Apple released iTunes 12.2.2 today, with a number of fixes to Apple Music. Unfortunately, it looks as though there’s a bug. (Note that I found the solution to this problem; skip to the end of the post if you only want to see that, or read this article to understand how this admittedly confusing feature works.)
Before the release of iTunes 12, there was a setting, in the General preferences, which said Show iTunes in the Cloud Purchases. This allowed you to show, in your library, both local and cloud content. You could download any of your purchases on demand, and even play them, if your internet connection was fast enough.
When iTunes 12 was released, Apple assimilated this into iCloud Music Library; as such, there is now an iCloud Music Library setting in the location of the previous Show iTunes in the Cloud Purchases option. As you can see below, I have that setting turned off, and the preference pane tells me that changes to this library will not appear on other devices.
Note the change in language from before the update; it seems that Apple has tried to make what iCloud Music Library does a bit clearer. Here’s what they said with iTunes 12.0:
And here’s what it says now, when iCloud Music Library is on:
In any case, when I updated to iTunes 12.2.2, I quickly noticed that there were cloud icons in my library. I’ve confirmed this with my friend Doug Adams, purveyor of Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes. He’s seeing the same thing is me, both in the preferences, and in his iTunes library. I have heard from a number of other people who were seeing the same thing too.
These are all purchased items: music, movies, TV shows, etc. It looks as though every purchased item that is not on my Mac now displays with a cloud icon.
This is a very serious problem. I do not want these items in my library, and I expect them to not display. In some cases, they show up as duplicates; I have some albums where I see two copies of each track, one in my library, and another in the cloud.
I’m not sure why there are duplicates in the above example; it may be because I removed the Album Artist tag from the purchased tracks.
Other duplicates are, for example, the U2 digital box set, which I bought a long time ago. I renamed each album with its name, rather than the global title The Complete U2.
I note that I cannot display the iCloud Status column in list views, which would show the locations of items.
Note: I found this track from an interesting album called Orphaned Songs in Database:
Now I know this is a U2 song, and anything is possible, but that’s just wrong…
Update: After signing out of my iTunes Store account and signing in again, several times, I was able to see an option in the View menu which wasn’t visible before:
Note the menu items All Music and Only Music Available Offline. Choosing the latter made everything in the cloud disappear. (You see a similar setting in your Movies and TV Shows library.) It seems that this setting now reproduces the previous iTunes in the Cloud setting. But after updating to today’s version of iTunes, those menu items were not visible to me. So, sign out of the iTunes Store and sign in again; you may have to do it several times. You can then hide your purchases. Note that they will still be in your library, just hidden.