“The software is functioning as intended,” said Amber.
May 5, 2016 2:51 PM   Subscribe

"What Amber explained was exactly what I’d feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users’ computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted."
posted by Sebmojo (138 comments total) 39 users marked this as a favorite
 
…IN NO CASE SHALL APPLE, ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS, CONTRACTORS, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF THE APPLE MUSIC SERVICE OR FOR ANY OTHER CLAIM RELATED IN ANY WAY TO YOUR USE OF THE APPLE MUSIC SERVICE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY ERRORS OR OMISSIONS IN ANY CONTENT OR APPLE MUSIC PRODUCTS, OR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE OF ANY KIND INCURRED AS A RESULT OF THE USE OF ANY CONTENT OR APPLE MUSIC PRODUCTS POSTED, TRANSMITTED, OR OTHERWISE MADE AVAILABLE VIA THE APPLE MUSIC SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THEIR POSSIBILITY.”
We really need to reform EULAs and T&Cs. This kind of boilerplate seems fairly non-controversial and common, and a user wouldn't have expected this to be an issue until an unethical company decided to comb through their files and delete them. Caveat emptor shouldn't cover this kind of invasion and destruction of property.

I suspect that some endeavoring lawyer ought to be able to make a case about this instance, if Apple declined to inform users that they would actively comb through and delete files on your computer, but I don't think it will be easy.

Good reminder to go and back up all my mp3s, though.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:10 PM on May 5, 2016 [25 favorites]


And that's why I still buy and rip CDs! I like owning stuff when I buy it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 3:12 PM on May 5, 2016 [40 favorites]




To be fair, the comments on that link from Talez are full of people saying 'this happened to me too'.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:19 PM on May 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


No, Apple Music is not deleting tracks off your hard drive — unless you tell it to

Interesting. Is there another take from a third party with less of a formal Apple relationship? This person appears to be a bit of an Apple booster...
Serenity Caldwell has been writing and talking about and tinkering with Apple products since she was old enough to double-click. Managing editor of iMore, she hosts a number of popular podcasts and speaks frequently at conferences. In past lives she worked at Macworld and Apple Retail.
From the comments:

detunedradios
I beg to differ!

Back when Apple Music first came out, I did the free trial on my MacBook Air. While it was matching my library, I noticed a handful of seemingly random songs started greying out and wouldn't upload. When I checked for them in the filesystem they had been totally deleted. I never once told it to delete the songs, and I know the songs were there prior to matching, one because I'd listened to them recently, and two because I thankfully managed to recover them from a Time Machine backup from just prior to matching. There was no rhyme or reason, no pattern, it just decided to obliterate random files from my disk for no clear reason.
Serenity Caldwell
That is super-weird and not how AM is supposed to work. Glad you had a backup, and why I encourage everyone to use backups before turning on streaming or cloud services.
posted by Existential Dread at 3:20 PM on May 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


"iTunes is like having your hand held by a robot who wants to walk into the ocean and die."

iTunes and the rest of Apple's music/media ecosystem is so godawful that I'm planning to buy Android for my next smartphone. It always thinks it knows better than you do which files should go where, and when – and allows basically zero ability to say "no thanks" and manage things yourself. And I still don't understand the first thing about how it's supposed to work – I basically just avoid launching iTunes or syncing my iPhone, ever.

And I'm a fuckin' professional computer programmer. If it doesn't make sense to me, I don't know how it's supposed to make sense to the average user.

The embarrassment of this incident might actually compel Apple to reconsider some of their nonsense – but for me, anything they do will be too little, too late.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 3:21 PM on May 5, 2016 [132 favorites]


Apple products are fantastic as long as what you want to do is what Apple wants you to do at all times.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:23 PM on May 5, 2016 [80 favorites]


Play Music has a uploaded music locker but it doesn't even try to clean up for you.
posted by GuyZero at 3:25 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ahaha, yeah, no. I enjoyed the linked essays but holy shit I wouldn't touch Apple Music Anything with a barge pole. Jumping onto the pile of "I'm a professional computerer, and AM is too byzantine Kafkaesque for me".
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 3:25 PM on May 5, 2016 [9 favorites]


I was just about to post the link that Talez did because it shows that it's not clear-cut what happens.

If it was a user error, it's not really the user's fault. Keeping up with the details of how all of these services work is now a serious time/brainpower commitment--and a lot of us don't have that luxury. Designers need to make transparent, predictable behavior a priority, or else things like this will happen. Apple has sacrificed that in favor of a "streamlined" experience.

I actually like iTunes as a media player, but I avoid using the cloud (anyone's "cloud") as anything other than a backup because of issues like this.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:26 PM on May 5, 2016 [15 favorites]


Meanwhile, with Google Play Music, you either upload music files via Chrome or use its Music Manager app to scan for music to upload. Both are somewhat clunky, especially for bulk uploads, and I find Music Manager obtuse. Why can't I just drag and drop folders onto it, instead of having to select folders to scan? What are these files Music Manager can't upload, and why? (The error logs don't mention anything.) Are they even important? Nothing seems to be missing in my online library. It's confusing.

But man, one thing I can say about the way Google handles this is IT NEVER DELETES YOUR FILES. It's not even an option. This makes sense because Music Manager, despite its name, is just a tool for uploading for the cloud, and so doesn't give a shit where your files are stored or what should happen to them after you upload. It's a one-way synchronization and I would never have it any other way.
posted by chrominance at 3:33 PM on May 5, 2016 [12 favorites]


Over the course of almost 15 years of using iTunes it has gone from a simple music player that I enjoyed using to a bloated, evil software demon that singlehandedly destroyed my enthusiasm for Apple. When my current iPhone dies I'm switching to...something else, and in the meantime I wouldn't use Apple Music if they paid me.

I'm also worried that extracting my music (mostly MP3s) from iTunes' clutches will prove to be impossible in some way, but on the other hand iTunes is such a PITA that I hardly ever actually listen to MP3s anymore. It's vinyl and Spotify for me these days.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:38 PM on May 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


That's possibly my favorite quote about anything ever, and I had thought a Mefite came up with it. I'm disappointed with you all
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:39 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


The headline to this post makes it seem like Apple Music is supposed to delete all your music without asking you and replace it with crap, which is certainly wrong, whatever the support person said.

If it sometimes happens, that's very alarming and bad. But it's not supposed to do that. It's not Apple's evil plan.
posted by edheil at 3:40 PM on May 5, 2016


Didn't Apple stop making functional software somewhere around OSX Lion? And didn't everyone know that already?

