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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

#91

Post by kevinfiol »

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…

Hey, I can agree with that! I still keep an MP3/FLAC collection I've been building since 2005-ish (when I was a teen). A lot of music has come and gone, but one thing that hasn't changed is that I still use foobar2000[1] on my personal computer to access my collection. Last year, I bought a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM for cheap + an old SSD I had laying around, installed OpenMediaVault[2] on it, connected it to my router via Ethernet, and now I'm able to access my music from all of my home devices. I use RhythmBox on my Linux machines, and I'm pretty sure there's a way to interop with Plex.

I don't have the RPi connected to the internet though. I just load my phone with MP3s like the old days, and open up NewPipe[3] when I want to listen to something I don't have stored.

[1] https://www.foobar2000.org/

[2] https://www.openmediavault.org/

[3] https://newpipe.net/

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

#92

Post by babypuncher »

I like Apple products, but I learned not to trust them with my music a long time ago. Not because they do anything nefarious, but because their software likes to think it is smarter than me, and often these "smart" features are a little buggy. This might be a continuation of that trend.

These days 99% of my music library is FLAC (either ripped from CDs or bought from a lossless store). For use on Apple devices, I maintain an AAC version of my library that iTunes can do whatever it wants with.

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

#93

Post by epgui »

alphabettsy wrote: post #56
phkahler wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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

They don’t change your files. iTunes / Apple Music match your with their catalog and basically flip a flag that says this song is in your library. If a song is in your library you can download the file on other devices, same as if you purchased the song from them. If I download the song from iTunes via Match it’s a DRM-ed version because they don’t upload files that match the music catalog so there’s no original to d…

I can guarantee you that they either currently do change your files, or did at some point in the past. My entire catalogue of music imported from physical CDs was switched to different files, with different metadata and all (overriding my manual classification), and sometimes replacing uncensored versions with radio-safe versions, etc, sometime after 2010.

This caused me to stop buying music altogether.

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

#94

Post by naravara »

ben7799 wrote: post #83

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 drive…

Vinyl isn't making a comeback because of mastering or fidelity issues. It's making a comeback because people like the ritual of putting a disc on a platter and having to focus on listening to it. It's a different form of engagement with the music than the endless, pre-curated stream of singles that are the default way of using streaming services.

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

#95

Post by endigma »

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…

Imagine one of those short films from grade school with drunk driving or drug abuse or whatever, but with a severe data loss incident. Show it off to kids nationwide, they'd take the sentiment home to their parents.

Imagine being a 40something and having your kid come home and say "Are our family photos backed up locally, redundantly on a rotating schedule with a tested disaster recovery plan?" "An untested disaster recovery plan isn't a disaster recovery plan".

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

#97

Post by galad87 »

baby wrote: post #69
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.]

^ this. I pay for both services

You don't need to pay both. Apple Music includes iTunes Match.

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

#98

Post by encryptluks2 »

pimeys wrote: post #20
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 use Backblaze B2 for my music backups. It costs a bit to restore the files from there, but just storing them is cheap enough for me to not care.

Backblaze B2 makes sense for large libraries over a few TB, but for 2TB... even Google One with 2TB of storage for Google Drive outcompetes them on pricing. For $99/yr of 2TB of storage, you end up saving $140 per year over Backblaze B2 and rclone is an amazing third-party client, or if you prefer regular snapshot backups then you can use restic.

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

#99

Post by Steuard »

endigma wrote: post #66
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…

Deduplicating backup software has existed for ages, they would only have a backup of each distinct file, so when A.mp3 is "silently changed" the backup software now has "A.mp3 (before)" and "A.mp3 (after)" etc. Look into borg, restic etc if interested. If you saw in your backup software that a shitload of files changed you would both be alerted of the "silent change" as well as able to revert it.

Okay, but you're now moving away from "How could people not know to make backups???" to "This problem could in principle be avoided by people who use specific types of backup software and maintain complete snapshots going back at least five years". Still a good idea, certainly, but it feels like we've moved well out of "holy shit" territory. (Also, isn't Apple's own built-in Time Machine exactly the sort of backup that you're talking about here?)

As for carefully monitoring your backup software to keep track of when files change, 1) I think we're getting even farther into the "not reasonable to expect of ordinary users" range here, and 2) if I did somehow happen to notice that a bunch of music files had changed, I'd be a lot more likely to assume that Apple Music had updated their ID3 tags than that it had completely rewritten the music!

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

#100

Post by jmbwell »

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).

My understanding is that with iTunes Match, your rips stay your rips and are not DRMed. But without iTunes Match, Apple Music replaces your rips with DRMed tracks from the store.
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