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Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

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Re: Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

#41

Post by blowski »

endigma wrote: post #16

Not that it excuses any of this on Apple's part, but holy shit do people with like a ton of music not realize backups are important? Like seriously buy a NAS of any caliber from anywhere or an external HDD or use dropbox but don't put all your eggs in one basket people. I get that "shit happens" and all, but I don't understand how backups are not more prominently known in tech culture as mandatory for data you care a…

My friend is in his 60s who is not very technical, but is very into music. He has 1000s of (purchased) CDs and vinyl.

He has ripped a lot of it onto a local hard drive. I can see how he might think Apple Music _is_ a backup of those files. It seems a failing of modern technology that he needs to understand backup in the sense of bits on a magnetic disk is different to being able to access the files as a network stream. I imagine many tech companies are quite happy to let the confusion continue.

Re: Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

#42

Post by LeoPanthera »

I don't think this is actually true. I have a bunch of obscure music in my library that isn't "matched", and while it is transcoded to AAC, it doesn't have DRM in it and can be downloaded and played on a second Mac in VLC or IINA.

Re: Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

#43

Post by the-rc »

knaik94 wrote: post #17
extr0pian wrote: post #13

I had my entire music collection stored on Google Play Music for a time, at one point being my only backup. When I tried to export my music collection, I discovered that not only were the file names and folder structures completely messed up, but I would sometimes get lower bitrate version of the songs or songs with "clean" lyrics - which I know for a fact wasn't what I had originally uploaded. I refuse to use music…

I had a different experience, on export my files were all in the original encoding. The value of Google Play Music was that you could upload files. I have also never had any files replaced. I have enjoyed self hosted solutions since YouTube Music broke the smart Playlist and integration for uploaded files with steaming files.

When GPM launched, there was definitely no deduplication in place. Even if two users uploaded the same file, there would be two copies — more if you count replication and RS-encoding. It was so because... somebody ordered so.

Perhaps things changed later, but I'm skeptical, because the "somebodies" never change. Also, as recently as a couple of years ago, I noticed broken metadata/cover art in my library that I actually wish YTM would fix for me. I suspect it's more likely that the original bits were/are still in there somewhere and some UI made it harder to get to them. With YTM, accessing your own MP3s is a bit convoluted. I'll give it a shot later tonight, to see if I can download some music that I know to have specific metadata and bitrates.

Re: Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

#44

Post by alphabettsy »

everyone wrote: post #30
ur-whale wrote: post #19

Quoted post unavailable.

HN users love apple though. Something which will never cease to mystify me. You would think relatively tech savvy people, programmers and computer super-users would utterly detest apple with a burning passion.

Why should I detest things that usually serve their intended purpose really well?

I actually like macOS on my MacBook Pro, I don’t have to tinker with it to keep it working like my Linux desktop.

I’ve been frustrated with iOS but I originally switched because I was tired of my phone being randomly off or otherwise having some unexpected behavior causing it to be unreliable.

I can understand why other people prefer Windows, Linux or Android. How can it be mystifying why some might prefer macOS or iOS?

Re: Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

#46

Post by null_object »

arnaudsm wrote: post #31
null_object wrote: post #22

Wow this currently has 111 points and is sailing to the top of HN... based on a user misunderstanding... Edit: What's more, the person pointing to the solution isn't even the top-voted comment on this thread. Just everyone repeating their usual anti-Apple fixations.

Are Dark Patterns the fault of the user or the company ?

> Are Dark Patterns the fault of the user or the company

But you - and supposedly the other people downvoting me - don’t seem to realize that absolutely nothing has happened to the user’s original files. They simply misunderstood how to sync files to their other devices.

Re: Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

#48

Post by phkahler »

alphabettsy wrote: post #9
galad87 wrote: post #6

Apple Music includes the old iTunes Match features, so it matches your local library with the Apple Music library if you allow it to do so, and uploads only the songs it can't match. This process is not perfect so some songs might be matched to a different version. Anyway, even if I download a matches song it's DRM free on my Mac, and Apple Music won't automatically delete your local files. But I guess bugs happens,…

This is exactly my experience as well. Not an issue imo, you have to preserve the original files still.

>> Not an issue imo

That's an odd stance IMO. Should any service or software ever change a user's files without letting them know? I think not, regardless of what ever technobabble explains why it happens

Re: Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions

#49

Post by nonrandomstring »

arnaudsm wrote: post #31
null_object wrote: post #22

Wow this currently has 111 points and is sailing to the top of HN... based on a user misunderstanding... Edit: What's more, the person pointing to the solution isn't even the top-voted comment on this thread. Just everyone repeating their usual anti-Apple fixations.

Are Dark Patterns the fault of the user or the company ?

The responsibility for a defective product that allows harm to be done to it's user through misoperation and lack of safety features lies with the manufacturer. Supplying the equivalent of a chainsaw without a blade guard, and then blaming the victims is not okay.
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