Apple Music deletes your original songs and replaces them with DRM'd versions • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by lancesells » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #41

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 strea…

Isn't his backup his CDs and vinyl? I get the reason for maintaining another backup but your friend seems to be reasonably fine using Apple Music.

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

#72

Post by musicale » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

smcl wrote: post #53

Other problems include: - deleting songs which were on my computer, but which didn't exist in apple's catalogue waaaay back when I originally signed up. That's long gone, but it still bothered me. - letting me add and listen to albums for months/years, then suddenly marking one or more songs in that album as "not available" (Life Aquatic soundtrack has this, for me) - relisting albums somehow, sometimes while leaving…

> do so in a way that I could listen to it on the go without having to carry an MP3 player

Unfortunately (as OP noted) syncing through Apple Music streaming means that you get the Apple Music interpretation of your library rather than your actual library.

A (mostly vastly) superior system for users would be if they gave you a terabyte of cloud storage for free and allowed you to upload and stream your actual music library. Didn't Google's cloud music player used to work this way? The main user down side is that uploading your library for the first time takes forever. And from the service provider perspective it wastes a lot of storage and is costly.

Another scheme that I think was sued out of existence matched a CD locally and then gave you access to the streamed version of the same CD. This is sort of what Apple Music/iTunes match is trying to do, and they've actually resolved the legal and licensing issues, except that 1) a CD-matching system is less useful in the post-CD streaming era 2) they aren't matching the bits on the original disc and are using a Shazam-like inexact match of the song instead, and 3) the licensing resolution seems (?) to use DRM for lossless songs, 15 years after Steve Jobs' anti-DRM "thoughts on Music" and DRM-free AAC music via iTunes Plus.

I wish that Apple would deliver DRM-free and lossless iTunes purchases as Jobs intended.

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

#73

Post by FabHK » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:52 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #41

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 strea…

Would he be able to, or want to, distinguish his particular rip of an album from Apple's rip of an album? If he doesn't, then for all practical purpose Apple Music _is_ a backup of those files, IIUC. The ones that Apple recognizes will be "replaced" by Apple's rip (on synced devices and/or, if he ever deletes the original file, on the original device), often in higher quality, btw, and the ones that Apple does not recognize will be a bit-for-bit copy.

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

#74

Post by endigma » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

blowski wrote: post #41

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 strea…

I wish a company like synology who operates in this space would drive marketing hard to try and get through this barrier. We're at a point in the world now where billions of people rely on google/apple/microsoft/whatever to do their jobs, and bring that reliance home with them and store their treasured photos or music or videos on these services that could ban them without recourse without a second thought.

Reminds me of that post about the parents banned from gdrive after syncing a picture of their child's genitals (for medical purposes, verified) while sending it to a doctor. I'm pretty sure they're still permabanned and without access to their data. I think they even took his phone service, Google Fi away.

Someone with money in the game needs to pounce on this, even if it's another for-profit like synology etc they would at least get the mentality that storing things you care about in the cloud is foolish at best.

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

#75

Post by jasonlotito » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:53 PM UTC

null_object wrote: post #46

arnaudsm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

This is incorrect. You are wrong.

They are clearly misrepresenting what they are doing if the songs they are matching are not the same ones uploaded.

e.g. I upload version A, and I get back a different version (version B). Some songs are dramatically different from version A to B, and "matching" a different version is not acceptable.

Further, why people are down voting you has very little to do with what is happening and more to do with your comments and how they are in some ways inappropriate.

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

#76

Post by FabHK » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #61

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…

holy shit do people with like a ton of music not realize backups are important? A backup doesn't help when a service is silently changing your files. Once you realize a file isn't right, you look into it and discover that it was automatically replaced by the service three or four years ago. It is not reasonable to expect anyone - even a tech-literate person - to keep 300 hard drives around for a decade or more, and a…

> A backup doesn't help when a service is silently changing your files.

Correct. Just to be clear, though: Apple Music does not do that.

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

#77

Post by jrmg » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

FabHK wrote: post #67

jrmg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Music includes the old iTunes Match features It does not - it’s a separate subscription, though you can use both at once. [Edit: maybe I’m wrong? See ensuing discussion below.]

It does. I used to have iTunes Match, subscribed to Apple Music, cancelled iTunes Match, and still enjoy its functionality (that my music (ie all the ripped CDs I have had for ages) is available on all my devices).

Even music that’s not available to Apple Music subscribers?

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

#78

Post by robomartin » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

I haven’t used Apple Music (various applications and incarnations) for a very long time, going back to iPod days.

One of the most annoying things was the inability to play an album as recorded. If I want to listen to Mozart’s Requiem, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto or Pink Floyd’s The Wall, I need to be able to listen to the tracks in the order they are intended. Last I checked this was still impossible.

My entire library of hundreds of purchased music CD’s is stored in Windows Media Player. I can listen to albums exactly as the artist intended.

Has Apple fixed this? If not, why?

I also remember that importing my CD’s into Apple-whatever was a nightmare. Among other things, the metadata that Windows gathered without effort was gone, and the concept of albums seemed to be nonexistent. So, I gave up. At some point you just can’t continue to waste time with bad software.

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

#79

Post by endigma » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:54 PM UTC

verytrivial wrote: post #36

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…

The media is dirt cheap, but doing the backup is fraught. I think only Time Machine actually "solved" that usability problem and frankly kept me on Apple products longer than I would otherwise have endured. I still don't know the right way to backup a Windows 10 machine that doesn't involve hours of research, testing, tradeoffs and probably $$$.

borg, restic, synology, windows also has built in functionality too.

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

#80

Post by endigma » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:56 PM UTC

knaik94 wrote: post #38

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…

I think it's understandable that someone wouldn't expect to need a backup of their music library. At a bare minimum, I would expect iTunes to keep both versions of a file if an identical one can't be retrieved from Apple servers. People that care enough to keep a library of music after the popularity of Spotify are the same people to leave the ecosystem permanently when this kind of stuff happens.

iTunes should do this, but ultimately it and a shitload of other things can change your files in a negative way and give the user no recourse. Versioned, deduplicating, infinite history backups are the solution, the friction to get started is far less than the friction to repair your files after a loss incident.