Mail is a steaming coil, OSX has become a shuffling zombie, and iTunes is a howling void of madness. I thought this was general knowledge.
posted by chimaera at 3:42 PM on May 5, 2016 [16 favorites]


AskMe search for "iTunes problem": 393 posts, 20 full pages of pain and frustration.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:44 PM on May 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


Count me as another seasoned user who won't go anywhere near iTunes. It's objectively terrible and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably biased.

For those of us who are less tech-savvy: you'll hear Apple and others say that iTunes will never delete your files unless you tell it to, and the subtext there is, you did something wrong. The unfortunate truth is, though: if iTunes -- or any piece of software at all -- ever does something that surprises you, that's a design flaw. Software is not supposed to surprise you. The actions a program like iTunes takes on your behalf should be clear and intuitive at all times, and above all at times when it's going to make irrevocable changes to your data. If software ever deletes your data unexpectedly, regardless of whether there's a box you were supposed to have checked or an option you didn't realize you needed to toggle to prevent it, it's ultimately the software's fault. This is Software Design 101-level stuff. (See also: Principle of Least Astonishment.)
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 3:48 PM on May 5, 2016 [96 favorites]


So, what you are all saying is that the Dark Souls games are a metaphor for Apple Music?
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:48 PM on May 5, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'm typing this on a Macbook which is a nice piece of hardware, but I've found that the best strategy for using it is to never use any Apple applications ever. I used Safari once to download Chrome and everything else I use was written by Microsoft, Google, Adobe or Slack. I took the iTunes icon off the dock as soon as I got the computer and have never started it and have happily not used iTunes for a 12 years now.
posted by octothorpe at 3:49 PM on May 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


My favourite iTunes thing is the jesuitically bland prompt it gives you when you plug a new iDevice into it, basically 'sync y/n?'. I have never ever said yes because I'm pretty sure it just wipes everything and runs into the mist, giggling.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:52 PM on May 5, 2016 [47 favorites]


I like my Macs and my iDevices but I never trust iTunes, iCloud, Photos.app, or anything else that tries to hide the works I hold dear. Those files are backed up (to a Linux server). I'm only slightly more trusting than Mark Pilgrim (who ragequit everything Mac ten years ago).
posted by Monochrome at 3:54 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


As Woz once said, never trust a computer you can't throw out a window. Ever tried throwing a cloud out the window?

Apple's music situation has been a garbage fire for some time now and I only expect things to get warmer for Apple users who don't subscribe to Apple Music.
posted by entropicamericana at 3:55 PM on May 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


I don't grok wanting my music not on my device and on a remote server somewhere. iTunes in my pocket has always worked for me.

I must say, however, that the iTunes *interface* is totally awful now.

Does anyone know of a decent music player that let me sort and display the way *I* want to do it?

Tks.
posted by CrowGoat at 3:56 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


I have all my audio files carefully curated (and properly genre'd but that's another discussion) and although I use iTunes to play them, it's not allowed to do anything beyond that. Nothing. Nope. Wretched nasty thing, and a steadily decreading user experience every release.

Stories like these (where Apple gleefully deletes files or something similar) give me heart palpatations. What a nightmare.
posted by parki at 3:56 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


What are the alternatives to Itunes for a person with Apple phones and computers? I would love to know, because I am also frustrated with the program.
posted by ferdydurke at 3:56 PM on May 5, 2016 [9 favorites]


Does anyone know of a decent music player that let me sort and display the way *I* want to do it?

There are a bunch of them out there but right now my favorite is Vox

They also have a cloud storage something something option, but I never use the cloud for anything, so I haven't looked into it.
posted by freakazoid at 4:00 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also anxiously awaiting what people with macs / iphones use for an iTunes alternative. I use spotify whenever I can, but I have a bunch of music that is not on spotify as well as my own demos / stuff and i'd love to have a sane way to organize and play them all.
I lost my ENTIRE music library over the summer due to following (against my better judgement) the instructions given to me by an apple Genius at the Apple store. I was able to get a lot of it back from backups, but some of it (mostly stuff I'd recorded, etc) is gone FOREVER.
Sometime I'll tell the story of the Genius that convinced me to wipe my entire hard drive for NO REASON but right now it's still...too...painful.....
posted by capnsue at 4:02 PM on May 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


ferdydurke: “What are the alternatives to Itunes for a person with Apple phones and computers? I would love to know, because I am also frustrated with the program.”

I basically never listed to music through a computer, so I can't help you much there - although I feel like there are a lot of good desktop alternatives to iTunes. But as far as streaming music through my iPhone, I have most of my music on a Google Drive and stream it through the CloudBeats app, which has support for Amazon Cloud Drive, Box, Dropbox, Mediafire, OneDrive, owncloud, and even WebDAV. You can sync to the device so there's an offline option too.

There are probably better cloud players – I haven't shopped around recently, as this setup works well enough for me.
posted by koeselitz at 4:02 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


What are these files Music Manager can't upload, and why? (The error logs don't mention anything.)

Most likely DRM-ed stuff; that's the one instance where I've seen Play Music refuse to upload a file.
posted by Itaxpica at 4:03 PM on May 5, 2016


My Apple software experience has always been full of constant niggling frustrations that make me feel like they don't have any respect for themselves or their users. In the 00s, I had three iPods in a row where the tracks in certain albums would be randomly out of order. Everytime I found one, I had to fiddle and fiddle with the metadata in iTunes to try to fix it, which only occasionally worked. Online, many people were also looking for a solution to the problem, in the face of the usual Apple apologist nonsense ("why does the order of the songs even matter?", "just make playlists for all those albums", "go buy a Zune then, loser", etc.). Apple never did anything about it as far as I know. For years, their iconic music player could not reliably play albums as albums and they weren't interested in the problem. I liked my iPods because of the amount of storage space they had, but I would never buy a phone or computer from those people.

As for iTunes today, LOL.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 4:03 PM on May 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


Also anxiously awaiting what people with macs / iphones use for an iTunes alternative. I use spotify whenever I can, but I have a bunch of music that is not on spotify as well as my own demos / stuff and i'd love to have a sane way to organize and play them all.

