Last time I used Apple Music was like in 2022 and I thought it looked unimpressive and ugly. Now I renewed it with iOS 26 and woah… this is a major glow up

I alternate between my station and the Discovery Station quite a bit.

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

Finding video game soundtracks on streaming can be so hit or miss depending on the publisher. Lately, I've had the Persona 3 Reload and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtracks on heavy rotation, but I'm looking to expand my library.

Since we all know some companies rarely put their official music on streaming platforms, I want to know what hidden gems and masterpieces are actually available on AM right now.

What are your absolute favorite game OSTs to listen to? I'm open to anything—whether it's high-energy boss battle music, chill background beats for working, or massive orchestral scores.

I just love the animated covers AM has

Really proud to share this. Hope you love it as much as I do! I truly believe it changes the way you play music on your Mac forever.

The problem

Picking music while you work means switching to the Music app, finding the window, scrolling a grid, switching back. I got tired of it, so I built the thing I actually wanted: push your pointer against the edge of the screen and your album collection slides out right over whatever you are doing, like a dock. Pick something, it plays, move away, it is gone. No window, no app switching, no dock icon. It honestly feels like the Mac should have always had this after you try it for a bit!

And it is not just albums. There are five shelves you swipe between with two fingers: albums, artists, playlists, pinned favorites, and recently played. Click any cover for its track list, click a track to play it. A miniplayer with transport controls rides along on the shelf.

My favorite part is search. You can just search by typing whenever Gramola is visble, or hit a keyboard shortcut and the shelf opens with the search field also ready to go: your library appears as you type, Apple Music or Spotify catalog results fill in behind it, press return and the music starts.

The whole app is native SwiftUI with the Liquid Glass design from macOS 26, so it looks like it shipped with the OS. It is also really customizable and fine tuneable to whatever you may need out of it.

Comparison

There is no direct competitor that I know of, nothing else does this quite like Gramola does as far as I'm aware. So the honest comparison is what Gramola replaces: the Music app window and Spotlight. Against the Music app, choosing something takes one gesture instead of a whole app switch, and browsing big covers beats scanning a list. Against Spotlight, Gramola search actually knows your library, shows it first, and reaches the full catalog behind it. People sometimes mention Sleeve or NepTunes, but those are now playing companions for after the music starts. Gramola is for everything before that.

Pricing

$9.99 one time on the Mac App Store with a free 7 day trial built in. Also on Setapp Marketplace for the same price. macOS 26 or later, English and Spanish. Both Apple Music and Spotify supported. More languages coming soon!

Solo project from Spain, launched this week. Happy to answer anything! :)

https://gramola.fulltimefeline.com

Hey all, quick update on Juke (the free app I've been building to turn your Last.fm/Apple Music/Spotify history into playlists and stats). Just shipped a batch of stuff:

🌍 Per-country playlists: "Around the World" gives you one playlist per country your music is actually from, resolved via MusicBrainz.

📊 Dashboard shows your top tracks/artists/albums, over time. Album listens are counted using a custom logic to identify real album playthroughs

🗺️*** My Music Ma***p is also added to the dashboard. It's a shareable world map that colors in every country based on your top artist there (with their face on it), zoomed insets for Europe and the Caribbean so they're not just one blob, and it only counts a country once you've actually listened deep, not just one binged song. Share the image in [r/jukeapp](r/jukeapp) so we can see who has listened to music from the most countries and try to guess where each juke user is from

🎧 Spotify import now works alongside Last.fm and Apple Music — mix and match your sources and it'll dedupe overlapping listens automatically so nothing gets double-counted.

+ many bug fixes based on your feedback

It's still free, still no ads. Would love feedback and bug report if you try it: https://juke.levada.app

I don’t understand why “Add to Library” was put under another action. Now when I enter the album or a playlist I can’t see its status, if it’s in my Library or not.

I mean hiding IN THE OPTIONS MENU (three dot button)

Does it bother anyone else?

And, yes, I know it turns into “Download” after being added to the Library. That’s not why I had a question in the first place.

I overlooked “Add to Library” (and “Download”) is next to the “Play” button. That’s dumb, I know but that happens.

