"Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously." Yikes.

Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously. »

This is not good, folks. I think there were some concerns about this with the matching process; looks like those concerns may have been well-founded.

 

Reason #3895763457633 why, even though I'm a longtime user of Macs, iPhones, iPods, and iPads, that I'm glad I've stayed the hell away from Apple Music.

 

J River all the way for me, iTunes just with my meticulous music library way too much for my taste, even before reading this.

 

Gotta be careful what you agree to.

 

I don't really know why anyone would bother with Apple Music. Even the weakest of the subscription streaming music options (Tidal) is vastly superior to it.

 

Fortunately I'm too stupid to even understand Apple Music. I have a kind of instinctive fear of that kind of thing. I like the physical stuff: pens, paper, books, records. (I'm under 40 by the way.)

 

I use iTunes with my laptop, I download the tracks I get from them, onto separate drives.

Theres never a single music file on that laptop.

They can look all they want.

You know, I used to be a Mac snob.

F apple and their fanbois.

 

This makes me want to not even use iTunes as a media player on my MacBook, even without an Apple Music subscription. Yikes!

 

Amen, brother.

 

Never... EVER... allow iTunes to "manage your music library". It can do very bad things.

 

It's such a terrible, bloated piece of software, isn't it? I only use it to transfer music I've ripped from CD or downloaded onto and off my iPod, and it's a miserable experience even using it for that simple task. I never download anything from the iTunes store other than apps for my phone and I never will. I like to BUY my music physically, not rent it and only have access to it at their whim.

 

Agreed. From the moment I started using iTunes in ~2005, I've had it permanently set to "I manually manage my library"

 

On a somewhat related note: this is one reason why my music server is network-shared as "read-only". Only I can update/edit my music files. Applications like iTunes can only play them.

 

Halfway through an Apple Music 3 month trial here whilst maintaining my longstanding Spotify subscription in parallel. A couple of years back I had an iTunes Match subscription which mangled my iTunes library metadata, scrambled much of my album artwork and generally caused more problems than it solved.

Before diving in with Apple Music I'd read up extensively as to what was involved and have NOT enabled iCloud Music Library on either my mac or my iPhone. As such I can stream (but not download) Apple Music on said two devices but can use my obsessively curated music library on both.

I have enabled iCloud Music Library on my iPad, which isn't synced to iTunes on my mac. And sure enough, it's a great service - I've been downloading all sorts from Apple Music onto it, creating playlists and using the streaming and downloading side of the service with aplomb.

I just can't combine my own library with Apple Music without risking my own music files. It's either maintain an air gap and not use all of the features and functions of Apple Music, or use all the features and forums and have mono files substituted for stereo with wholly unrelated artwork.

The lesson @BeatlesJWOL quoted looks like Apple still haven't solved the issues that plagued iTunes Match back in the day. That the issues not only still exist but can't be manually intervened and corrected is just staggering. That people are having their own music files deleted without having the facility not to have it substituted for other music files is staggering. I use iCloud Photo Library. I appreciate what Apple are going for here, but they're falling short. Way short.

 

moral of the story: read the fine print and more importantly, backup backup backup.

Oh, and prevent any non-essential service from auto-starting when you turn on your computer.

 

In other words... Apple, sometimes they add U2, sometimes they delete you too

 

Yeah, I think most of us just use it as a gateway for our portable devices. Such overkill for what should be a simple app.

 

Are you certain they aren't sitting in a previous iTunes database?

Can you reset your computer to an older date to recover the lost files?

Either way, turn off Apple Music subscription first.

 

Kinda reminds me of those commercials I see for companies that will get your family background for you....just send them your DNA. Um, no.
My wife tried to cash a check someone gave her at a Bank of America a few years ago (where the check was from). The bank teller wanted her fingerprint. lol what?

 

Ummm...and this the same outfit that is so concerned about the Feds getting into an iphone...

 

yeah, I mean I only use it for casual listening and moving things from my hard drives to my iPod classic, but even still it's quite a pain in the rear to use. This is just a horrifying invasion in every way.

 

I'm gonna guess that 98% of Apple Music subscribers like this feature.

I, of course, do not -- and as an Apple Music subscriber, I religiously avoid having anything to do with an iCloud Music Library or iTunes Match. It's unfortunate, but really there's no excuse for not knowing how these programs work.

 

When I was playing around with Apple Music I had some issues as well. In my case, my original files' metadata was altered and I had to restore some things from backup. I like the concept, and might turn it on just my iPhone and iPad sometime, but sadly, I do not have the confidence to enable it on my main computer that houses all my original files. I guess if I do get it, I will just have to live with not having my music library in the cloud.

 

In answer to some of the points raised in the aforementioned blog:

No, Apple Music is not deleting tracks off your hard drive — unless you tell it to »