I just use Google Play Music (having uploaded any of my own stuff that isn't already in their catalog), but that requires internet. Not an issue for me, but I know it's probably a dealbreaker for a lot of folks.
posted by Itaxpica at 4:04 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I guess 10 years ago this would be the time when I point and laugh and say something that makes me feel good about hating on apple. But really, I think this is a further example of how the complexity of the software we use, and the operating systems that run the software (whichever they are) causes us to cede any kind of control over what we supposedly own. Hell, I think it's now illegal to reverse engineer stuff to figure out what it does.

I'm seeing this in science a lot lately. Instruments come with data fitting software that use 'propriatary' algorithms, and if you get a weird answer you can't tell if it's a problem with the software or your data. And my students always just trust the mysterious software, until I train them out of it. (Some of them, at least.) Molecular biology reagents are 'propriatary mixtures' that might or might not do what it is you want them to do, and might do something surprising that it takes you a long time to figure out.

We've gotten too comfortable letting corporations do complicated things for us without asking any questions. And then we allow them to avoid responsibly when that ends badly.
posted by overhauser at 4:06 PM on May 5, 2016 [39 favorites]


You can make Google Play Music download songs for offline play.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 4:06 PM on May 5, 2016


If you have Apple content, and hate iTunes, do what I do:

0. Buy music through iTunes (too late- but never again!)
1. Always buy content on hard media (Blu-Ray, DVD, CD). This is a nice fall-back.
2. Burn it without DRM if you can. Use a program on a system uninfected by iTunes.
3. Go to Fry's or ebay and buy a shitty $89 Windows computer, or netbook or crappy what-have-you.
4. Install the oldest possible version of iTunes you can get your hands - onto the crappy computer.
5. You can now sync your iCrap to the iTunes on the Crappy.
6. I do not use the Crappy for anything else. It is the iTunes jail only.

I am sure there are virtual machine solutions too, but I dunno how you would synch an iPod to a VM without going through the host.
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 4:06 PM on May 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


Don't be TOO pleased with Google Play Music. I uploaded all my tracks to their cloud, and while it definitely didn't delete any local files, it did replace some tracks with their own versions. They are actually different, remastered, artist-revised tracks ("whoa, where did that lame drum track come from on Cat Stevens' 'Sad Lisa'?"). I spent a fair bit of time on the phone with Google Play support, and it is clear there is no way to get my own original files into their cloud to stream as part of the rest of my library.
posted by twsf at 4:11 PM on May 5, 2016 [9 favorites]


I experienced something similar with Amazon. I own Metallica's Kill 'em All CD that contains Blitzkrieg and Stone Cold Crazy as bonus tracks. I ripped the CD, but it got...overwritten?...because of the copyright violations of those songs.

On the other hand, a couple of CD's that I bought from Amazon got several bonus tracks that weren't on the original CD I bought.

In the end, my biggest frustration has been that I legally own almost all of my music (I imagine I've got some music in my collection that has some copyright issue), but I ripped it in various formats, and that ONE TIME iTunes was autoconfigured to organize my music library, thousands of songs received the altered metadata of doom. 01 Song Title, 02 Song Title, unknown artist.

I don't want to rip my hundreds of CD's over again, but I may just be forced to.
posted by Chuffy at 4:11 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


These days I just play whatever fucken songs I want to hear on YouTube. The only time it's ever a challenge is when I want to listen to Prince and not dealing with digital music library bullshit has probably added years to my life.

I still have all my CDs, too.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:14 PM on May 5, 2016 [12 favorites]


I don't give a pair of fetid dingos kidneys for streaming, but the idea of iCloud Music Library is perfect for me. I have a vast, vast music library. Vast. My iPhone, however, only has 64GB of storage. Even if I had a 128GB iPhone, though, with nothing else on it but my music, I would only be able to copy over a little more than half my library.

Problem is, the frigging Cloud Music services do MATCHING of songs they already have. And they always match WRONG. I decided to try iTunes Match recently, and I was greeted by:

- The original CD Remaster of DEVO's Freedom of Choice which sounds like hot garbage. (I keep the 2008 Japanese mini-LP remaster)
- The English Language versions of several Kraftwerk songs in German
- God knows what else, 'cause I rage quit the next day.

I can't imagine Google Music Play In The Cloud or Amazon Music Locket would be better, because THEY do matching too! I just want a place in the cloud to keep my music so I can listen to it on my phone. Don't match anything, just be a dumb folder like Dropbox, but have smart apps on the phone.

UGH.

Oh, and iTunes Match knocked out a bunch of album art on my library, too.
posted by SansPoint at 4:15 PM on May 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


I love my Mac and my iPhone and my iPod, and I use iTunes, but I 1000% do not trust any iTunes matching, Apple Music nonsense. I'll stream stuff through Apple Music sometimes, but it's only the stuff I'm thinking of buying or don't like quite enough to buy. At this point I will just straight up never fully join the stream-all-my-music crowd. No thank you, I will continue to purchase my un-DRM'd music, have it live on my hard drive, and sync it to my assorted iDevices where it will live on those devices' local storage. I've got too many weirdo cover songs, one-off live tracks, non-English language music, and alternate versions of songs to trust any cloud matching service with my music library.
posted by yasaman at 4:15 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


I basically just avoid launching iTunes or syncing my iPhone, ever... and I'm a fuckin' professional computer programmer. If it doesn't make sense to me, I don't know how it's supposed to make sense to the average user.

It isn't supposed to make sense to the average user or in fact to any user. "Making sense" isn't something the user is supposed to do. Developing any kind of model of how an application or system works isn't something the user is supposed to do, and ideally, is supposed to be able to do.

For one thing, if they did, that would form a constraint on the bold, beautiful, and groundbreaking things product managers and UX would be able to do in order to "provide value" and advance their careers, and then where would the software industry be?

But for the remaining minority of the software for which participation is primarily about producing quality products... there's a cargo cult version of usability which has spread pretty far an wide which amounts to the same thing: not only do we not make the user develop a model, we don't accommodate it, much less uses outside of the model where we're managing as much as we can handle (and more).

