Upgrading to Apple Music might delete your songs library

Apple Music could revolutionise the nature of streaming services, its creator hopes, but is already suffering problems on the day of its launch.

People updating Apple's music library, iTunes, to add the new product, are experiencing issues like their songs getting deleted and their software crashing.

Alex Hern (@alexhern), a reporter from the Guardian, tweeted early this morning that installing iTunes 12.2 had led to the removal of 6,500 songs from his iCloud Music Library.

IT Pro'sJane McCallion (@janemccallion) experienced similar issues, with everything but U2's Songs of Innocence the album made available to everyone for free by Apple removed from her library.

Others have also taken to Twitter to air their frustrations, with @JonyIveParody tweeting Tim Cook and others: "This is something only Apple can do", alongside an image of his device seemingly getting confused as to whether iTunes needs to be updated or not.

Of course, this is just one manifestation of the problem, with complaints about crashes, freezing and morewhen mobile device users updating their operating system to iOS 8.4.

"I've just updated my iPhone 6 to iOS 8.4 and I activate Apple Music free trial," user memi.web complained on an Apple forum. "On my Apple Watch I've got duplicated songs and unknown playlists and I can't delete them. I've tried to unpair and pair again the watch but it doesn't work."

The app also caused iPads to crash, with user jafo399 writing on the forum: "I just installed the new iOS 8.4 on my iPhone and iPad and the iPad keeps crashing. It will launch to the home screen and then reboot over and over. It looks like a new update will need to fix the problem. Canyou say 8.4.1?"

The latest controversy comes after popstarTaylor Swift's open letterto Apple criticised its policy not to pay artists during Apple Music's three-month trial membership period, which Apple later backed down over.

Prior to this high profile U-turn, the service was also investigated for potentially anti-competitive activities in the form of preferential deals with studio labels at the expense of other services.

Apple Music is born from iTunes and Beats Music, which Apple acquired last year, with Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine announcing at WWDC that its launch is aimed at reducing fragmentation of the music market.

In addition to introducing Apple Music, the latest iOS update also include improvements for iBooks and various bug fixes for problems including GPS accessories being unable to provide location data, and Apple Watch apps re-installing after being deleted.

Caroline Preece

Caroline has been writing about technology for more than a decade, switching between consumer smart home news and reviews and in-depth B2B industry coverage. In addition to her work for IT Pro and Cloud Pro, she has contributed to a number of titles including Expert Reviews, TechRadar, The Week and many more. She is currently the smart home editor across Future Publishing's homes titles.

You can get in touch with Caroline via email at caroline.preece@futurenet.com.