Music Library Tracker
Music Library Tracker is an iPhone and iPad app that keeps an eye on your music library and monitors additions, deletions, and any changes to your songs. It can also tell you when tracks have been upgraded to Spatial Audio. With streaming becoming more popular, it is very easy for song metadata to change or for songs to disappear as licensing deals expire; with Music Library Tracker, you will always know when something in your library changes whether it was by you, a family member, or your streaming service.
Automatic monitoring
With automatic checking of your library, you can have peace of mind that if anything in your library changes, you'll know about it. Everything is stored locally so you can see a full history of your library changes from the date you install the app onwards. Every change is visible on a granular level so you can see exactly what was altered be it title, artist, album, album artist, disc number, track number, genre, rating, year of release, or Spatial Audio status.
Which of my songs are available in Spatial Audio?
Music Library Tracker can tell you which songs in your library have been upgraded to Spatial Audio. It can also automatically generate a playlist for you in Apple Music containing these upgraded songs and notify you when tracks in your library get updated. Spatial Audio encompasses all tracks mixed in Dolby Atmos or Dolby Audio.
Whilst Music Library Tracker can run on Macs with Apple Silicon thanks to iOS app emulation, Spatial Audio tracking is not supported. This is due to limitations with Apple's iOS media library implementation when emulated on macOS. All other functionality works on macOS but I strongly recommend using the app on an iPhone or iPad.
Summary notification
You can enable an optional summary notification in the app settings - this will send you a push notification in the morning if any changes were detected in your library on the previous day. This notification is customisable so you can choose which changes you are interested in (i.e. just deleted tracks).
Universal App for iPhone / iPad
Music Library Tracker runs natively on both iPhone and iPad. In addition to the regular features of Music Library Tracker, the iPad version also has trackpad and keyboard support and runs in split-screen modes allowing you to quickly check on your library whilst performing other tasks. A single purchase gives you access to the app on both platforms across all of your devices.
Automation
The app is compatible with Shortcuts and Siri enabling you to perform date range searches on the changes to your library. With this functionality it is possible to create shortcuts such as "Hey Siri, how many tracks have been deleted this week" or to get a full break down of additions, changes, and deletions between two dates which you can then use with other apps. For full details of how to use this, check out my page on automation with Music Library Tracker.
Privacy
Music Library Tracker contains no in-app purchases and does not require an internet connection. I was also instrumental in getting Apple to add privacy controls for the media library to iOS 10.
If you choose to enable Spatial Audio scanning, then the identifiers of your tracks are sent to my server for matching. This information is used only for the matching process (which takes less than a second) and is not stored. No personally identifiable information is ever sent.
You can find out more in my Privacy Policy.
Reviews
"While this is useful for those who like to monitor content and changes made manually to a music library to keep personal logs, it's perhaps best suited to Apple Music subscribers. There are instances where content available through the Apple Music service is deleted or changed due to licensing issues with record labels, and this app will allow users to keep track of potential deletions to replace missing music." – MacRumors
"iTunes doesn’t have an easy method to track 'lost' tracks, and dedicating all that time to managing music can be quite a nuisance. Music Library Tracker can handle all the additions, deletions and metadata changes without any user input. Its granularity is what really sells it for me. I download a lot of music from varying artist sources (Soundcloud and ToneDen for example), and I usually just add it into iTunes to change the metadata at a later date. Being able to confirm that the song’s metadata was changed and the track was not deleted helps put me at ease." – 9to5Mac
"This app is amazing. I have a large Apple Music collection over 67000 songs and it’s great to get daily updates on what metadata has changed so that I can correct it. It seems AppleMusic will change songs to completely different versions, live versions or even completely different songs without any rhyme or reason" – App Store Review
"Absolutely love this app. Unfortunately due to the unreliability of Apples music app, this app is now absolutely necessary for those who have music vanish regularly and want to know what's happening to their music library." – App Store Review
"As someone who’s music collection is very dear to them, this app is frankly a life saver. Apple/iTunes is horrible with metadata and frequently changes things at random, or worse, loses access completely on Apple Music. While this app can’t stop that, it’s nice to know when an album has been removed from my library, or when an artist or track name has been changed by apple so I can rectify it." – App Store Review
"The App is reliable and completely 'silent'. Anyone looking for information about the changes, in particular with Apple Music, is recommended this app." – App Store Review (translated from German)
Download
Music Library Tracker is available on the App Store and runs on all devices with iOS 15 or later.
Media Kit
If you are interested in reviewing or writing about Music Library Tracker, please take a look at my online Media Kit. It contains more information about the app along with screenshots and icons. Alternatively, you can download the media kit as a zip file (21.9MB) which contains all of the information in a PDF and directories for each subset of images.