Potential Apple Streaming Music Problem Ping!
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Posted on 07/06/2015 6:57:44 AM PDT by dayglored
I really like Apple Music. Everything from the setup process (I kept hitting "more artists" until I couldn't anymore) through the entire user interface left me impressed yesterday. Apple has managed to reinvent its Music app by stuffing a subscription music service inside it — without making it all hopelessly confusing...
Still, there's one fundamental problem with Apple Music that's crippling its potential for me and keeping it from becoming my one and only music destination — exactly the thing Apple wants it to be. It's the way the service heavily leans on iCloud. Or more specifically, "iCloud Music Library." If you've not yet come across this option, broadly speaking it's a rebranded version of iTunes Match that comes included with Apple Music's $9.99 monthly fee. Flip it on, and Apple will scan your entire iTunes library and compare it with its own catalog. The goal is to make your whole music collection available across devices via iCloud. Any tracks that Apple successfully matches with iTunes show up instantly, and those that aren't automatically get uploaded. Once everything's done, you can stream music on your iPhone or iPad without taking up valuable storage, saving that space for more apps or photos and videos...
A day after Apple Music's launch, people are already reporting that iCloud and iTunes have brought chaos to their music collections with incorrect album artwork and duplicated songs. There’s already a lengthy Apple support forum thread on the problems. Even if you've already got cover art linked to songs in your library, Apple will frequently ignore the work you've put in and just use whatever seems like the best fit from iTunes. And it's often wrong. This is another problem that Google shares with Apple, and another where Google makes it easier to fix mistakes...
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
It doesn't sound to me like it's as dire a problem as described in the article, but probably worth warning folks about.
The article is rather lengthy and I've only excerpted it above; I recommend reading the article before evaluating whether it applies to your own situation.
‘Morning Swordmaker, could you please ping your Apple list on this one? Seems like there might be some truth to this concern.
It’s “dire” insofar as some people have spent a LOT of time entering album info, only to see all that work be for naught.
Precisely. I'm one of them. I haven't lost anything because I do backups.
Folks who don't do backups and rely on "The Cloud" -- anybody's cloud -- are asking to lose their changes.
I make my living helping people who didn't do backups...
Personally, I draw an analogy between people with valuable property who rely on a company to "save their stuff" for them, and people with valuable property who rely on the government to "save their stuff" for them.
Anyone who is motivated enough to maintain their own software-based property ought to be motivated enough to ensure its continuance via backups.
Just sayin'...
Nonetheless, it seems to me there ought to be a technical solution to this problem. Apple's got a lot of brilliant people working there. I expect they'll come up with something. In the meantime, it's worth warning people, IMO.
And reminding them to make backups. :-)
“It doesn’t sound to me like it’s as dire a problem as described in the article...”
Yeah, but to the obsessive who has manually modified the tags for five thousand songs over the years, this is the end of the world :)
So you’re saying my naked selfies are not secure?
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Your naked selfies are secure and always were. Celebrities' naked selfies, especially celebrities who used very weak security questions such as "What was your mother's maiden name?" or "Where did you go to elementary school?", since those questions can be gleaned from their fanzine biographies allowing anyone to change their iCloud password, not so much. For PGR88, learning the answers to those questions would be pretty much impossible.
Initial results point to iTunes mishandling of network shares
— MacNewsNetwork, Mon July 6, 2015.
Over the period of time since iTunes 12.2 was released, MacNN has been receiving spotty reports of iTunes library corruptions. We've begun preliminary testing on the root cause, and a final determination or possible workaround is some time away -- however, w do have solid data pointing to iTunes corrupting libraries hosted over an OS X network share periodically. More problematically, iTunes libraries accessed over an SMB share from either a Windows-based computer or network attached storage (NAS) device are frequently damaged by some iTunes process.
We've implemented a test library of 400GB of iTunes-stored music and assorted video files. The files are a mix of stuff we've encoded, as well as iTunes store purchases. One library is stored within the normal iTunes-copied hierarchy, another in a custom folder. For the former library, we ensure iTunes copies files to the library upon addition, and with the latter, that setting is disabled.
Our test platforms are a 2010 Mac mini running OS X 10.7, and a 2013 Mac mini Running OS X 10.10.4, along with a Drobo 5D, Synology RackStation RS 214, Lenovo Iomega IS2, and a Rosewill RSV-S8 NAS device. The iTunes host machine is a 2013 i7 Mac mini running OS X 10.10.4. Given current personal events, the iTunes host machine is accessed by Apple Remote Access, but we believe that this doesn't introduce any variables to the testing.
The copy process to the various serving platforms is a Finder copy. Following copy, and a successful checksum comparison, we pointed iTunes 12.1.2 at the library, and waited six hours. In every case, with or without iTunes Match enabled, we didn't see any corruption exhibited, as demonstrated by a checksum evaluation.
We then upgraded iTunes to 12.2 on the host machine, and repeated the iTunes library connections. The locally-stored libraries showed (and continue to show) no corruption issues, with or without iTunes Match. However, the libraries on the Drobo, Synology, and Lenovo NAS devices started gradually corrupting themselves, starting with video files moving around with no pattern discernible at this time. The Rosewill is still running correctly, but we're mindful, and continuing to monitor.
We then turned off iTunes on the Mac mini test platforms, and mounted the libraries on our accessing machine. Following a successful mount, we pointed the iTunes library at the network share. Once again, both Mac mini libraries gradually corrupted themselves, after running fine with local storage for more than eight hours.
Summary
The wide-spread nature of the corruption across a network share suggests that something involved with the iTunes update is the culprit, and not the NAS device hardware itself. While we're not done with our testing -- and are expanding it to Windows versions of iTunes, more hardware, and additional NAS device vendors including Apple Time Capsules and Airport Extreme base stations of various vintages with attached storage -- we feel that our initial findings are important enough to disseminate now.
The bottom line: at this time, MacNN does not recommend storing iTunes libraries in any other location than on a local drive -- internal or external doesn't seem to matter, as long as the content is stored on the same machine as the iTunes application that uses the files as its library. We're not sure of the method of corruption, and we'll be examining closer exactly what happens as time allows.
So what happens with my Match?! I don’t want to spend $10/month on music right now.
#7 Please please let them be secure!!
ITunes Match hosed my library a year ago. It took forever to get the damned thing turned off and fix the mess. Apple gave me a refund, but didn’t pay a cent for the damage.
Glad to see their crack programmers fixed the problem.
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