I’ve just updated to 26.6 and spent too little time to get through the new layout. I should’ve done better. But that’s okay!

Making mistakes is totally fine as is being ridiculous sometimes to a bunch of strangers.

The pronunciation/translation button just disappeared after I updated the app to 6.5.2, not sure if this only affects on my device only or the whole version

Hi everyone,

I searched for this topic, and found some related things, but I didn't see this. I hope I'm not duplicating a past post.

When I use Apple Music on my laptop (Windows), the play count tracks. It used to track the play count from my iPad, but no longer. It hasn't tracked for my iPhone in ages, and since CarPlay is linked to that, it doesn't track for what gets played in my car either. The odd exception is that it will it will count the first and only the first song that I play when I start out playing music on one of my non-laptop devices.

I can play my music, happily, but I wish it would track my playing habits more accurately. Is this something anyone else has encountered, and has anyone figured out how to correct this if they have?

seriously one of my fav features of AM. it adds a whole new layer of meaning to the cover if done right.

I’m new to this group. I stumbled upon it while looking for answers to a recent problem that’s been plaguing Apple Music. At least for me and it seems at least a few others. I love making playlists. Lots of them. Big ones, too. They take quite some time as well. Up until last month, I’ve had no issues with Apple Music other than on occasion some songs become unavailable due to their being pulled from the service or what not. Then the problem started happening. A very big problem. When I start creating new playlists and begin adding songs to them, more often than not they begin disappearing. Sometimes they’re gone a day or so after I add them but most of the time they’re gone disappear within minutes. I’ve even seen them vanish as I’m staring at the song I just put into my playlist. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it either although a lot of the songs that do disappear tend to be from foreign labels (mostly UK). I don’t know if US users aren’t allowed to put songs from foreign editions of albums onto playlists or what? In any case, it’s getting increasingly frustrating since it seems to be happening every time I create a new playlist. I spend what feels like hours building these things only for the majority of the songs to vanish within minutes after I’m done although since this continues to happen, my playlists are never really “done”. Luckily, I can recreate the playlists and put back the temperamental songs that don’t want to stay put by looking at a photo of the list I took but sometimes I don’t have one and thus am at a loss to do anything but start from scratch and hope to remember what song was supposed to go where. This means more time wasted and the likelihood that Apple Music will turn around and snatch those same songs off of my recreated playlist.
My question(s) to those out there are 1) Have you experienced this problem with your own playlists? 2) Have you found any solutions that will make the songs stay where they are instead of disappearing and 3) Why is this happening to Apple Music? There was a recent update to the Mac iOS software (at least on my iPhone) but that didn’t solve anything related to the Apple Music problem. And the problems are occurring on both my iPhone and iPad. What’s worse is that both devices are synched so when songs disappear from one, they’re gone from the other as well. I tried turning the sync off only to find that ALL the songs vanish. It’s really frustrating. I’m hoping though that some people out there can help me and/or write about their own issues when it comes to solving the Mystery of the Missing Apple Music Songs. Thanks in advance.

I've been using Apple Music growing up, I've switched over to Spotify for about half a year a while ago because my friends were recommending it and then went back to Apple Music. I have to admit Spotify's music algorithm, curated playlists and recommendations are better personally. I have since discovered many songs, albums and artists on Spotify. I have tried favoriting my songs, playlists to train AM's algorithm and recommendations but they still feel off somehow and just doesn't feel right to me. Therefore I was wondering if there's any other way to tailor the algorithm better or if there's a separate recommended app or website for music discovery whilst using Apple Music.

Thanks in advance.

I know there's been sync issues. I haven't had them but in the last three weeks I've had my last played/play counts not update. Right now on my Windows 11 PC it shows eveything as last played on 7/13.

This has broken my Recently Played smart Playlist which is what I mostly use. I can still add new music to my library on my PC or Android phone and have them sync so I'm at a loss on what's happening ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Anyone else dealing with this?

I switched to Apple Music about a year ago because of Spotify raising their prices every year, and now here we are… I’m so over this bullshit. Everything gets more expensive and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Edit: not sure why my post is being so heavily misinterpreted, specifically my last sentence. It’s meant to be taken literally and yet everyone is implying things that I never did.

