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Apple Music issues after iOS 18 Update

Has anyone experienced issues with Apple Music in iOS 18? For example, audio quality lowered despite Dolby Atmos and EQ off? Or trying to scroll through your playlist and the app crashes?


[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 15, iOS 18

Posted on Sep 18, 2024 5:53 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 23, 2024 3:17 PM

My phone updated yesterday, took an hour to complete, and issues with Music started immediately. I've no degradation in sound quality, but (1) it has crashed a few times, (2) scrolling through playlists is jerky and slow, (3) album thumbnails don't always appear, (4) when one song finishes playing the next starts ok but the display still shows the previous song playing and the currently playing song next in queue, (5) when I start playing from a different playlist it doesn't always start playing, it displays Loading then fails and displays Not Playing, or occasionally reverting to the last song playing from the previous playlist, (6) (not an issue, just an annoyance) if a favourite song appears at the bottom of the queue and I want to move it to the top, when I click and hold the song the options have moved round and Move to Top isn't in the usual place!


There are other issues not connected to Music, eg my Notes are now all saved on iCloud, it seems. Lucky I don't have any personal information in them. Same with my photos. A few (not all) apps are very slow to load. A small number of websites need me to remember my passwords because my phone has forgotten them. Like I can remember 16 character randomly generated passwords! And last, but by no means least, the battery appears to be draining faster than usual, same as happened after several previous iOS upgrades, some of which took several further fixes to correct fully.

161 replies

Sep 28, 2024 6:45 AM in response to madslamared65

18 wronked up my music database on PC and iPhone. Had a buncha songs poof away. Not whole album, just some of the songs on an album. Unable to get them back by syncing, had to use a squirrelly workaround. But that wasn’t practical for the gobs of missing songs. Ended up deleting the entire iTunes music folder on my PC and starting over. Spent a whole day on this, it’s mostly ok now, a few glitches left.

this should never have made it out the door. Someone needs a different job.

Sep 28, 2024 5:12 PM in response to madslamared65

I’m sorry I updated to iOS 18. I only updated because my AirPods 4 wouldn’t show up in “Find My” until I updated all my devices.


After the iOS 18 update, I’m having issues with Apple Music: songs fade out halfway through or they stutter; I cannot update playlists and the app freezes. It is very frustrating. I understand there are problems when there’s an update, but Apple has received enough complaints to do something to fix the problems they created.

Sep 30, 2024 3:47 AM in response to madslamared65

Today is the first time I play music after iOS 18 update and my compilation albums now are sorted by artist instead of by song title as it used to be. There is no way I can change the sorting back and playback stops randomly, so I have to restart the app to continue playing.


The reason I have compilation albums is to avoid listening to the same artist back to back and I am not a fan of shuffle play, as I have memorized the order of my songs and they need to remain in the same order. I have to stop mid-workout routine and turn off the music. Apple must fix this nonsense.

Sep 30, 2024 2:13 PM in response to madslamared65

Just wondering what those of you saying you can't sync are using? I can sync ok using iTunes on a Windows 11 laptop. I have to connect via a cable, they won't talk to each other via wifi (since pre iOS 18, I think it's a Windows 11 issue) because the replacements for iTunes (Apple Music and Apple Devices) were a waste of space, wiped all the music off my phone, wouldn't put it back on, froze, only seemed to want to copy music held on the Cloud (I think that's what it was hinting at?) and so on.

Sep 30, 2024 5:52 PM in response to madslamared65

I just started using Apple Music, coming from Spotify (trying the Apple One subscription) and I am having all these issues. I never used it before iOS18 or Sequoia so i'm not sure how much worse it has become. I cannot get favourited albums to sync between phone and macbook, they randomly disappear or some i can't even add. Some albums have songs missing entirely. I can add an album to favourites on the macbook and watch it appear on my phone in real time but then it disappears later. Albums I add on the phone never make it to the macbook. I wanted a break from all the bloat of Spotify (podcasts, audiobooks etc) and just use an app for music (with bonus lossless audio) but man this basic stuff is just painful!

Oct 1, 2024 7:16 AM in response to Tarra85

I contacted Apple support, and they advised me to reset all settings, which I did. Unfortunately, the issue still persists as you described. We're definitely losing our subscription money due to a problem we've never encountered before. I hope they release an update to fix this soon. I encourage everyone to reach out to Apple support and report any issues as they arise; this will help prioritize their fixing efforts.

Oct 2, 2024 10:49 AM in response to TomPancoast

Hahaha your last sentence describes my mental state when dealing with this incredible song download and playlist adds lag perfectly! I spoke with tech support on Sat (09/28) and they said they aren't aware of any Music app issues since ios18 and I was like, "Check out this thread I have been commenting on and following then; it's a huge problem!"

Oct 4, 2024 3:22 PM in response to madslamared65

Yes, the apple music app has been extremely slow and laggy since updating to ios 18, today’s 18.0.1 update still did not fix the issue. I have been using the Jet Music Player (I purchased it to use fyi) instead and it seems to work without any lagging or freezing like the music app player. Hope apple can patch or fix this in the 18.1 update.

Apple Music issues after iOS 18 Update

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