One-click deletion of EVERY SONG from Mac?

Menina23 wrote:

While working on my Mac, I went to play some music. I tried to tell it to shuffle all songs, but it made me select them first. Then a song played that I no longer wanted in my library. I double-tapped and hit delete. I forgot EVERY SONG in my library was selected, and they ALL just disappeared. I immediately hit command+z, but it did nothing. Every other time I delete a song, it makes me confirm the deletion. How was that able to happen? Is there a way to recover my library? Since it's all synced, it's gone from my phone and laptop and iPad. YEARS of curating my library. I have a subscription, but I have eclectic tastes and spent years gathering and organizing it. From what I'm reading, it's just gone. It doesn't seem like that should be possible, Apple. No warning, no "recently deleted", no trash recovery? No undo? I don't have a Time Machine because it was in the cloud. Is there truly no way to restore my recently deleted library? On the bright side, if all my music is gone, there's no reason to keep paying subscription. HA!

No, this should not have happened.

Any time that I delete music from my library, the very first confirmation window asks if I'm sure I want to do that and warns that doing so will remove the music from all my synch'd devices. The second asks if I want to keep the file or move it to the trash, if it's been downloaded. If I absentmindedly confirm the deletion, it's done. But any songs that had been downloaded to my computer may remain in the music library folders or in the Trash.

Using the Mac, or any compute for that matter, requires at least a little bit of focus.

As for backing up the Mac, as you've discovered, iCloud is not a true backup solution for the Mac. The main focus of iCloud is to be a means to syncing files and data among several devices. Simple backups for the iPhone and iPad can be stored in iCloud, but the complex backups provided by Time Machine and other apps cannot.

Time Machine is an easy and perfectly fine way to back up your Mac, and the best thing about it is it's built into the OS so it's installed on every Mac. All you have to add is an external drive that is at least sometimes connected to your computer.