WARNING: iCloud Music Library just destroyed my Mac's iTunes Library

Good Article. http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/17/8981783/best-music-streaming-service-2015-spot ify-apple-google-tidal-rdio

Thanks for the advice

Really want to use Apple's service, but it completely disregards my own music collection as my own, and wants to destroy it, I cannot use it, and will be going to Spotify.

Apple take heed, turn off the enforced use of iCloud to have offline copies of music, and your service will flourish. If you dont then it will fail

APPLE......

In the iCloud Music Library, do not automatically match and upload a customer's library. Let the customer control what gets uploaded and how. I.e., if a customer has a lot of curated music files, let them upload them first. Then let them upload anything else they want. Then match whatever is left over. Give the customer some control over what is uploaded and how it is done. Avoid tampering with the metadata of customers' music files and how they have their music libraries organized at all cost.

Combine the iTunes Store and New Music and just let subscribers play complete songs if they desire from the iTunes Store.

Allow subscribers the ability to delete their custom radio stations as needed.

Either greatly improve Connect or eliminate it. Currently it is worthless.

Here is what I wrote to Facebook friends about the issues

Update: Google Play Muisc has turned out to be THE service that Apple Music should have been, and is now my primary cloud/streaming choice. I can do the usual things, have music discovered by preference, create radio stations from playlists or artists, Use other people's playlists, etc. But the FREE version is now allowing me to upload my entire collection (up to 50,000 songs) into their cloud, WITHOUT MESSING UP MY ALBUMS, TRACKS OR ARTWORK.

Apple Music Fail:

The UI is incomprehensible, there is a HUGE support forum thread on how turning on iCloud Music has largely destroyed people's iTunes collections, and there is no free option. I couldn't even figure out what it was until I looked at Spotify, and saw what it was *trying* to become. I decided that I would use the 3 month free period to seriously evaluate streaming and cloud options for music. Here are the conclusions I am coming to:

Useful going forward, whether paid or free: Google Play Music, Spotify, Pandora and Vox (possibly, although Google Play Music looks even better).

Not Useful and cancelled (or soon will be): Amazon Music Player and Apple Music.

Definite Winners: VLC player for desktop and phone/tablet: Open Source Software does it right again.

Streaming from the NAS box: Air-Playit and Plex both have their strengths and weaknesses. The build-in DLNA server on the NAS is good enough for all in-home use, with Air-Playit providing internet and web access to media files.

Apple needs a Steve Jobs to yell at them when something is not up to snuff - like Apple Maps and Apple Music.

Apple must be going after the teeny bopper target market. They are most certainly not targeting serious music collectors.

I'm kind of surprised to still see so many people upset / frustrated / making plans to use other products. Initially that made sense - it looked like iTunes was munging collections and rewriting metadata of our actual files. But then Apple released an iTunes update and a very detailed support document. In that document, we all learned this problem only affected some users of iTunes Match, not everyone. And for those that were affected, it only affected the the match data, not actual metadata in your actual files. And Apple provided clear instructions on how to reset the match data. Users who tried those instructions then reported that all was well, their original data was just fine, and that resetting match fixed everything.

So the whole thing turned out to be a bit of a tempest in a teapot. Things weren't nearly as bad as feared, and there was a clear and easy path to repair.

Yet, people are still really upset. Hey guys - bugs are in all software. They happen. Our meticulous collections were not in fact damaged and people who applied the recommended steps reported that everything did in fact work as advertised.

My only challenge now is to get the collection down to 100,000 tracks so I can actually take advantage of it. But I'm no longer ******, or fearful of enabling iCloud Music Library.

>> "we all learned this problem only affected some users of iTunes Match"

That's wrong. I never used iTunes Match, but I've had massive problems."

>> "So the whole thing turned out to be a bit of a tempest in a teapot. Things weren't nearly as bad as feared, and there was a clear and easy path to repair."

That's all false, from what I've seen. It's still a huge issue for me. A deal breaker for iCloud Music Library.

No Scot, there is no way to reset the match data when you are still a iTunes Match subscriber.

No Scot, the iTunes update didn't fix everything.

For me, turning off iCloud Music Library :

- still empties half to 80% of my playlists,

- still duplicates them each day,

- still matches some tracks that I purchased into Apple Match DRM ones

So yes Scot bugs are in all software but please don't talk to us as to kids.

I currently cannot use an Apple service I'm still paying for (iTunes Match) because of their matching process.

That is why I am still very upset / frustrated / making plans to use other products.

