Apple Stole My Music • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#171

Post by simonster » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:30 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #93

givinguflac wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid there is a bug in software! This article is crap, maybe he ran into an issue but I've helped over a dozen people get setup on Apple Music and not once has there been file deletion. I am very skeptical that theoretical phone rep said any of these things either. Obviously there is a bug that needs fixing, but this is definitely not a platform wide attempt to delete anyone's data.

Really? Just because you have helped over a dozen people it means that this issue doesn't exist? Did you bother to check every local file on the person's drive that you were helping? If you didn't know about the potential issue how would you know to check. The author isn't saying its intentional hs's saying this is a side-effect of this model. Incidentally this is not the first type questionable practice from Apple M…

The article you linked to appears to describe something totally different. It says that if you delete your music from your computer, then re-downloading the music through Apple Music will give you DRMed files. But it also says:

> If you haven’t deleted your own copies of your music, then there’s nothing to worry about. If you download onto other devices from Apple Music, those devices will get the DRM versions, but you’ll still have your DRM-free originals.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#172

Post by oarsinsync » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:30 PM UTC

dingo_bat wrote: post #46

delinka wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files from the user's computer..." Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being helpful here. But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong - "I know! Let's save the user some space by serving all their music from the cloud!" The moment that file deletion came up in the design, the option to opt-in should have been…

> Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being helpful here. Yeah, storage that was made precious by apple by not supporting an SD card slot. Very "helpful".

This isn't about a lack of expandable storage (all Macs have at least one USB port, some come with SD card slots), but rather that a lot of Macs come with very small SSDs.

I can totally see how this might have seemed like a good idea. Shame it's just... not.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#173

Post by gcatalfamo » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:30 PM UTC

tl;dr:

"through the Apple Music subscription [...] Apple now deletes files from its users [...] iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted."

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#174

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

This is exactly why I've held onto all my CDs, and why I continue to buy the majority of my music in a physical format. I once had Apple ... iTunes match? iCloud? I can't even remember what it was called ... decide that an Eminem album I had was too racy and serve me a censored, unlistenable version instead. And the complexity involved in keeping any kind of sizeable music library in check using iTunes is overwhelming. I have two apple ids, some music on an external hard drive, some on an internal hard drive, some subset/superset/overlapping set of which is 'somewhere' in the cloud; it's a nightmare. Is there a sensible alternative to iTunes that will a) not do anything with 'the cloud' b) sync to my iPod?

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#175

Post by darkmagnus » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #36

Apple iTunes Match (and Apple Music) subscriber, with 23,000 hand ripped songs, only about 18,000 able to exact match by Apple, 5,000 are less common versions. Also have enabled iCloud Music Library. Note these are three different services, and iCloud Music Library has been the most likely culprit for monkeying with your music, not Apple Music. The combo of all three has deleted or auto-replaced exactly zero of my cu…

Same here, never have had a problem and I use both services.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#176

Post by marknutter » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #174

This is exactly why I've held onto all my CDs, and why I continue to buy the majority of my music in a physical format. I once had Apple ... iTunes match? iCloud? I can't even remember what it was called ... decide that an Eminem album I had was too racy and serve me a censored, unlistenable version instead. And the complexity involved in keeping any kind of sizeable music library in check using iTunes is overwhelmin…

I store all my music in the PirateBay

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#177

Post by 6stringmerc » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

At first I thought the tone of the article was a bit hyperbolic, but upon reading further, no, this totally fits with the emotions that I'd probably feel upon such a situation. Shock, then horror, then anger. Then solution minded...then when hitting a wall...

>When giving the above warning, however, even in my most Orwellian paranoia I never could have dreamed that the content holders, like Apple, would also reach into your computer and take away what you already owned.

It just feels dirty, and, as my Software Developer Uncle probably would've called it, "Playing outside the sandbox." I mean, sure, as the article notes, the TOS gives Apple a lot of consent, but "Loss or Damage" via incidental use vs. outright deletion via intentional coding feels...different. Maybe legally they're not...

I do remember ranting at the top of my lungs after an online jam software installed an update and crashed my Win7 PC laptop so hard it had to rebuild via a command prompt screen. By then, I already had CD backups, a USB HD 500GB full of projects, and it was a cold reminder. The laptop restored fine, but whoa, not fun. Not what I signed up for in the agreement, risk-wise, I felt, so I've essentially stopped using that software.

...and I'll close by reminding myself I'm perfectly reasonable with my Win laptop setup, not running iTunes (Winamp), and backing up to a local cloud or other media (another USB HD coming soon). Life happens, accidents happen...but there's some funky software out there.

Heck of a story, and one I will point to gladly when discussing paths for audio DAW hardware/software platforms.

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#178

Post by darkmagnus » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

mbrutsch wrote: post #162

Lie with dogs, you get fleas. I have zero sympathy for those who fall prey to closed ecosystem BS like this, including my own wife. People just don't listen.

My flea repellant is working very well then...

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#179

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

pjsg wrote: post #84

rossng wrote: post #74

Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly difficult to: * Get it synced properly * Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-device * Ensure that device contents are actually backed-up, unless done manually * Set up simple things like email accounts Just a month or two ago, I was helping someone whose iTunes music wouldn't sync to their iPhone. It turned out that, when they signed up to…

No -- you aren't alone. Whenever I connect my daughter's iPhone to iTunes (say to add more music) we take our lives in our hands. You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want. I don't know whether this is deliberate on the part of Apple to discourage the use of iTunes, or whether they really think that it works well and is intuitive. For anybody from Apple…

"You get scary popups that ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you want."

This! One is something like "delete all the music from my iPod" and the other is "delete all the music from my hard drive". How on earth has this situation been allowed to develop?

Re: Apple Stole My Music

#180

Post by leephillips » Thu, May 05, 2016, 1:36 PM UTC

rossng wrote: post #74

Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly difficult to: * Get it synced properly * Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-device * Ensure that device contents are actually backed-up, unless done manually * Set up simple things like email accounts Just a month or two ago, I was helping someone whose iTunes music wouldn't sync to their iPhone. It turned out that, when they signed up to…

I recommend Android for anyone in a position to change.

I plug my Android phone into my Linux laptop. The phone's filesystem is mounted. I move, copy, delete whatever music and photos I want. Dead simple and rational.

I put Flickr on the phone. Photos I take with the phone are automatically backed up to Flickr, and I can see them from anywhere.