I can actually deeply appreciate the "don't make me think" approach... but that's barely past entry level -- a bar that Apple isn't meeting if it is taking *any* destructive actions without explicit user opt-in on top of warnings. Start with "first do no harm." Move to things "just work." Then "don't make me think." And then don't stop there. Let users think. Help them develop an underlying model of how the app/system works and give them gradual exposure to it. Think out all the assumptions you've made about how your software will be used. Challenge every one of them. Measure if at all possible to see what's actually happening. Pay attention to the seemingly marginal cases; they may represent the tip of a frustrated iceberg. Figure out unobtrusive ways for the practiced to develop whatever virtuosity the problem domain allows. Reward investment.
posted by wildblueyonder at 4:25 PM on May 5, 2016 [9 favorites]


From the article:
For about ten years, I’ve been warning people, “hang onto your media. One day, you won’t buy a movie. You’ll buy the right to watch a movie, and that movie will be served to you. If the companies serving the movie don’t want you to see it, or they want to change something, they will have the power to do so. They can alter history, and they can make you keep paying for things that you formerly could have bought. Information will be a utility rather than a possession. Even information that you yourself have created will require unending, recurring payments just to access.”
This a million times. This. Your data belongs to you, and you should always keep multiple copies of it on your own storage media that you control. It should never become a utility. And that applies to your music, movies and TV shows just as much as it does to data you create.

The cloud is really convenient, but never forget that nothing on it is really yours. Not when someone else can alter that data at will.
posted by Kevin Street at 4:36 PM on May 5, 2016 [54 favorites]


In the end, my biggest frustration has been that I legally own almost all of my music (I imagine I've got some music in my collection that has some copyright issue), but I ripped it in various formats, and that ONE TIME iTunes was autoconfigured to organize my music library, thousands of songs received the altered metadata of doom. 01 Song Title, 02 Song Title, unknown artist.

Not a magic wand, but if I was in this situation I'd look at tagging with Picard. Its scan feature is basically a open-source, transparent version of the matching that everyone's complaining about, in that it will fingerprint the audio of your track and try to match it to some metadata. Only works if someone has previously scanned the same track in a way linked to the MusicBrainz entry for it, sometimes gets it hilariously wrong, but it'll probably rescue a chunk of what you've got and cut down on the amount you need to re-rerip.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 4:39 PM on May 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


If a thing doesn't work how it is "supposed" to work then that means it doesn't work and the fault is with the thing rather than the person using the thing.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:41 PM on May 5, 2016 [10 favorites]


While we're on the topic of Music Brainz AND THE LIKE, I pronounce a fatwa against whoever is polluting the metadata with stuff like "Never Gonna Give You Up (Live Version)". That is not the name of the song! Maybe it would be delightful to have some field where you can write that it is a live recording. But that is not the job of the Title field!
posted by thelonius at 4:47 PM on May 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm actually having a really great Apple Music experience. But I got there by realizing that these days the music I most care about is played by me and friends live and that even though in the abstract I do want to keep all the rare and weird stuff I've accumulated over the years, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I lost my iTunes library and was reduced to my CD collection + AM streaming (the library is pretty good I find).

So basically, as a condition of enjoying Apple Music, I had to consciously make the shift from "person who really really cares about what music is available on their computer, even in the abstract" to "person who already considers it all lost, like a Buddhist monk at peace with the inevitable eventual shattering of his favorite cup." It works great for me but I don't think it says very good things about Apple Music's design. (And it's not really compatible with being a composer who stores their own compositions in iTunes too.)
posted by No-sword at 4:47 PM on May 5, 2016 [10 favorites]


No, Apple Music is not deleting tracks off your hard drive — unless you tell it to

Here's the thing that strikes me, reading this article. Obviously it's not gonna be an unbiased source, coming from www.imore.com which is plastered with ads for iProducts, but even so, a bunch of lines jump out (emphasis mine).

Apple Music should never automatically delete files off your primary Mac's hard drive unless you specifically delete them first.

When you enable Apple Music on your original Mac, the service scans your music library and matches any tracks you own to its streaming library. This is so, when you're on a secondary device — like an iPhone, iPad, or other Mac — you can stream those tracks at their highest quality without having to download local files.

Once this matching and uploading process is complete, you have two libraries: your locally-stored library on your original Mac with all your old files, and an iCloud-stored library that you can access from other devices.

On your original Mac, Apple Music will never delete songs without your knowledge.

On an iPhone, iPad, or secondary Mac, this process is different

You can, however, download iCloud Music Library-sourced tracks on your Mac if you delete your original copies

That's simply not how the service works on your primary Mac

8 times this article assumes that oh, you must be doing this on one or more Macs. And hey, maybe on a Mac this doesn't happen. I doubt it, but it wouldn't be the first time. But Apple Music is offered on more platforms than just Macs - when I go to the Apple Music site and click for a free trial, it dumps me to the Windows download of iTunes.

Why is it assumed that this is all being done on Macs? If you use it on non-Apple hardware, are you supposed to deserve this?
posted by kafziel at 4:48 PM on May 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


I used Apple Match for a bit (disclaimer: I worked for Apple at the time and probably got a discount), and ran into a lot of these same issues. That said, I had an exit strategy before even going in: "heck, I'll use apple match to replace my rips of old, skippy modest mouse cds and come out on the other end with actual listenable audio files!".

How did that pan out? Man, I dunno. I remember having to make a lot of custom playlists and work through iTunes' HORRIBLE BEHEMOTH interface, gasp in incredulity, then drink a lot to forget. Basically: anything that makes you use iTunes more than you need to is something bad and evil. No Apple Music for me.
posted by destructive cactus at 5:07 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm with "escape from the potato planet" on this. I've been a software engineer for over 30 years, and I can't figure out what Apple's intent is with this feature, and especially with iTunes "sync". I have a sneaking suspicion that Apple is one of those companies that hires "clever" instead of experienced programmers. I've wasted a lot of my precious time and life cleaning up after clever programmers.
posted by shorstenbach at 5:09 PM on May 5, 2016 [18 favorites]


I learned long ago to use most software (no matter the maker) only for its basic core function(s), unless assured by legions of guineapigsfellow users that it's safe to wander into additional functions.

I'm an Apple user, and I use iTunes daily for my music and backing-up my iPad. That said, I won't go near iCloud or AppleMusic. I just don't trust any of it. AppleMusic, especially, simply smelled...suspicious...when it appeared and my suspicions proved correct. It's disappointing because I've been using Apple products since the days of System 7, but somewhere after, say, Snow Leopard, Apple seemed to start veering off the tracks into this bizarre model of gentle, yet arrogant, patriarchy. Some people blame iOS and the success of the iPhone. I don't disagree.

Thing is, I don't trust any of Apple's competitors any further than I do Apple anymore.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:10 PM on May 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


The only reason I still use iTunes is because I do enjoy their podcast/subscription service. It's fairly easy to deal with. That said, I also do not use iTunes to purchase music, I simply use it to play my own. I have never used one of their free streaming music trials. Mostly because I like to have my music backed up on my own drive.

