How Far the Song has Fallen from the iTunes Tree
![an iMac G4 with iTunes Music Store on the screen and and iPod sitting to the right of it on a flat surface.](https://jagibson.org/uploads/2024/2003-itunes-music-store.jpg)
I have nothing against streaming music (I do so on occasion), but I prefer buying my music and downloading on to my device. iTunes used to be really great at this. In the last two or more years, I keep running into this glitch where 1) I buy an album from iTunes on my iPhone. 2) The tracks all go through the “Downloading” motions and successfully download. 3) New album or songs don’t show up on my Apple Music library for anywhere between 2 - 24 hours.
Rebooting or killing Apple Music process does nothing to accelerate anything showing up on my library.
Yesterday, while accidentally deleting a song off of a playlist, the album I purchased not 3 hours prior magically showed up.
“Could it be that by manipulating a track list in a playlist resets the library somehow to show the recently downloaded track(s)?” - my brain
Yes, my friends, this is indeed the case. I tested this by buying a track, creating a playlist called “Test” and adding a random song from my library.
Bam, track shows up in my library immediately.
What was once a service I never had to think about on my phone, now requires multiple steps to get a purchased piece of music to show up in my library.