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. :-)
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.