Potential Apple Streaming Music Problem Ping!
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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.
“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?
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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.