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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

#81

Post by jvanderbot »

ryandrake wrote: post #40
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 “Bitcoin” people have that saying, cautioning people about wallet ownership and the danger of cloud wallets: “Not your keys, not your coins.” I think we need a clever saying to rattle off every time someone gets burned by relying 100% on a cloud service (either the software screws up user data or suspends their account, without recourse) without backups/alternates. Not your drive, not your data? I don’t know, I’m…

Not your metal, not your music.

Not your bits, not your beats.

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

#82

Post by rhn_mk1 »

pcurve wrote: post #18
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 agree... most people's music collection should fit fine on a 256GB thumbdrive, which costs less than $25 nowadays.

Don't rely on flash memory too much for long-term backup, flash technology is not particularly good at retaining bits without refreshing.

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

#83

Post by ben7799 »

It's funny people are still learning this, but I guess some are younger.

I have hundreds of CDs I started buying about 1992 or 1993 and did a big project at one point making MP3s and early on in the iTunes/iPod era they found their way into iTunes. I started playing around with MP3 Layer 2 and then Layer 3 around 1995-1996, but at that time it was still prohibitive to try and store your whole collection as hard drives were still barely the size of one CD. I think my computer in 1995-1996 had a 250MB HDD. In 1997 I think I got a 1GB one in a desktop build. But by 2002-2003 this started to not be an issue.

There have been so many shenanigans along the way (this reddit thread is just one of them) that I gave up about 9 years ago.

I ended up re-scanning every CD as FLAC and storing them all outside of iTunes and then ended up getting a Fiio DAP that could play them.

I don't use the Fiio all that much anymore, but I kept on buying CDs and ripping them to FLAC or buying FLACs directly. I definitely didn't buy as much music the past 10 years though.

Lately I have gone back to actually playing the CDs in a dedicated CD player and even got a Turntable and now have a very small # of vinyls. Everything is off on the NAS backed up but yet it's somehow just more fun to pull the disc out and play it.

It's like the entire physical media -> files -> streaming thing has been a 20 year bad trip. The loudness war didn't help either.

It boggles my mind vinyl is making a comeback now, but it seems obvious it is because of the double whammy of the loudness war and the endless shenanigans by Apple and all other digital music stores/streaming platforms. And the stupid thing is there are still tons of releases that actually sound better on Vinyl despite it being an inferior format because they have never gone back and fixed a lot of the loudness issues. Some of these are crazy. The Beatles Sergeant Pepper's album was re-released a few years ago. The Vinyl copy was an improvement on the older vinyl versions. But the CD version was a degradation of the 1997 version that I've owned since the late 90s! Sometimes the streaming services somehow have worse versions than the CD.

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

#85

Post by FabHK »

jrmg wrote: post #77
FabHK wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. Recordings of my Chinese teacher reading out lessons, etc.

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

#87

Post by endigma »

FabHK wrote: post #76
reaperducer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do, and Apple Music isn't the only thing that can cause a loss incident with data you care about.

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

#88

Post by naravara »

pcurve wrote: post #18
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 agree... most people's music collection should fit fine on a 256GB thumbdrive, which costs less than $25 nowadays.

The initial back-up isn't the problem. It's keeping it current over time as you add new music. Then you need to keep track of which songs are on which drive and also access your backups often enough that some of the routine error checking happens to mitigate bit rot.

Especially a problem with flash storage since it really isn't designed for long-term storage without being plugged in.

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

#89

Post by tpush »

JadeNB wrote: post #34
robertoandred wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know Apple Music doesn't actually delete your stuff, right?

> You know Apple Music doesn't actually delete your stuff, right? I don't use Apple Music so can't comment, but the post explicitly says that it does. Perhaps you could explain what part of the post is wrong, or what the poster has misunderstood?

I neither deletes nor changes you files; the reddit post is simply based on a misunderstanding of how iTunes Match works (You import a file on one device, then all other devices receive the matched version.)

This whole thread is terrible and should be deleted, IMO.

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