itunes match deleted my music

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itunes match deleted my music

Today I was saddened to learn my personal catalog of music, imported from CDs, personal audio recordings, and non-itunes downloads over a period of 15 years, has been systematically deleted by Apple, and is now lost forever.

Not only have I lost the content of CDs I've since tossed as I naively moved my music library to itunes digital service, but I've also lost art projects, personal recordings, and love songs written for me many years ago that I will never have back again.

I have been a loyal Apple customer since 2003. I have owned several iMacs, ibooks, and iphones over the years. With each new device, I have dutifully transferred my content over to the next. I have purchased expensive time machines at Apple's urging to back up my content. I have now learned that since I signed up for iTunes Match in 2012, the service has been mining my source files on my computer and back up devices and erasing them all, creating digital "proxy" files to replace them. When I discontinued my subscription in January of this year - those proxy files were erased - and since Apple deleted all my original files - that music is gone forever.

Thousands of dollars of music gone. Original recordings made throughout my life gone. I was "backing up" the entire time - and Apple was going into my external hard drive, and deleting files from there as well.

I am heart broken. This has been a personal violation and breech of trust. As an Apple stockholder, I am seriously considering selling my shares. As an Apple consumer - I will likely be moving on. I will be advising everyone I know that signing up for iTunes Match or Apple Music comes with a hefty price.

iMac 21.5", OS X 10.10

Posted on Apr 19, 2019 6:24 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

apple_deleted_my_music Author

Level 1

33 points

Apr 19, 2019 11:25 AM in response to turingtest2

There are ample accounts of Apple deleting music files from Apple Music subscribers available through a simple internet search, some carried by media outlets. If this has not come across this forum before, perhaps you should open your perspective to the possibility that you are encountering something new to you.

If you are a volunteer contributor helping people in these forums, I'm glad you can provide value to others. In this case, repeatedly countering the assessment provided to me by Apple, and blaming me for user error, is decidedly unhelpful.

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Answer 2

Apr 19, 2019 6:41 AM in response to turingtest2

Not true. I was never prompted to "delete" my original files. My files were backed up on my Time Machine. I have it on confirmation from an Apple Representative that the back ups were deleted from there as well.

I was under the assumption it was a "syncing service" as well, so my original files would be safe. By the time I was discontinuing service, all of the original files had already been deleted.

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Answer 3

Apr 19, 2019 8:40 AM in response to turingtest2

Unless you are willing to identify yourself as an Apple Representative, your characterizations of the program are the subjective understanding of a consumer.

If you are indeed an Apple Representative or paid contractor, you are misrepresenting yourself in an effort to delegitimize my experience.

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Answer 4

JRWells

Level 1

13 points

Apr 19, 2019 12:54 PM in response to apple_deleted_my_music

Your account matches my experience today when I turned on iCloud music library. After much matching/uploading/etc. I'm left with roughly 1000 songs out of the 8000 I started with. Fortunately I have backups to recover and to verify the activity. I certainly didn't tell iTunes to go ahead and delete 7000 songs. It appears that it removed songs from my local drive as it matched them.

I've been a fan of Apple hardware for a long time, but they ought to be embarrassed by this service.

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Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

272,737 points

Apr 19, 2019 6:35 AM in response to apple_deleted_my_music

And yet this isn't how iTunes Match works. Files are only removed from local storage and backups if you choose to delete them and then replicate that deletion. iTunes Match is a library syncing service, not a backup mechanism, and if you plan to discontinue a service the onus is on you to ensure that all content you've chosen to store in it has been secured before you do so.

tt2

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Answer 6

turingtest2

Level 10

272,737 points

Apr 19, 2019 6:58 AM in response to apple_deleted_my_music

Obviously only you are in a position to review what steps you took over the years to move and maintain your library if your content was shown in the cloud when you discontinued the service then it would all have evaporated. If it was on your computer it would still be there. Have you explored the history within Time Machine going back to a date when you think you last saw your content on your computer? Was Time Machine actively backing up the iTunes Media folder?

If I remove items from my iCloud Music Library they are removed from any iOS devices, and any iTunes Library that only sees the tracks as being in the cloud, but for a library that has a local copy the file stays in place and its iCloud Status is changed to Removed.

tt2

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Answer 7

Apr 19, 2019 7:07 AM in response to turingtest2

I think your understanding and information regarding this service is outdated or inaccurate.

The way the service works is to "match" the original files in your itunes library with proxy tracks available on iTunes. In the process, it deletes your original files on your hard drive, and any external devices you have synced with your hard drive. So even if you are backing up to Time Machine, the original files are deleted from there as well.