Ah - apologies in that case. I had gotten the impression from posts by several others a few pages back that all was well after all. Sounds like Apple have cleared up many, but not all of the problems.

Scot,

It seems to me that Apple has cleared up some but not many of the problems as you say. The only useful information I have received regarding this whole debacle has been from this discussion thread but most certainly not from the powers that be at Apple. They are so isolated in their ivory tower that they have no way of hearing from and interacting with their customers. I am still using iTunes due to my huge library, but meanwhile I am following this discussion and sitting on the sidelines while looking for an alternative until Apple fully addresses this or just ignores it totally.

Just to show you how isolated from their iTunes customers Apple really is, I recently called AppleCare about the problems. They had no clue about the issues and could offer no help. I looked into Google Play Music and, when I had questions, they had both phone and chat support available. So I chose chat. I chatted with a most knowledgeable person at Google who was able to tell me exactly what I wanted to know. Although Google Play Music is not for me, I was able to communicate with them, and unlike Apple they answered my questions.

I still love Apple hardware and most of their software, but I am a music person. I would just like to find a separate music library(without a cloud) and player combo(i.e., a music jukebox) for my Mac that is separate from iTunes. I want to physically load my iTunes library into that jukebox and back it up so that all will be well going forward in the event Apple continues to go down the slippery slope with further catastrophic iTunes updates in the future. I have yet to find what I am looking for.

curious-what don't you like about Google Music? It is almost exactly what you just said you are looking for. Take your folders out of iTunes and load them to google. If you don't want to stream their vast catalog for 10 bucks a month, you can purchase and download them to your folders. Then back them up. Unless you are looking to upload FLAC or other high fidelity files I think this is the closest we are going to get. For now. Beats iTunes that is for sure. I will only use itunes for movies and tv to stream to Apple TV. Which lately I have mostly switched to Amazon Fire Stick for that content other than HBO Now. Like you I still love OSX and IOS but Apple software I have given up on. Except FCPX, the rest is all crud now.

jctez,

Enjoying the conversation!

1. I do not want to eliminate iTunes. I want to use it as is without the Cloud Library and keep my iTunes Library intact.

2. In examining Google, unlike Apple Music, the first thing you have to do is upload your music into their Cloud. At least that is what they told me. They also told me they match your songs with the closest matches they have ACCORDING TO THEIR STANDARDS. They said they have a way for customers to reload originals of songs they match incorrectly.

3. I don't want a cloud that mismatches a lot of my stuff. I don't want a cloud at all. I just want a stand alone library program with its own player. I have recategorized the genres of thousands of songs and edited the EQ on many to suit my taste. Plus I have made many cd compilations with custom designed cd covers that I have uploaded. It would be impossible for any cloud matching service to do anything but wreak havoc with my music library. It's like Apple for an example. In trying to match songs, they ran roughshod over album covers, EQs and genres. Their match settings paid absolutely no attention to them at all.

4. Unless you have a generic music collection, I think it is virtually impossible for a cloud matching service to do anything good for you. Unless they set very strict matching standards, you will only find yourself trying to unravel what they have messed up.

Hope all this makes sense.

No one wants a cloud that mismatches stuff, but I personally have wanted a cloud service for my own collection for many years. I have a 2.7 TB collection of largely rare / out of print / unavailable music on my "master" Mac at home, while most of my listening time is from work during the day, and sometimes on a separate laptop in other situations . If I drove a car more often, I'd want access to it from a phone as well. I have tried many convoluted systems over the years to gain access to my home music collection from work, including Home Sharing + Slink, VNC + Icecast, and others. Match initially showed a lot of promise here, but its tiny 25,000 track limit made it a non-starter.

iTunes continues to work fine as a standalone player, but I've been wanting to throw my money at Apple for a very long time to solve this problem, hence my very strong interest in this working flawlessly. Apple Music streaming of music from outside my collection is fun to play with, but not nearly as nice as hearing my own curated collection.

Matching is probably a harder problem to solve than it appears, but I believe it's solvable. Your custom playlists with custom covers should "just work" in the cloud. Whether they will when Apple gets this right is still an open question, but I have a lot of faith they'll nail it.

I have spent the last few days uploading my collections to Google Play, including non-identifiable albums, out of print stuff and FLAC files. I have had nearly ZERO problems with tracks albums or artwoK. And this is the FREE version. I am also able to have custom stations and playlists. Apples problems merely spurred me to look at available options, and I am impressed by Google.

2.7 TB of music? How do you manage that? How would anyone manage that? Are they WAV files or what? I couldn't have that much music in three lifetimes.