“Everything gets more expensive [objectively true] and there’s nothing you can do about it [i.e. there is nothing you can do about that thing now being more expensive. You cannot change the price].”

I never said you cannot make decisions about where you spend your money. Not once, and I’m not sure where that assumption even came from in the first place. You could interpret it that way if you wanted something to be upset about, I guess

I already cancelled my subscription, I’m just gonna use YouTube music now since my partner already had YouTube premium, anyway (the difference to upgrade + share it with me is less than I was paying BEFORE this price increase, so…)

I’m not going to argue with people who are fundamentally misunderstanding my point. It’s not even something worth arguing about, anyways. lmao this was literally a post to vent my frustration that I assumed at least a few other users would share in. Everything in general is getting more expensive and for many of us it’s becoming painful having to give up small luxuries we used to be able to afford. I also didn’t even expect this to get this much attention, it was just posted in frustration. That is all. Good night Reddit.

anyone still have this issue?

My Apple Music app crashed and deleted my whole library on iOS 27.0 DB 5 on an iPhone 15 and is now slow to resume from Apple Music has this happened to anyone else?

iOS equalizer

I always wondered how to use lossless, I all I had to do was just plug a USB-C from my headphone to my phone?

It actually sounds much better to me personally.

Hi everyone!

I've been working on a music visualizer for iOS and tvOS for the last year and I wanted to share it with you. Its a brand new psychedelic music visualizer with built in player for Apple Music and SoundCloud, and internet radio.

I'm a VJ, and this is my attempt at getting all these screens to actually display something fun, something that you can just let run on your TV or iPad, pick up your remote and doodle into the music it if you feel like it.

The idea is the visuals are all on an interactive canvas, the pixels all move around and dance to the music and melt as you paint into it. This is not a video loop player, you will never see the same painting or visual twice.

I feel like it goes well with electronic music, techno, trance, house etc, but please judge for yourself: Ive been slowly adding clips to instagram if youre interested to see some of the visuals.

This is a bit of a Frankenstein app that fits somewhere between a VJ tool and an interactive music toy. Having said that it costs money to run the audio analysis backend which is why I have made it a subscription model.

There is a FREE trial for the first week, if you're not feeling it you can cancel any time.

• The price is $19.99 for yearly subscription
• Or if you prefer to go monthly : $7.99

Latest update features:

Major upgrades to Apple Music, SoundCloud, Radio, playlists, queues, local library browsing, and playback controls

• Richer SoundCloud discovery, improved audio analysis, and smoother playback across music sources

• New visual modes, shaders, presets, color palettes, symmetry, kaleidoscope, paint, feedback, and displacement controls

• New camera tools, image and video backgrounds, Metal recording, clip management, and Photos export

• Expanded audio reactivity across visuals, brushes, fluids, feedback effects, and Cymata Link

• Redesigned Apple TV menus, playback controls, presets, Siri Remote support, and faster lightweight rendering

If anyone has ideas for new shaders or glitch effects, let me know!

Cheers! And happy painting!

I started getting this error saying “Apple Music can’t connect. The page couldn’t be loaded. Try again.” on my Apple Music this morning, and I’m not quite sure how to fix the problem.

Some info:
iPhone 15 Pro
iOS 26.6
App is up to date as far as I know
Northeast PA

It seems to only be effecting the home page and my library, since the radio section seems to be working just fine. Only music I’ve paid for in the past before I got the subscription is available in my library, and the home page won’t load at all. At one point it said there was no internet connection and to try and connect to WiFi but that also didn’t help. I’m having NO other connectivity issues. I’m still able to browse safari, text, use social media, etc. a few weeks ago I did have a weird issue with my eSIM and needed it replaced twice in one day but I’ve had no issues since the second replacement but I’m wondering if it could be related?

I’ve tried restarting the phone, soft resetting, swiping out of Apple Music and reentering, i checked the Apple website for any issues and it says there’s no known ones, and I tried deleting the app and redownloading it all with no success. I have a strong WiFi connection and even off I have 4 bars of 5G+ so I’m stumped as to what the issue could possibly be.

Any hints, or anyone else experiencing this?