The last 10 years has been a shift away from Apple into Android. Android isn't perfect, but I personally find Android to be much better with regards to issues like this (privacy, ownership, music rights, etc.). But I'm sure that could easily change.

They're both business giants that have a lot of my personal information. The evil you know, I guess.
posted by Fizz at 5:25 PM on May 5, 2016


i have never had a problem with iTunes deleting files. however, i am also using iTunes Match, and i'm not sure if this has something to do with it. just the other day i downloaded all the matched AAC files for safe keeping, Just In Case. i am a little afraid to unsubscribe from iTunes Match, which i suppose goes to the point of this post.

just about the only frustration i've had is *duplication* of files in my database, for instance if i happen to add an album from Apple Music that i already own. so then on my iphone, all the tracks are doubled up... and the iPhone seems to get confused about the cover art.

for all its warts, apple music is the most economical music streaming service for my family. $15 per month for 6 people, except that i always buy iTunes gift cards when they are 20% off, so it only costs me $12/month. way, way cheaper than Rdio (RIP) or spotify.
posted by joeblough at 5:30 PM on May 5, 2016


$15 per month for 6 people

Same price as Google Play Music's family plan. No idea if google play gift cards ever go on sale though. I'm surprised the itunes ones have discounts as it's basically free cash.
posted by GuyZero at 5:35 PM on May 5, 2016


Another longtime and still pretty-loyal Apple/Mac user here, another probably in the "expert" category since my Mac Plus days, and another who hates iTunes like everyone else, yup. It's a nightmare in the sense that its purpose has melted and morphed and shifted so much over the years (it was once supposed to be a local file manager that copied things to your iPod as needed, a 'hub' for your files, remember?) that I don't even know what it's for, these days.

Today, I use it to occasionally copy a big whack or ripped music or videos to my phone or iPad... and that's about it. My MP3s don't really touch iTunes anymore, unless I'm using it in a one-time, copy-all-Bowie-so-I-can-mope-on-airplanes-all-month way.

All my music these days is on my own "cloud" via a Synology NAS, about 6TB of MP3s that I can play or stream or download or manage from anywhere on earth. And, in a crude old fashioned way, it's also backed up via tar, gzip and cron, which might not be pretty, but it's explicit and clear, and I know it works.

(That said, Synology's "smart" apps are about as annoyingly brain-dead as Apple's when it comes to sorting, tagging and labeling media files. To wit, the main thing they do is happily mangle my own careful hand-managed tags and cover art, so I do my best to keep all those features disabled.)

iTunes has needed a rethink, and a rewrite from the ground up, for at least a decade. It's basically Apple's Internet Explorer: hated by all, but trundling forward and needing a bullet badly. Again, I still can't explain what iTunes is even *for* in a single sentence. How many apps are like that?

I've put off trying Apple Music as a streaming service -- as joeblough says, it's a lot cheaper than Spotify, especially for a family -- until the dust settles and the bugs are cleaned out. But it sounds like that might still be some distance away.
posted by rokusan at 5:37 PM on May 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


Worth noting that despite my rage over iTunes Match, I actually use iTunes and... like it. For playing back locally stored files, as long as you don't touch the cloud stuff, it's fine.

Of course, I tend to interact with it through LaunchBar, so YMMV.
posted by SansPoint at 5:39 PM on May 5, 2016


I still can't explain what iTunes is even *for* in a single sentence.

It is for selling media via the iTunes Store
posted by thelonius at 5:39 PM on May 5, 2016 [9 favorites]


I'm surprised the itunes ones have discounts as it's basically free cash.

well it's true, if you watch slickdeals.net you'll see them come on sale every 1-2 months. and also costco frequently has them for 15% off.
posted by joeblough at 5:40 PM on May 5, 2016


I'm surprised the itunes [gift cards] have discounts as it's basically free cash.

Yup, been the "right way" to buy music or apps from Apple for a decade or so.

Sometimes Apple has a deal online, but more often it's Target or Best Buy or Costco or Wal-Mart or Amazon that does. I'm sure any given week someone has them on sale, so yes, you can always get at least 10% off, and usually 20-25%. The most common deal seems to be a $50 card for $40, which is exactly 20% off.

Not quite free money, since you can't re-convert it to real dollars in any way I can think of, but it is a lot like banking a sale for later, when there's something you want to buy.
posted by rokusan at 5:41 PM on May 5, 2016


And playing local and remote music and video, thelonius? And for backing up my iPad? And for managing my local and network MP3s and videos? And for reformatting my iPhone? And for streaming radio stations? And for managing app subscriptions? And for ripping CDs? (But not for ripping DVDs, confusingly.) And for streaming videos to my AppleTV?

I mean, this list is out of date and padded with a bit of fluff, but it's not far off.
posted by rokusan at 5:45 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


So, the increasing likelihood of these kind of hijinks by one large corporation or another may finally be enough to get me to abandon iTunes, which I've only been using as long as I have because I have 13 years' worth of metrics and have love having AppleScripts to do things like generate playlists of stuff that I've rated highly but haven't listened to in a long time. But there was a year or two where I could not get home sharing to work at all (which is how I discovered Plex) and I can't remember the last time I was able to actually sync music to my iPhone (which is why I still use Plex to listen to music on that device.) I finally found the fix for the home sharing problem on the 19th page of comments on some forum or another: Change the name of the host computer.

I haven't bought a *ton* of music through iTunes (I still feel better having a hard copy in one format or another) but sometimes the instant gratification factor can't be beat... I've been happy enough with the music store since they removed the DRM; I can at least copy those audio files outside of iTunes and "own" them, but no way in hell would I ever trust a cloud service that works as described here.

Of the alternative OS X music players out there, do any offer something along the lines of the Genre/Artist/Album column browser (Which is the only reasonable way to manage a library of any size, but which Apple inexplicably makes harder and harder to find with each release?)
posted by usonian at 5:45 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


usonian That, and DRMmed video, are what's keeping me on iTunes too. That said, I absolutely _love_ the grid view for music, and do not miss the column browser. I'm visual, and anal about album art. Did you know you can skip to an artist in the grid view by typing the name?
posted by SansPoint at 5:49 PM on May 5, 2016


I actually use iTunes and... like it

Yeah, and I honestly don't like the implication that if you like it, you must be biased or not know what you're doing. I've never had trouble with it. I use it to play a very large music library, which it handles gracefully. It does almost everything I want and the only behaviors I don't like are trivial (not data-destroying).

