Credit: Thinkstock
Posted on 05/07/2016 1:01:40 PM PDT by Swordmaker
How Apple's music services all work is a little confusing, but in no way is the company interested in getting rid of your music library.
A blog post has been making the rounds since Thursday, saying that Apple Stole My Music. James Pinkstone, writing on his company’s blog, tells a tale of losing 122GB of music files because of Apple Music. Plenty of websites are trumpeting this story, saying that Apple Music is the big bad wolf. But I’m afraid that isn’t the case.
The author of this blog post begins by citing a bit of a conversation he had with one Amber, an Apple tech support person:
“The software is functioning as intended,” said Amber.
“Wait,” I asked, “so it’s supposed to delete my personal files from my internal hard drive without asking my permission?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Amber is wrong. Neither Apple Music nor iCloud Music Library deletes music files. This simply doesn’t happen.
I’m not contesting what happened to Mr. Pinkstone. iTunes is nothing if not problematic, as you can see regularly in my Ask the iTunes Guy column. But if Apple Music—or more correctly, in this case, iCloud Music Library—were rapturing music files of every user around the world, there would have already been a -gate controversy (musicgate? filegate?) and a class-action lawsuit. Heck, even Taylor Swift would have been unhappy, and penned an open letter to Apple.
I don’t know exactly what happened to this user. I contacted him by email trying to get more information, and he told me that he no longer uses Apple Music, so he really can’t help elucidate the issue. There are a few hypotheses circulating about what may have happened, and none of them make total sense. Something deleted his music files—including music he composed—and it’s hard to figure out what was responsible. But it wasn’t Apple Music, and Apple certainly did not “steal” his music.
First, some terminology. Apple Music is the company’s streaming service; it does nothing to any of your files. iCloud Music Library, however, is the feature that lets you match your library, store files in the cloud, and save files you like from Apple Music. The goal of this is to allow you to play any music from your iTunes library on any device you own. (This can be confusing; I wrote about how Apple Music, iCloud Music Library, and iTunes Match work together.)
Here’s what happens when you use iCloud Music Library or iTunes Match:
What happens next depends on how you use iTunes and your iOS devices.
If you retain all the original files on your computer, iCloud Music Library may change tags and artwork. I suffered that in the early days, but it neither changes nor deletes any files in your iTunes library.
If you delete music on an iOS device, you see this dialog. It can be confusing.
If you delete the local copies of those files, you can re-download them from the cloud, and they will be the 256 kbps AAC versions of your files (if the originals were not in that format), and, if you don’t have an iTunes Match subscription, they will have DRM. However, if you delete your music on an iOS device, this may remove the files from your iCloud Music Library; the iOS dialog isn’t very clear.
If you cancel your Apple Music subscription, any files from that service that you saved will disappear; but your original files will still remain on your computer.
There have been issues where, following an iTunes upgrade, a library is empty, but the files are still present, and the fix is relatively simple.
I don’t know what happened to Mr. Pinkstone’s music files. Somehow they got deleted; whether through user error or by another application. But I know that this is not how iCloud Music Library works.
Whatever the cause of this incident, it highlights the need for backups; fortunately, Mr. Pinkstone had a backup of his music files. I maintain three backups of my media library, because I have a very large library, and I’ve spent a lot of time tagging my files and adding album artwork. But I have three backups of all my files, so I’m pretty safe. When I do lose files because of some ham-fisted maneuver—and this happens—I can pull copies from one of my backups.
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Don’t get me started with describing apple and their arrogance. There was a 100+ dollar charge on my debit card from Itunes a few years ago and I had never ANY dealing with apple or any of their crunchy offspring. They would not even talk to me without an Itunes account ID...which I never or would ever have such a mark of the beast.
Fortunately, the VP of the LARGE Multi National corp I worked for was able to get a clear message to Apple that they needed to service me and quickly. The same night a bigwig mgr from Apple phoned and told me they reversed the charges and apologized.
microShaft, Apple and all other micromisfits can KMRRA.
Apple can delete your music if you do business with them—whether they choose to do it or not is up to them.
Caveat emptor.
No, they can not. Apple does not have access to your files on your hard drive unless YOU give them access and even then, they would not have permissions to do so under UNIX. Apple has not done so, or there would have been a hue and cry across the world already. Did you not read the article?
Apple can do whatever they want, its a cult, not a lifestyle.
Keep drinking the kool aid
THERE IS A SIMPLE “FIX”: Don’t use iTunes or any other Asspull product.
Problem solved.
If you did not have an AppleID, how could they talk to you? There was no way for them to even know who you were. You could have been anybody calling in claiming to be you. If you never had any dealings with Apple, it was pure and simple credit card fraud. . . and not something Apple had anything to do with or any way of correcting without proof of YOUR identity, or proof you were who you said you were via an AppleID. They were completely in the right to refuse to deal with you without that.
The other choice you would seem to prefer is that ANYONE could steal your identity merely by calling and claiming to be you! Good luck with that, soycd.
Also, it can be a pain to transfer personally ripped songs from one Ipod to another if you don't have the original ripped songs. Cloning an Ipod is impossible. So old personal songs might be lost in the process if they are not back up somewhere and easily recovered.
Maybe Apple have fixed this in recent years.
Bottom line: ALWAYS BACK UP!
You have zero evidence for such a claim. . . Apple has not and does not delete anyone's music. The user can elect to do that, if they choose.. READ THE ARTICLE. You guys are amazing. Apple has over 800,000,000 users with over one billion Apple devices in use throughout the world and you still cling to your claim it is a "cult."
Best of all, you don't need an Ipod!
Note: there are still some songs that I can't convert but there are only 6 or 7. All of the rest of my thousands of songs are in MP3 format so that I can play them in my car.
It’s no longer a cult, ok?
It’s a religion.
Can you clone your old ipod to your new ipod?
This has never worked for me and I always lose the ripped songs. I am always glad that I have backed them up.
Spam.
What "Apple Proprietary Format?" AAC? That's an industry standard file format. Are you referring to the Music Industry's required Digital Rights Management (DRM) that Apple was instrumental in getting eliminated?
Apple ALWAYS allowed you to convert your music files to MP3 files. . . it was change in policy or ability of iTunes as you imply it was. . . you could even convert the DRMed files. .. . but because you were converting to MP3, you got a lesser quality sound. SHEESH!
Funny. I am not able to play any if the Apple formats on my non Apple devices. MP3 is the true industry standard and can be played on all devices.
Converting to MP3. Wrong! We’ll yes if you were okay with burning through a stack of CDs and ripping them back to MP3. A very time consuming and expensive process. A big pain in the arse. Now you can convert them directly to MP3 in itunes.
BTW you can choose the MP3 bit rate and think it can go higher than 200k. I chose 160K for sound quality vs disk space.
Bottom line: a song file is useless to me if I can’t play it on anything other than Apple device.
Sounds like a cult to me
If someone charges my card with an “Itunes” title, the filthy rich Itunes mofos need to take care of it, not me. Never dealt with the POS and never will.
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