Apple Music fail (or user fail?)

Apple General
#1

I signed up to the Apple Music trial and have just noticed that all of my music has been copied to the cloud (without any warning or confirmation that I wanted this to happen). I now want to stop the trial subscription and go back to ‘normal’ iTunes/music library but also this does not seem to be possible.

None of the methods I can find for unsubscribing from the trial using either iDevices or iTunes work as there is simply no option to turn the trial off so it looks like I need to wait until January 4 when the trial expires to regain control of my music library.

To put it bluntly this pisses me off, I was never ask if I want to copy the music to the cloud and certainly did not give my permission for this to happen. (I only found that this had happened as I have just done a clean install of OS X on my MacBook and saw all the music items with the little cloud symbol on them).

I religiously back up things prior to a rebuild and obviously have all the music and will copy it back so as to restore my library to its original state but the fact that this even happened (the copying of music to the cloud) was done without any warning or permission which is a privacy breach in my view.

I’m also going to try and send this information to Apple to have them explain how/why this happened but don’t expect any response.

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#2

I’ve heard enough people with trouble with Apple Music that I’ve steered clear of it. Besides I’m old enough now that all the new music available pretty much doesn’t appeal to me :slight_smile:

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#4

The majority of it doesn’t actually get “copied” to the cloud. It does scan your iTunes Library but if it finds that music in the Apple Music catalogue, it will add that version instead rather than uploading it. (same as iTunes Match back in the day).

I really like Apple Music, but it does have problems.

At some point (I don’t remember when) I added a copy of Karma from Delirium to my Apple Music, I already had a copy of it in iTunes. Unfortunately, the ID3 tag for Silence was a bit different so now I have two copies in my library. I don’t really know how to resolve it. Do I just delete my own copy? Then what happens if I turn my Apple Music subscription off? I’ve effectively lost that song.

What’s more frustrating in this instance is a few years ago, I spent hours going through my iTunes Library changing ID3 tags around so they reflect how they look in the iTunes Music Store. This is different from how they’re tagged in Apple Music.

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#5

That’s very interesting…

I’m an Apple Music user and over the weekend I noticed I got charged for iTunes Match (which I’ve used pretty much since it came out). I contacted Apple since I didn’t see the need to have both services and they graciously gave me a refund for that amount (which was quick and painless) but I was wondering what would happen to all the matched music since I didn’t realise that Apple Music did the same thing. All my music is living on my Mac Mini but I figured that without the match service running it would just stop me playing to on my iPhone unless I downloaded it off the mini… Now I know why it’s kept on working!

I’m actually starting to use Spotify a bit and grabbed their 3 month for 99c premium subscription to see how it goes vs Apple Music. I will have to make a decision on which to keep very soon.

#6

There’s one or two of weird caveats (I think the publisher has to opt in to Apple Music) and the wording is very onimous but 99% of people won’t need iTunes Match if they have Apple Music. I remember reading at one point iTunes Match was going to be included with Apple Music paid accounts but can’t remember what ended up happening with that.

#7

From Monday Morning News thread:

I’d completely forgotten about DRM being a differentiator.

A minor change to the Apple Music membership FAQ now states that the streaming music service now includes all the benefits of iTunes Match. Previously iTunes Match allowed subscribers to download DRM-free versions of tracks matched from your own library, where Apple Music included DRM on every track downloaded from a user’s matched library. There may have been a few reasons to subscribe to both services previously, but there’s one less now.

#8

I noticed that too, it’a an interesting little tid bit and not necessarily an issue at all so long as you keep subscribing.

As I said, In my case all music was previously downloaded and sits on my Mac Mini. I always tried to keep all music downloaded to that machine but previously I wouldn’t have bothered backing this up since I could just re-download it and all… but if my versions are DRM free (since they were all downloaded under iTunes Match) it might just be worth making a copy of them all now before I forget and lose them to the machine.

Most of it was ripped from CD’s long long ago, but after running iTunes Match over it all I deleted it all and downloaded the shiny new versions from iTunes complete with cover art and all the correct and complete meta data (I had keyed all mine by hand or used the auto stuff provided when ripping it along with scanned album covers). The physical CD’s are either in a box in the shed, or far more likely, tossed in one of the moves over the years.

I’ve been 100% digital since the late 90’s… moreso after getting a Siemens SL45 that could play MP3’s in '01 and various other MP3 players after that.

There is plenty of stuff that wasn’t matched for one reason or another, and the vast majority of I probably wouldn’t even notice… But it’s a little sad to think it’s now locked to Apple for all eternity if I don’t keep a copy of all those non DRM’d tracks.