But then I've not synced anything with the cloud, and I don't let it manage my files for me. I suspect that this will get worse as they push cloud services more, but right now I'm still happy with iTunes. I've tried other players, sometimes on the recommendations of people here, and haven't found them to be what I want.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 5:51 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Kutsuwamushi: I do let it manage my files for me, if only because how it organizes files is almost identical to how I used to back in the days of manual music organization.
Artist/Album/Folder/01 - Song.mp3
How much more complicated do you need to get?
posted by SansPoint at 5:55 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


if your files are on a NAS that's remotely mounted by multiple machines it's probably not a good idea to let itunes manage that.
posted by joeblough at 6:02 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


Man, I defended iTunes for years and never understood what people's problem was, but every version gets worse when I don't even think that's possible anymore. When I finally broke down and moved to 12 I must have spent 20 minutes staring at the screen trying to figure out how it worked. I've used computers for 25 years and made my living with them. Most of it still doesn't make any sense to me, I've just memorized it. How it's supposed to be better is another level of baffling.

I was tempted to try the music service, but there's no way I could trust it. Wouldn't dare. I wanted to try the match to update some really old iTunes purchases, but again I don't have the fight in me. Besides it took an hour of reading to try and figure out how any of that worked and I only have a vague idea still.

Unfortunately this has really soured me on the whole company. I may never go past OS 10.8.5 at this point. My wife is always saying "don't update anything, it'll fuck up my whole computer".
posted by bongo_x at 6:04 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


That's a good point, and I used to let it organize my files for me because it used a file structure I had no problem with, and the behavior was pretty predictable (e.g. if you deleted a song from your music library, it asked if you wanted to delete the file or just the entry in iTunes).

But I have limited hard drive space since transitioning to using a laptop as my primary computer, and a lot of my music's on an external drive now. iTunes' automatic file management can't handle that.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:06 PM on May 5, 2016


10.10 is fine. i can't handle the SIP stuff in 10.11 (code injection into Dock.app no longer works, so TotalSpaces no longer works...)
posted by joeblough at 6:07 PM on May 5, 2016


Kutuswamushi: It can, since that's what I've been doing for the last six years or so, but you have to do a little magic to tell iTunes to keep the files on the external drive, but store the library locally, and damned if I can remember how I did that back in the day.
posted by SansPoint at 6:08 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I just want a place in the cloud to keep my music so I can listen to it on my phone. Don't match anything, just be a dumb folder like Dropbox, but have smart apps on the phone.

There used to be an awesome program called Audiogalaxy that would placeshift and stream your entire music library, exactly as it was organized on your desktop. Dropbox bought it and killed it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:21 PM on May 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


My wife is always saying "don't update anything, it'll fuck up my whole computer".

I'm a PC person with an iPhone, but my non-tech wife is a lifelong Mac person. I upgraded her macbook to El Capitan...which completely killed the CD drive functionality and has still yet to be acknowledged or fixed by Apple. Took it into the store and the "genius" guy wanted to sell us a new $1900 model without a CD drive. Fuck, that. I set up the network sharing drive or whatever for now, but I'll probably eventually wipe her laptop and downgrade the OS. I guess when you have 100$ billion sitting in offshore accounts ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:27 PM on May 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


I remember once I decided to just let iTunes do whatever it wanted - I left all the settings default, including the critical ones: manage my music, and copy files to iTunes directory. The thing that drove me insane was....look, say you have a Buddy Guy CD where he did duets with other famous blues artists on some of the songs. The metadata for those songs almost certainly has "Buddy Guy feat. Robert Cray" or some crap like that in the "Artist" field, and iTunes will therefore create a different folder for any song so labelled. The one CD ends up being spread out over 7 or 8 different directories that were created for "Artists" that I don't even want to distinguish from Buddy Guy. I think the design philosophy of iTunes is, you should not know or care where the files are stored: you have iTunes and its UI, and that's your music. I'm not OK with that, for various reasons, and I eventually found a system for using it that I can live with.


I mean, this list is out of date and padded with a bit of fluff, but it's not far off.


That's incredible, rokusan. Of course what I meant, semi-seriously, is, all the things it does are there to get or keep you using the software, so that you will buy things from the store.
posted by thelonius at 6:29 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


If you've ever had three or four apple devices and used the sync feature with itunes this is going to happen to you. My wife lost a bunch of mp3s from our dance instructor this way that were vitally important to a workshop she was trying to organize. Very stressful. And there is virtually nothing available online to figure out how to fix this problem except a bunch of apparent apple employees or fans I guess saying we're not thinking about the purpose of the software the right way or some other bullshit.
posted by osk at 6:30 PM on May 5, 2016


thelonious That's bad Metadata for the CD in Gracenote. You can assign an "Album Artist" of "Buddy Guy" to the album and that'll get all the files together.
posted by SansPoint at 6:32 PM on May 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


I have music from wherever, have moved computers way too many times, and won't even install itunes. I miss winamp and hope it returns. Meanwhile, is there an undelete tool that might recover these files from the drive? And, this is what backups are for.
posted by theora55 at 6:33 PM on May 5, 2016


Album Artist would change the folder structure too? Like redo it after a CD was imported? Thanks, that is good to know. I have had to use it to change the displayed list of artists.
posted by thelonius at 6:38 PM on May 5, 2016


Yep -- as long as you have "keep music organized" checked in the preferences, it'll re-do the directory structure.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 6:39 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think iTunes killed my interest in music. I had a carefully curated directory that it murderer when it had that auto-organize feature that was turned on by default. And it destroyed my organization, with no way to undo. That was many years ago. I still listen to music, but not the same way. I think I was just too crestfallen and never recovered.

From the very beginning, Apple's approach to music has been my way or the highway. This latest issue is just more evidence of that.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 6:49 PM on May 5, 2016 [12 favorites]


That's been Apple's approach to all media since Steve Jobs saved the company.

BTW, I don't think he saved it so that the users could tell him how to run things.
posted by BYiro at 6:55 PM on May 5, 2016


I have to wonder, how do you people listen to music? I tend to just listen to albums, and iTunes works fine for that. I will sometimes play an individual song, and it isn't great for that, but for albums and playlists? Never had an issue... (as long as all the cloud shit is off.)
posted by SansPoint at 7:01 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, you want "Album Artist" for those kind of guest star situations, and check "Compilation" for uh, compilations. This will keep them all together instead of making a new folder/listing for each one.
posted by bongo_x at 7:10 PM on May 5, 2016


Yep -- as long as you have "keep music organized" checked in the preferences, it'll re-do the directory structure.

