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> 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 me

> 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.
  - acdha 4y ago
    I can’t speak to the problems you alluded to since the system works well for me, but my pushback on the superiority claim is really just that I don’t think a ton of people have this problem. I think the average person is fine with the streaming services.
    - musicale 4y ago
      I think I was saying "it's superior for solving this problem" (based on context, OP's problem) and you're saying "the problem is uncommon in the streaming era" (different context, not OP's proiblem.) I don't find any disagreement.

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.
- acdha 4y ago
  I can’t speak to the problems you alluded to since the system works well for me, but my pushback on the superiority claim is really just that I don’t think a ton of people have this problem. I think the average person is fine with the streaming services.
  - musicale 4y ago
    I think I was saying "it's superior for solving this problem" (based on context, OP's problem) and you're saying "the problem is uncommon in the streaming era" (different context, not OP's proiblem.) I don't find any disagreement.