Apple Music without Apple interfering with my Music Library

You could leave your computer’s music app as is, without configuring the Apple Music account.

Then you configure your Apple music account only on your iphone or your iPad, from which you can play Apple music content directly from your homepods (when your turn off your iphone or ipad, your homepods will still be playing the music) - music is not streamed from your iphone/ipad to your homepods, it is played/streamed by the homepods themselves).

To do that, i’m the Music app on your iPhone/iPad, use the “control other speakers & tvs” feature.

Salutations 307Cable, 

Once you subscribe to Apple Music, your music uploads and is matched, if available in the Apple Music catalog, to your iCloud Music Library. That’s when you see the changes made as your library is now reflecting data from the Apple Music catalog.

First, before enabling Apple Music on a computer, be sure to make a backup of your library. This way if you run into any issues or if you opt to cancel a subscription, those albums are available how you prefer them.

If you prefer, you can opt to not sync your computer with your iCloud Music Library which would leave your library intact the way it was prior to subscribing. You’ll just be sure under Preferences to not turn on ‘Sync Library’. 

Thanks. 

I created two distinct user accounts on my Mac.

With the first user, I don’t configure an Apple Music account, so that I can import only my local music and be sure that Music will not mess up my library with the online content.

With the second user, I configured my Apple Music account and checked the Sync Library option. With this user, I use only Apple Music online content.

On both user accounts, I setup music sharing, giving different library names (“Music” and “Apple Music”) so that I can remotely control both libraries from the iTunes Remote app on my iPhone and iPad - of course I logged in both user accounts using fast user switching when bottling the Mac, then let my Mac always on as my music server.

With the library with my local music, I usually do lossless airplay.

With the other library, I play the Apple Music hi-res lossless directly through HDMI connected to my AVR acting as a DAC - I set the Audio Midi Setup settings on 8 channels 24 bits 96Khz.

That allows me to launch both music types remotely.

That’s brilliant thank you, what I’ve wanted for ages. Many thanks, much appreciated

I think that’s beyond my abilities! Thank you