5 ms·

Other problems include: - deleting songs which were on my computer, but which didn't exist in apple's catalogue waaaay back when I originally signed up. That's

by smcl 4y ago

Other problems include: - deleting songs which were on my computer, but which didn't exist in apple's catalogue waaaay back when I originally signed up. That's long gone, but it still bothered me. - letting me add and listen to albums for months/years, then suddenly marking one or more songs in that album as "not available" (Life Aquatic soundtrack has this, for me) - relisting albums somehow, sometimes while leaving a single track hanging around - moving some songs around, for example "Gun" by Chvrches disappeared from the album it was on (The Bones of What You Believe) but I discovered it has appeared under an album I never added - "Virgin Records: 40 years of Disruptions" - Various Artists. Looking under "Various Artists" is a way to find weird thigns like this - editing the artist in some albums, so while I had a handful under "Prince" they got switched around at one point so they're now by "Prince", "Prince & the N.P.G." and "Prince & The Revolution" Another fun one that annoyed me, Shazam decided of its own accord to add everything I'd ever Shazam'd into my library (I hadn't used it in months at that point, so it's not something I did). Looking back on my old setup (folders with artists/albums/playlists, and xmms) with nostalgia :-/ I don't know how I could build that back up or do so in a way that I could listen to it on the go without having to carry an MP3 player.

musicale 4y ago
> do so in a way that I could listen to it on the go without having to carry an MP3 player Unfortunately (as OP noted) syncing through Apple Music streaming means that you get the Apple Music interpretation of your library rather than your actual library. A (mostly vastly) superior system for users would be if they gave you a terabyte of cloud storage for free and allowed you to upload and stream your actual music library. Didn't Google's cloud music player used to work this way? The main user down side is that uploading your library for the first time takes forever. And from the service provider perspective it wastes a lot of storage and is costly. Another scheme that I think was sued out of existence matched a CD locally and then gave you access to the streamed version of the same CD. This is sort of what Apple Music/iTunes match is trying to do, and they've actually resolved the legal and licensing issues, except that 1) a CD-matching system is less useful in the post-CD streaming era 2) they aren't matching the bits on the original disc and are using a Shazam-like inexact match of the song instead, and 3) the licensing resolution seems (?) to use DRM for lossless songs, 15 years after Steve Jobs' anti-DRM "thoughts on Music" and DRM-free AAC music via iTunes Plus. I wish that Apple would deliver DRM-free and lossless iTunes purchases as Jobs intended.
- acdha 4y ago
  > A (mostly vastly) superior system for users would be if they gave you a terabyte of cloud storage for free and allowed you to upload and stream your actual music library. Didn't Google's cloud music player used to work this way? The main user down side is that uploading your library for the first time takes forever. And from the service provider perspective it wastes a lot of storage and is costly. That's iTunes Match: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 It works really well for the parts of your collection which aren't available on streaming services — for example, I have some obscure records, soundboard recordings which the artist released on their website but didn't put on a label, etc. It's much better on precision than the described Apple Music feature — it either matched entirely or uploaded but I've never found it to have mis-identified a track. I would disagree with the “mostly vastly superior” label, however, since it's really only better for [generally us older] people who have a ton of existing music — someone who only uses streaming services or sites like YouTube won't have much saved locally and may never have owned a CD. It does that optimization which you're describing, as well. MP3.com was sued because licensing but Apple has both existing business agreements and a lot more lawyers. When you look at tracks it'll show the status as an exact match or an upload — in my case, it matched basically everything I got off of eMusic back in the day but many of the independent tracks which bands had released and some CDs had to be uploaded.
  - musicale 4y ago
    I have iTunes Match, but 1) it isn't free, 2) it doesn't seem to do what I want - and often mis-matches, and 3) it doesn't seem to play well with Apple Music songs. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to maintain a hybrid library that includes your (owned/library) songs as well as Apple Music (rented/streamed) songs and lets them coexist peacefully and easily sync and stream across devices. I don't understand the part about why my suggestion wouldn't be a better system for cloud syncing and streaming a local Music (formerly iTunes) library, if you have one, across devices, which is the original context of this discussion. It would seem to solve the OP and PP issues. Pure streaming is clearly a different use case, as users only need to sync playlists and metadata and won't run into those problems in the first place. The part I do understand is that Apple doesn't seem to care as much about local music libraries anymore, probably because they don't create recurring subscription revenue. And because Steve Jobs turned out to be wrong about people wanting to own rather than rent/stream music and video: renting/streaming is just too darned convenient, and manual curation is such a pain that most people don't want to deal with it - while automatic curation is buggy and often doesn't do what you want.

