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Music App - Search error: "Something went wrong. Please try again later."

Hello, I'm having a problem with the Apple Music app search function.


Inputting any search terms and pressing return consistently leads to the message: "Something went wrong. Please try again later":



As a workaround, I'm able to open a song, artist, or album page when its preview appears under the search bar:



However, certain artists and tracks don't appear as previews (even when I've confirmed their availability by searching them on Apple Music on a browser). As a result, they are impossible to access from the app.



I've already tried to sign out and sign back in to my account, as well as restarting the machine entirely, to no avail. Running Sonoma 14.6 on a 2021 Apple M1 Pro.


Is this a known issue, and does anyone have suggestions to resolve this issue?


Thank you



MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 14.6

Posted on Oct 10, 2024 12:21 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 11, 2024 6:29 AM

I am also having this issue. Just wanted to let anyone else affected that I have reported this issue up to Level 3 support at Apple and they're handing it off to the development team.


It does not appear to be account related as we did some testing, including using a fresh account on the same machine with the same issue. Appears to be specific to that version of Apple Music or MacOS. This is occurring for me on OS 14.7.

82 replies

Oct 19, 2024 4:21 PM in response to lkrupp

For critical bugs and major security issues, I believe Apple does issue notices from time to time that they will be dealing with the problem in an upcoming update.


For issues like this, I agree – we probably won’t see anything from Apple until the next Sonoma update, whenever that will be. As you mentioned, it isn’t a showstopper, but it does severely limit the search functionality, so my bet is that it’s something that they can fix rather easily and will do so in due course.

Oct 19, 2024 6:35 PM in response to recombinant

Interesting thoughts about the caching of the single-word searches. I hadn't imagined that they would do that, but it seems to make sense, as the search function in the Apple Music desktop app does do a "live search" as you're typing, which indicates that JavaScript is likely at play (would this be AJAX?). As you mentioned, the Web app and desktop app may be passing common or popular searches on to an Apple Music Web server that handles such, but less common searches are perhaps passed on to a different service. The query to the latter service is apparently failing on Sonoma. This suggests that they changed the server-side code from Sequoia, but failed to update the client-side query in Sonoma to match the new server-side code.


Maybe.


I also confirmed today that it's not just multiple keywords searches, but also uncommon single keyword searches that throw the generic "Something went wrong. Please try again later." error.


Also, about Feedback Assistant, I used that for several cases, but it seems that Apple never updates the status on anything there, even though internally they may be referring to user feedback. They probably just designed the tool thinking it was a good idea (or based on complaints from users around the world and a request from upper management to get their act together), but the devs likely don't have the time to update the feedback themselves. I surmise this based on my own experience in the software development sector. With larger firms and projects, the devs themselves don't usually take on the role of client-facing dialogue and responding personally to feedback—they just don't have the time. Apple doesn't seem to have linked their own support organization with the Feedback Assistant tool, which is why customers like us see the disconnect and experience the defunctness of it all.


Anyway, it's nothing we can do anything about, except to complain using the Product Feedback and Support channels, and assume that Apple will eventually post a fix in an upcoming update for Sonoma... unless we want to go all the way and upgrade to Sequoia, of course.

Oct 25, 2024 2:27 PM in response to jchapper

Hey, I appreciate this. Yeah, I haven't upgraded to Sequoia yet. I actually wasn't planning on too. I actually wasn't planning on upgrading to Sonoma, but that accidentally happened (I have automatic updating turned on). I'm currently using a 2021 MacBook Pro M1. But yeah, I noticed the iPhone is not affected.


Will do and report my voice, hopefully many more do so as well because this is just unacceptable. such a shame.

Oct 30, 2024 3:52 PM in response to recombinant

Same here. It feels as if the search is breaking at the point where it would have identified a search as an artist (before displaying the artist image in the predictive search results).


"The Beatl" works, showing the predictive results "The Beatles" and the artist image.


"Tift Merri" shows the predictive test result "Tift Merritt" but doesn't make the jump to connect this to the artist.

Music App - Search error: "Something went wrong. Please try again later."

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