Apple Music appears to be malfunctioning a bit, as multiple Apple Music listeners have hit Reddit to complain about other people’s playlists appearing in their music libraries.
As reported by MacRumors, Redditor adh1003, who contacted them about the issue, has compiled several reports from users who are complaining about the appearance of strangers’ playlists in the Music app. Other posts on Reddit come from users reporting the same behavior.
This is something an alarming number of people are reporting more and more.
It appears to be a truly horrific bug in the Apple Music servers themselves.
There’s nothing you can do about it and it is extremely bad news. Some people have had years of playlists totally trashed – songs added or removed, playlists themselves deleted and so-on. Apple provide no easy way to back up your cloud-based content, so if they break it, it’s broken forever.
The Music application on macOS lets you export playlists in XML format and if you’re seeing corruption already I recommend you do that IMMEDIATELY if those matter to you – just in case!
This really really urgently needs to get Apple “mainstream media” attention (since Apple of course will deny everything).
Some users report unknown playlists being merged with their existing playlists. In other cases, users report that their playlists have been replaced by unrecognized playlists.
While there has been concern among users that their Apple accounts have been hacked, but it’s more likely to be an issue with Apple’s iCloud servers.
Some users, but not all, report success in unsyncing and then re-syncing iCloud for the Music app (Settings -> Apple ID -> iCloud -> Show All).
User reports regarding the issue have been posted as far back as mid-February, indicating the problem could be related to the release of iOS 16.3.1, which included iCloud bug fixes.
Users say they have contacted Apple support but none report any success in coming up with a solution.
