Lost my Apple Music library after re-subscribing — is there any way to recover it?

Is it normal for Apple Music to permanently delete your library after some time without a subscription? Is there any way to recover it, or is it lost for good?

Yes it is normal. After a grace period rumored to be somewhere from 0 to 30 days, the library is gone.

Apple does not save the library of non-subscribed users. This comes a rude shock to many (especially since Spotify does not do that) but that is how it works.

Once you re-subscribe to Apple Music, you will again have access to the full catalog of over 100 million songs, but you will have to rebuild your library.

ArielRgs wrote:

Is it normal for Apple Music to permanently delete your library after some time without a subscription? Is there any way to recover it, or is it lost for good?

I believe that it is normal for ending a subscription to disable and delete

• Offline listening copies of Apple Music subscription songs
• Playlists containing Apple Music subscription songs
• "Sync Library" copies of songs (whether subscription songs or purchased songs). I.e., if you had a purchased song on your computer, and "Sync Library" had synchronized a copy onto your phone, the copy on your phone would be deleted or would stop working

Supposedly it will not delete purchased music from your library – such as music you bought from the iTunes Store or imported from your own CDs. But if you have purchased music and are also using "Sync Library", it might be a good idea to have a backup you could use to restore purchased music after the subscription ends, just in case.

ArielRgs wrote:

That’s honestly terrible and doesn’t make much sense to me.

I noticed that Apple still seems to keep some data from my old account activity — for example, my “Favorites,” “Recently Played,” and even some of my old searches are still showing up, even though they’re from more than six months ago. Also, the music recommendations I’m getting now are clearly based on what I used to listen to before canceling my subscription.

So it’s really strange that Apple can retain all this information, but not my actual library or playlists. It feels very disappointing and inconsistent.

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