Need to subscribe to Apple Music to use iTunes "For You" function seems odd, no? I recall iTunes used to suggest new songs which I then purchased from Apple. (Haven't subscribed due to fear of deletion of old songs copied from legit CDs I own.)

Hey Tim.

As far as the store goes, it was hidden on my mac Apple Music, so i went to preferences and Show: iTunes Store to look at it.

I can't see much suggestion there though, it's all charts, new music and such.

So yeah, there seems to be no suggestion engine for iTunes Store, they are pushing us to rent from them rather than own our music.

Usually when files are deleted, it's because I bumped into the "remove download" contextual menu. My collection is mostly in tact. This can happen even if you are not using apple music, I think. But the upside is that you can re-download files. I've lost some lossless .aiff files, and gotten unlocked aac files instead. Annoying, but not the end of the world. And if your collection is all mp3s, this is not a loss in quality, and since the files are unlocked, should not be bound to a subscription.

If you're very worried, do back up your library before joining Apple music. The benefit of Apple music is that it mirrors your music collection, mp3s and other stored files, into apple music, so you can listen to all your old playlists on your phone.

For a long time, I had an itunes collection and then spotify for streaming and suggestions. I'm now using Apple Music too, and it's... fine. I don't really use the discovery much, and if I do, I still buy the files, since I need lossless for DJing on big systems.

If you hear something on Apple Music, you can click the ... and it will send you over to the iTunes store. But since apple doesn't care about store sales, you could just as well buy it whereever you find the cheapest downloads.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

These are features of Apple Music. You need a subscription to access them.

If you subscribe to Apple Music, you should back up your music to an external drive as a matter of course.

Jim