Yeah you can fix a lot of the weird stuff iTunes does (also you don't have to let it move or copy your files at all...) and in some ways it's pretty powerful. But it's a huge program with a mind of its own and constantly mysteriously changes with updates so it's always at least a little bit a pain in the ass.
posted by atoxyl at 7:11 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I upgraded her macbook to El Capitan...which completely killed the CD drive functionality and has still yet to be acknowledged or fixed by Apple.

Until a few years ago I never hesitated to upgrade my Macs, because it was always going to be better and rarely had problems. Very slowly that started changing so that in the last few years every update involves losing some functionality, but not gaining anything I'm interested in. I'll only update the OS when I'm absolutely forced to for compatibility reasons.
posted by bongo_x at 7:19 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I back up my library often and backup my iTunes settings so if things ever get screwed up I can fix it. I think I am safe though as I have refused to update iTunes for a long time now. I trust them so little at this point that a 99% off sale on every item on the store wouldn't get me to update the program or use the store.

I'll use my ancient version of iTunes until my iPod classic dies, then I will have to find something else to use with whatever music player I pick up. I have always loved my iPod but iTunes was never great and keeps getting worse and I have no desire to ever give any more of my money to Apple.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 7:32 PM on May 5, 2016


Tangentially, seen on Twitter recently:

"Every day, I use Windows, Linux, and OS X. Each is the absolute worst thing ever created, depending on which problem I hit 3 minutes ago."
posted by Slothrup at 7:37 PM on May 5, 2016 [23 favorites]


vox is what i use when i m on a mac. i don't do much that is that complicated. it works well.
posted by eustatic at 7:53 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was never, ever under any illusion that the late Steve Jobs was a saint or had any other consideration in his life than his own self interest... But if he were alive today, and virtually everyone on the planet who were using his products were yelling very loudly at him that one of his software applications was a piece of shitty crap, I don't think he would sleep soundly until he found a way to make it work better.
posted by ovvl at 8:03 PM on May 5, 2016 [6 favorites]


"Every day, I use Windows, Linux, and OS X. Each is the absolute worst thing ever created, depending on which problem I hit 3 minutes ago."

Yes. As frustrated as I get it I still haven't even come close to the point of going Windows for work or Linux for personal, except in small doses (god knows I wouldn't think of switching those two).

And every once in a while I look up all the iTunes alternatives, read the reviews and caveats, hang my head and go back grumbling.
posted by bongo_x at 8:08 PM on May 5, 2016


Like I said, I don't fuckin' understand iTunes. So I could be completely wrong about this, but:

It seems like a big part of the problem (and I see this in other Apple products, as well) is that the abstractions presented in the UI just don't map well to the abstractions that actually exist under the hood. Like, they tried to come up with UI abstractions that are more intuitive to work with than the real, underlying abstractions – but the ones they came up with are just trying to reach across too much conceptual space. Or, there are edge cases which disobey the rule, making it impossible to deduce a coherent mental model of the thing. Or, if you already understand the underlying abstractions (files, folders, metadata, audio formats, etc.), then the UI abstractions aren't actually any simpler – they just complicate the overall picture.

I don't know if that even makes sense. I'd give an example, but like I said – I don't fuckin' understand iTunes, so I can't. It's just a gut feeling.

As a developer, I love my iMac – after years in Windows-land, it's bliss to work in a Unix-like environment with a decent terminal and an ecosystem of developer tools that actually work without endless futzing around. And, I mostly love my iPhone. It's when I plug my iPhone into my iMac that I start wanting to murder people.

Consider photos: when I connect my phone to my computer via USB, I expect the phone to appear as a removable drive, allowing me to copy/add/delete photos (or MP3s) as I see fit. But, nope—it is not physically possible to do this without third-party software. Not only that, but MacOS, by default, will automatically suck down copies of every photo on my phone (which is super fun if I was just trying to charge my phone on someone else's computer), and hide them away in some inaccessible directory, in an obnoxious, Byzantine, metadata-encrusted directory tree that's only accessible via Photo Viewer. Which, the last time I tried to use it, couldn't even give me direct access to the actual JPEGs.

Maybe someone can answer a question for me. I don't really use iTunes for music (or at all, if I can avoid it). But when I've made tentative steps to do so, it seems like iTunes wants to load every song I've ever purchased onto my phone. Like, there's no concept of choosing a dozen or so albums (out of a library of potentially hundreds) to copy onto my phone: it's just like "YAY LET'S FORCE-FEED EVERY FILE THAT ITUNES KNOWS ABOUT ONTO UR PHONE!!! AFTER MANGLING THEIR METADATA AND CONVERTING THEM TO SOME SHITTY PROPRIETARY FORMAT WITHOUT ASKING!!!" It seems to be the same with apps and everything else. Like, it wants every one of my devices to have an identical copy of the exact same library of everything.

Am I misunderstanding? Because that's insane. What if I have more music than my phone can hold? What if I was just trying to grab one song and I don't have 20 minutes to wait for iTunes to thrash my files around?

There's an option labeled "Manage my music manually", or something like that – but I've never, ever been able to figure out how to actually do that.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 8:09 PM on May 5, 2016 [7 favorites]


"Every day, I use Windows, Linux, and OS X. Each is the absolute worst thing ever created, depending on which problem I hit 3 minutes ago."

iTunes transcends, and by this very transcendence is innately more horrible than mere operating system problems. Like Java.
posted by chimaera at 8:16 PM on May 5, 2016 [10 favorites]


"iTunes is like having your hand held by a robot who wants to walk into the ocean and die."

prize bull octorok: That's possibly my favorite quote about anything ever, and I had thought a Mefite came up with it.

Hey, Mods, can you comp that guy Bois a freebie account? I think he might fit in around here.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:17 PM on May 5, 2016 [4 favorites]


The nice thing is that there are lots of cross-platform options now. As a media player and organiser, Clementine for OSX works pretty well. Tomahawk also works well. There are less geeky/columnar-driven apps that are more "cloudy" or mobile-friendly, or OSX-only, but I tend to use ones available on more than one OS.
posted by meehawl at 8:29 PM on May 5, 2016 [3 favorites]


Maybe someone can answer a question for me. I don't really use iTunes for music (or at all, if I can avoid it). But when I've made tentative steps to do so, it seems like iTunes wants to load every song I've ever purchased onto my phone.