And, yes, my time machine back ups have been checked for source files as far back as they go.

This is not something that Apple is hiding. This was explicitly explained to me by a representative at supervisor status.

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Answer 8

turingtest2

Level 10

272,737 points

Apr 19, 2019 7:42 AM in response to apple_deleted_my_music

As an existing iTunes Match and Apple Music subscriber, and an iTunes user of some 14 years standing, I am fully aware of how the service works, and its many bugs/features. My hard drive contains all 7,596 of my own tracks that I've added to iTunes Match. They are also all stored in the two parallel backups that I have, and in a larger library some ten times bigger that isn't connected to the iTunes Music Library service, and the two backups I have of it. The only time iTunes has ever deleted content I didn't (knowingly) specifically ask it to was when I allowed it to sync my Podcast settings from my iOS device to my iTunes library, and it wiped out several hundred archived podcasts that I'd wanted kept on my computer but not on my device. Restoring a backup resolved that. I had mistakenly assumed the settings would have synced in the other direction so ultimately my fault coupled with ambiguous design.

I can only assume that at some point you chose to remove local copies of your media in order to free up space on your computer. This is, after all, what plenty of users subscribe to iTunes Match in order to achieve, which is fine as long as a complete offline backup of the library is kept somewhere and you know how to use it when needed.

tt2

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Answer 9

Apr 19, 2019 7:53 AM in response to apple_deleted_my_music

Hi,

iTunes does not delete your original files when using iTunes Match. iTunes match scans your library to determine what tracks can be matched with tracks on the iTunes servers and those that can't be matched are uploaded as is (except when the tracks are ALAC or AIFF - transcribed to 256 kbps AAC). The original tracks are NOT changed by this process.

Once a track has been matched, you have the option to remove original and download the Matched version or keep the original.

I have over 70k tracks in my iCloud Music Library. All those tracks are on both my computers hard drive with an additional time machine back up. As far as I am aware, apart from a few tracks, nothing has been removed from my hard drive. The missing tracks were probable deleted by me in error - this has occurred a few times.

Jim

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Answer 10

Apr 19, 2019 7:55 AM in response to turingtest2

I appreciate you sharing your experience, but please do not misrepresent mine.

I have already stated that I have never asked or gave permission to iTunes Match to delete my files. I have it on authority from an Apple representative that that does not matter - it is the basic function of the service to delete your original files. Unless you have them backed up onto a drive that is not connected with your computer - the source files will be deleted from your computer's hard drive and all connected Time Machine back up hard drives.

This was not an accident or oversight. This is how the program functions.

Cheers to you for making a back up on a device not connected to your computer hard drive. Your source files are likely safe.

Unless you have more knowledge and authority to speak on this subject than an Apple supervisor, I am going to defer to information I have received directly from Apple.

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Answer 11

Apr 19, 2019 7:56 AM in response to Jimzgoldfinch

Not true. I was never prompted to "delete" my original files. My files were backed up on my Time Machine. I have it on confirmation from an Apple Representative that the back ups were deleted from there as well.

I was under the assumption it was a "syncing service" as well, so my original files would be safe. By the time I was discontinuing service, all of the original files had already been deleted.

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Answer 12

turingtest2

Level 10

272,737 points

Apr 19, 2019 8:31 AM in response to apple_deleted_my_music

When you decided to discontinue the service were the tracks still available to you to play from the cloud at that point in time? I would assume that they were, and that you could have taken the opportunity to download them at that point in time. It should go without saying that I understand and sympathise with your experience, but it is quite possible that your support representative has misunderstood the situation. iTunes doesn't have the ability to reach into your backups, or scan for content not connected to the library, nor can it retroactively delete past snapshots from Time Machine. Your original data must have been delete quite some time ago if TimeMachine no longer holds a copy, assuming it was ever on the computer in question and captured by TM.

tt2

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Answer 13

turingtest2

Level 10

272,737 points

Apr 19, 2019 9:50 AM in response to apple_deleted_my_music

I don't work for Apple, nor for anyone else connected with the company. I've been volunteering on these forums for nearly 12 years and read almost everything that comes through the iTunes communities. If your suggested cause for your media loss were accurate I'm certain I would have heard about it before, and as an active iTunes Match user there ought to be evidence of the same on my computer. I cannot help you recover your data if it isn't there to be retrieved, but I've put in many hours to help people when Apple said there was nothing they could do. I am tying to help correct what I believe to be a genuine misunderstanding. If that isn't helpful then I apologise.

tt2

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itunes match deleted my music

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