by smcl 4y ago

musicale 4y ago

> do so in a way that I could listen to it on the go without having to carry an MP3 player Unfortunately (as OP noted) syncing through Apple Music streaming means that you get the Apple Music interpretation of your library rather than your actual library. A (mostly vastly) superior system for users would be if they gave you a terabyte of cloud storage for free and allowed you to upload and stream your actual music library. Didn't Google's cloud music player used to work this way? The main user down side is that uploading your library for the first time takes forever. And from the service provider perspective it wastes a lot of storage and is costly. Another scheme that I think was sued out of existence matched a CD locally and then gave you access to the streamed version of the same CD. This is sort of what Apple Music/iTunes match is trying to do, and they've actually resolved the legal and licensing issues, except that 1) a CD-matching system is less useful in the post-CD streaming era 2) they aren't matching the bits on the original disc and are using a Shazam-like inexact match of the song instead, and 3) the licensing resolution seems (?) to use DRM for lossless songs, 15 years after Steve Jobs' anti-DRM "thoughts on Music" and DRM-free AAC music via iTunes Plus. I wish that Apple would deliver DRM-free and lossless iTunes purchases as Jobs intended.

acdha 4y ago
> A (mostly vastly) superior system for users would be if they gave you a terabyte of cloud storage for free and allowed you to upload and stream your actual music library. Didn't Google's cloud music player used to work this way? The main user down side is that uploading your library for the first time takes forever. And from the service provider perspective it wastes a lot of storage and is costly. That's iTunes Match: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146 It works really well for the parts of your collection which aren't available on streaming services — for example, I have some obscure records, soundboard recordings which the artist released on their website but didn't put on a label, etc. It's much better on precision than the described Apple Music feature — it either matched entirely or uploaded but I've never found it to have mis-identified a track. I would disagree with the “mostly vastly superior” label, however, since it's really only better for [generally us older] people who have a ton of existing music — someone who only uses streaming services or sites like YouTube won't have much saved locally and may never have owned a CD. It does that optimization which you're describing, as well. MP3.com was sued because licensing but Apple has both existing business agreements and a lot more lawyers. When you look at tracks it'll show the status as an exact match or an upload — in my case, it matched basically everything I got off of eMusic back in the day but many of the independent tracks which bands had released and some CDs had to be uploaded.
- musicale 4y ago
  I have iTunes Match, but 1) it isn't free, 2) it doesn't seem to do what I want - and often mis-matches, and 3) it doesn't seem to play well with Apple Music songs. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to maintain a hybrid library that includes your (owned/library) songs as well as Apple Music (rented/streamed) songs and lets them coexist peacefully and easily sync and stream across devices. I don't understand the part about why my suggestion wouldn't be a better system for cloud syncing and streaming a local Music (formerly iTunes) library, if you have one, across devices, which is the original context of this discussion. It would seem to solve the OP and PP issues. Pure streaming is clearly a different use case, as users only need to sync playlists and metadata and won't run into those problems in the first place. The part I do understand is that Apple doesn't seem to care as much about local music libraries anymore, probably because they don't create recurring subscription revenue. And because Steve Jobs turned out to be wrong about people wanting to own rather than rent/stream music and video: renting/streaming is just too darned convenient, and manual curation is such a pain that most people don't want to deal with it - while automatic curation is buggy and often doesn't do what you want.