What can I do with an Apple Music source?

When you add an Apple Music source, three new items are added to the Radiccio source list, under the Apple Music category:

• Catalog — contains everything available to you as part of your Apple Music subscription
• Library — the specific collection of items you have personally chosen to add to your library; whether from the catalog, uploaded, or added to Music.app on your Mac
• Radio — DJ-hosted and algorithmic stations curated by Apple and available through your Apple Music subscription

If you do not have a paid Apple Music subscription, only the library item will be shown.

With Radiccio’s Apple Music source, you can search, browse, play items, and add catalog items to your library.

To learn which features are available with an Apple Music source, see our feature availability guide.

Is Radiccio Plus! required to use an Apple Music source?

No.

Is a paid Apple Music subscription required to use an Apple Music source?

No.

A paid Apple Music subscription is required in order to use the Apple Music catalog, and radio features. This is separate and unrelated to Radiccio Plus! The Apple Music subscription is provided by Apple Inc., not by us.

If you have local files in Music.app on your Mac, you can listen to those via the Apple Music library section of the source, even if you don’t have a paid Apple Music subscription. (In this case, catalog and radio will not appear in the sidebar.) You can use Radiccio this way if you wish; however, keep in mind that you will experience fewer features compared to an “On My Mac” source.

Can I add the contents of my Apple Music library as an “On My Mac” source?

Technically yes, you could, but we don’t recommend it.

Music.app manages this folder automatically, and it may make changes to the contents at any time. For example, Music.app may delete, move, or rename audio files automatically, without action by you. These types of changes can make it more difficult for Librarian to keep track of your files. This could also result in Librarian data becoming dissociated from the songs or albums it belongs to.

Radiccio does not make changes to your files, so it should not negatively impact the operation of Music.app.

For the best possible experience, consider copying or moving your audio files to a new location, and using the new location as an “On My Mac” source.

Alternatively, add an Apple Music source to access your Apple Music library that way. This has fewer features than an “On My Mac” source, but none of the downsides mentioned in this section.

Can I add more than one Apple Music source?

No.

Radiccio uses the Apple account you are signed into in Music.app. We do not have a way for you to sign into a different account.

This does not change regardless of whether or not you have Radiccio Plus! All users are limited to only one Apple Music source, due to the nature of how it works.

After clicking “Add to Library”, the item doesn’t appear in my library

Access to new items via MusicKit seems to depend on whether Music.app “knows about” the item or not. If Music.app has not been opened in a while, it may not be aware of the newly added item, and therefore it may not appear in Radiccio.

Try launching Music.app, wait for it to finish its tasks, quit it again, and then click the reload button in Radiccio.

If that still doesn’t help, see the next answer below.

After clicking “Add To Library”, the item appears, but it cannot be played

Try the following in sequence:

1. Launch Music.app, wait for it to finish its tasks.
2. Click the reload button in Radiccio.
3. If that doesn’t help, quit and reopen Radiccio.
4. If that doesn’t help: Launch Music.app, and go to File menu > Library > Update Cloud Library.
5. Near the bottom left of the Music.app window, you should see a spinner and text “Updating Cloud Library…” Wait for this to complete. It can take some time (5-10 minutes or more).
6. After the spinner and text disappears in Music.app, click the reload button in Radiccio.
7. If that doesn’t help: quit and reopen Radiccio.

Why does sorting by year sometimes not work properly with Apple Music?

Radiccio uses the “release date” attribute to sort Apple Music content. Content which was added to your library from the Apple Music catalog usually has a release date (but not always). Content which was uploaded to iCloud usually does not have a release date, so it will not be sorted correctly.

Uploaded content may have a “year” attribute, but for unknown reasons, MusicKit does not provide access to the “year” attribute, so Radiccio cannot use it. We have reported this to Apple (FB18130091) and we hope that Apple will address this in the future.

Why am I sometimes unable to add songs to the queue, or use shuffle, with Apple Music?

First, note that there are two different ways of accessing Apple Music: the catalog, and the library. The catalog contains all of the content available with an Apple Music subscription. The library contains only content that you have chosen to add to your library.

These two systems work differently. One such way is that queue operations (such as play next, play last, etc.), and shuffle, cannot currently be used with content that comes from the Apple Music catalog. If the queue only contains catalog content, or contains a mixture of catalog and library content, these features will not be available.

The reason for this is that, with catalog content, the MusicKit APIs only allow playing an entire album or playlist at a time. An individual song cannot be played and cannot be added to the queue. Nor can an album or playlist be added to an existing queue. One consequence of this is that Radiccio’s specific way of providing shuffle functionality also does not work, because it depends on queue operations that don’t work. This seems to be a result of a bug in MusicKit, and we have reported the bug to Apple (FB18131975). We hope that Apple will address this in the future.

Queue operations, and shuffle, should work properly when playing only content from your Apple Music library. If you find otherwise, please contact us to let us know.

One way to work around this is to add albums and playlists that you like to your library. After doing so, they should work as expected. (Why this makes a difference is unknown to us.) Also note that it may take a minute or two for newly added content to appear in your library, so if it doesn’t show up right away, please wait a moment and then try the refresh button.

What is “Music.app”?

When we say Music.app, we mean the app on your Mac which is simply named “Music”. It used to be named “iTunes”. (If you choose File > Get Info in Finder, you will see that it is actually named Music.app, but the extension part of the name is usually hidden.)

We refer to it as Music.app to avoid confusion with Apple Music, which is the paid subscription service offered by Apple, and also a source type in Radiccio.

What is MusicKit?

MusicKit is a macOS API. It is a set of tools that Apple has created to allow third-party developers like us to provide access to the Apple Music service in our apps.

MusicKit has a different set of features and functionality than Music.app. So when we say that something doesn’t work the same way in Radiccio as it does in Music.app, often it is because of the way that functionality is different in MusicKit; or in some cases, missing entirely from MusicKit. This is why we are not able to offer exact feature parity between Radiccio and Music.app.