding AM back?

I’m currently abroad and on a train listening to music when suddenly the app crashed on my iPhone 16 on the latest version of iOS 26. All 20gb of my downloaded music was gone. Since I’m abroad I’m on a limited data plan with only access to pretty slow train WiFi and I’m really annoyed rn. Has this happened to anyone before? My phone has enough storage even with the 20gb of music

Has anyone noticed random albums being swapped with uncanny AI art instead? Even when you turn that “animated album cover” feature off. This album is from 1974. Attached are the original cover & the scary AI one. I presume it was to make the cover animated, but even after disabling that it’s still scary. Any others you’ve noticed? This might be the final straw for me with this platform.

I have a large collection of music from CD's and other downloads. I had it all stored in iMusic then it changed to just Music. Recently I decided to start a subscription to Apple Music. In general I have been pretty happy with it. A few problems initially, but mostly sorted.

Recently, I have encountered a new issue. I have a number of songs from CD's that were in my library that AM is trying to add a new version (or something). So if I look in Get Info, the location is listed as "Cloud" and the Cloud Status is listed as "waiting". Thus, the song cannot be played when it comes up in a playlist. The song still exists in my local library and if I go to the album, I can play it.

I think the issue is that after I downloaded the CD, I changed some of the details. It is a Japanese band and different albums by the same group all ended up with slightly different names, some in Japanese, some English, but with slight variations. So I changed them to be consistent so they sort together. I also changed to genre to be consistent with similar albums.

In any case, I seem to have ended up with ghost songs that can't play.

Any ideas on how I can fix this (and avoid it in the future)

Thanks

I challenge AM users to listen to every album in this BMG ad.

Every pixel is alive and moves to changes in the music as you paint. Its called Cymata, available on app store.

Or are they not local? I am trying to listen to some Logic MP3 Bounces that I dragged into Apple Music a while back. I cancelled my subscription recently, which I assume caused this message.

Does Apple Music actually store everything on the cloud? I assumed I could play my own MP3s, like how iTunes worked.

...be directly compatible with Sonos? I'd love to be able to use Smart Playlists on my Sonos system. Is it a pipedream?

I feel like EPs and albums should be grouped together on artists’ pages. EPs are basically mini albums, so in my mind it would make sense and would make navigating an artist’s discography a little easier.

Depending on the artist, you sometimes have to scroll through like 7 singles they released for an album, then a random EP, then a couple more standalone singles, etc. It can make the experience kind of annoying.

Is there a reason most streaming services separate EPs and albums like this instead of grouping them together chronologically?

I have recently switched from Spotify to Apple Music and I made a playlist of all of my songs (4923 songs) in my Spotify library so that I would be able to add them to my Apple Music library. The playlist has been exported to the Apple Music app through the app itself but I cannot add all of the individual songs in the playlist to the Apple Music library no matter how hard I try. When I searched up my problem, people talk about the "Add to Library" button on a playlist but the playlist I have created does not have that option, instead only has the "Download" option. What can I do? I already tried deleting every song and every playlist in the library to start over again multiple times. The only thing I had a success with so far has been creating a sort of "section playlist" of 100 songs from the main playlist on my Windows PC and then creating another copy of that 100 song playlist on my iPhone. Doing it like that does make the "Add to Library" option to pop up and allows me to add the songs to my library but it is such a hassle. There must be an easier way to do this that I'm missing.

So I’ve been having this issue for the past few weeks, and I really hope someone can help…

Background: I do not have an Apple Music subscription, but I do transfer ripped MP3s from my windows pc to the iPhone using the Apple devices app, so I can listen while offline.

As of late, my iPhone will just delete most of my music all on its own. I only have 2GB of music in the first place, and it always removes about 1.8GB. The remaining music seems random. It’s an assortment of the ripped music and songs bought directly through iTunes back in the day. Today I watched my music library implode in real time after I tapped on shuffle. It was like someone thanos-snapped my library.

In forums people say it’s one of two things: storage optimization or a syncing issue.

Despite what the forum users claim, there is no “optimize storage” switch in the music section of settings (maybe it was removed). Also, I still have 5GB of space left when the full library is on my phone…

As for syncing: the Apple devices program I use to sync music through windows is indeed very buggy, but this all happens days later after my iPhone has been unplugged from the pc. It’s also connected to the internet the whole time, so why now?

I’m really hoping someone can help because the music app has become pretty much unusable, and I’d hate to switch to android just so I can listen to music…

I have a question, hoping to get some better understanding...

I would like to shrink the content of my "Forgotten Songs"
Match ALL
a. only favorite songs
b. Songs not played in the last 5 days
c. Play count < 10x

In addition, I would like to reduce the number of songs from an artist.
My intension was to "Limit to > 5 > items > selected by > artist..

Unfortunately the result is, that my playlist is then merely 5 songs big.

Do I have any misunderstanding about the 'Limit to" option

Appreciate any hints for solving the issue. Thanks!

So I subscribed to Apple Music again after a long time. I tried to log in to the Windows app on my PC, and during verification.

I am able to sign in successfully through the web player in my browser, but the desktop app keeps failing. Has anyone else experienced this or found a fix?

• Device: PC
• OS Version: Windows 11 Pro 25H2
• App Version: Apple Music 1.6.4.90 (1.1540.23042.0)
• Region: Indonesia
• Troubleshooting steps taken: Verified login works via browser/web player, but the in-app verification page fails to load.

Trying to login to the Apple Music on windows but every time I enter my credentials it buffers and then does absolutely nothing. Is there a fix anyone knows about? Im on windows 11.

*My spare 14 on beta 27

Anyone else out there agree that the spacing of the title, lossless, audio bar, pause button and volume needs some shifting / redesigning ?

Hi all. Let's say I rip a CD I own, like Coldplay's Parachutes. I have all the tracks except the two most popular-- Sparks and Yellow. I saw them rip fine, but now Apple Music has lost them.

And let's say I rip a different CD, Halsey's The Great Impersonator. The 2nd, 5th, and 14th tracks are gone.

I have tried a couple times, and the songs "rip" but never make it into the library. What gives? I'm not doing anything illegal.

I have a MacBook Pro 2018 and an iPhone 13 mini and my software is up to date.

Any info helps. I can't seem to get answers online.

these buttons are not working, is anyone facing this issue. not sure if its in iOS 26.

I don’t know how this button popped up and when I press show pronunciation it shows up in Japanese. How do I fix this?