I quit Apple Music and have now lost all of my “Loved” tracks. Is there any way I can get them back?

If you suspend your Apple Music subscription for whatever reason you have only small time window to re-instate your subscription before Apple will remove your library from their databases. If you’d saved treasured playlists and favourite tracks to your library this can be extremely frustrating: they will effectively be deleted.

If this happens to you, you may be interested in this section which describes a way in which you may be able to retrieve your favourite tracks, providing that not too much time has passed. The method is easy but it does take a bit of time while you wait for Apple to do their thing. This is how you do it:

  1. Log-on to https://privacy.apple.com using the Apple Id that you use for Apple Music (this is very important – if you use different Ids for Apple Music & iCloud)
  2. Select “Obtain a copy of your data” and then “Apple Media Services information”. Then “Continue”.
  3. Choose a maximum file size (the minimum of 1Gb should be fine) and then “Complete request”.
  4. Wait. For a day or two. Or three. Keep checking back here: https://privacy.apple.com/account to see if your file is ready for download.
  5. Once it is ready, download your file (it is called “Apple Media Services information.zip”) and unzip it (easiest on a Mac or PC).
  6. Next, find the file “Apple_Media_Services.zip”, unzip it and then open the folder “Apple Music Activity”.
  7. Find the file “Apple Music Likes and Dislikes.csv” and put it somewhere where Playlisty can open it e.g. on a Mac leave it in the Downloads folder; on an iPad or iPhone, put it somewhere on your iCloud or DropBox drive.
  8. Open Playlisty, select the “Files” tab and add the “Apple Music Likes and Dislikes.csv” file. Hit “Next…” and let Playlisty do the rest.

Sorry if that sounds complicated – it really is not, but you do have to wait a while for Apple to get your data together.