So, I just googled it, and found these instructions, which say that once you enable this option you can click and drag content to your phone.

But then I found this page which shows a screen much like the one I have when I sync my iPod (I don't have an iphone). Under "music," you have the option to sync your entire library (which is checked by default), but you can also choose to sync just certain playlists, artists, songs etc. It's the second option I always use with my iPods--it'd be insane if they disabled that for the iPhone.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:36 PM on May 5, 2016


I just want to know why every computer program ever made thinks the appropriate letter to alphabetize metadata that starts with "The" is "T".
posted by Automocar at 8:38 PM on May 5, 2016 [5 favorites]


I just want to know why every computer program ever made thinks the appropriate letter to alphabetize metadata that starts with "The" is "T".

????

iTunes doesn't.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:10 PM on May 5, 2016


I miss having foobar2000.
posted by gucci mane at 9:14 PM on May 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


Consider photos: when I connect my phone to my computer via USB, I expect the phone to appear as a removable drive, allowing me to copy/add/delete photos

Turn off all the syncing bullshit it iTunes, etc. Image Capture will treat your phone like a mounted camera & let you copy from the phone to whatever location on your computer, or delete photos from the phone. Same with Adobe Lightroom, though watch out for its shitty default location. I can't think of a good non-photos way to add images to your phone other than perhaps Dropbox or Good Reader. You can email them to yourself, I suppose.

I tried Apple Match for a month because I wanted to upgrade all my old 128k .m4p purchases to the 256k .m4a files offered on Match. Some albums were no longer available, 20 or 30 got duplicated, quite a few had their names changed, and 2 or 3 got disappeared completely. It took most of the month to sort it out, then I immediately un-subscribed. Apple Music can kiss my spotted ass before I give them write access to 24,000 files, half of which are probably irreplaceable without re-ripping CD's. I have my backups, I have my iPod & I have my files, thank you very much.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:37 PM on May 5, 2016


Also, Swinsian Is a good iTunes replacement/companion that will play ogg & flac files, and also sync with your iTunes library.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:40 PM on May 5, 2016


Automocar: internationalization.

Software isn't smart enough to know that "The Apple Stretching" is written in English, and therefore should be sorted as "Apple Stretching, The." The word "the" might be the Danish or Irish or Interlingua word, or could be some bit of nonsense the artist came up with!

(This gets worse with artist names -- there is really no way at all to know if you should sort by "Nine Inch Nails" or "Nails, Nine Inch.")

In modern audio files there is a place where a human can record the "name to use for sorting" -- so "A Little Dog Cried" should have "Little Dog Cried, A" stored in there, and then whatever software comes along can use that for sorting.

However, a human has to actually fill that field in, and depending where your library came from that may not have happened. Most of the music you buy from iTunes (or Amazon or Google or other large, reputable source) should have that field filled in, but music from elsewhere may or may not.
posted by reventlov at 9:48 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


there's a much larger problem which is that a cargo cult has developed among developers that rejects the idea that the file directory tree is actually the optimal database for user files. huge academic and business research telling developers that users would do much better with 'tasks' rather than files... but the only way to follow this paradigm is to accept endless metadata edge cases or fuckups as the price of "progress."
posted by ennui.bz at 10:05 PM on May 5, 2016 [11 favorites]


Indeed, I rejected the metadata koolaid some while back, and went back to files and directories for my music and am generally quite happy to organize things that way.

And of course I don't use Itunes. My 0.5 terabytes of music and podcasts are stored in a git repository, using a program I wrote to a) let git scale to that size and b) make it easy to check out only the subset of music I'm currently enjoying and c) ensure that I have at least 5 copies of every file scattered around different devices and d) keep track of what's where.

And, I read the comments about this story on Hacker News and blanched at the unending, unalderated Apple apologist parade there.

But, about warantee disclaimers. If I could be held liable for damage that my software might make to your files, I would not be able to share my software. Because I want to continue to own my house. Free software depends on its developers not being held liable for damage from bugs. Without warantee disclaimers, probably the only ones left distributing software would be companies so big they can finesse it with lawyers, and anons.

Wish I knew a solution to that conundrum, because in a lot of ways the set point for what software developers are allowed to get away with is all wrong. We should care a *lot* more about this kind of bug on the whole.
posted by joeyh at 10:52 PM on May 5, 2016 [2 favorites]


joeyh: I'm a fan of your work in general and git-annex in particular, but the vast majority of folks in this thread could read the intro paragraph for git-annex and still have no idea what it does.
posted by vanar sena at 12:31 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


But I have limited hard drive space since transitioning to using a laptop as my primary computer, and a lot of my music's on an external drive now. iTunes' automatic file management can't handle that.

Um... that's completely untrue. All my music files are on an external drive, and my iTunes library is stored locally, and it's all being kept in Artist -> Album -> Track directory trees.

Preferences -> Advanced has "iTunes Media Folder Location", and you can set that drive and directory to be any drive your computer has access to, including wireless drives. Obviously check the "Keep iTunes Media Folder organized" checkbox, and the "Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to Library" checkbox.

All 22K of my music files are stored on an external drive, and have been for 15 or more years, since I had a crucial hard drive failure that resulted in me having to spend 2 or 3 weekends re-ripping my CD collection. I also run backups on the music drive as part of my Time Machine regimen, because you never know when that external drive is going to fail.
posted by hippybear at 12:40 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, I guess I will say, I've been a Mac user since 1984, and have used iTunes since it was first released and have surfed along with every shitty UI change and feature bloat since it started. I will be the first to admit that perhaps part of my personal user experience with the software is that with updates a lot of the Preferences choices I made in previous versions get carried over to the new install, so at this point I don't even know when I chose certain settings or even necessarily why. I just know that the group of settings I have has me pretty happy.

My music library is organized well so I can go into the Finder (or Explorer if you are on Windows) and locate the exact file I want. My interactions with the software are... well, not 100% awesome, but I can get done everything I might want to get done within my simple desires. (I mostly just want to play music or download podcasts to load onto my 1st Gen iPod Touch.) The Info window works well for individual or group tagging of files, when required. It's taken me a while to find all the right checkboxes to get the UI to work like I want on the most current version of iTunes, but I got it there, and it's mostly effortless for me to use the software.

Every single iteration of the software comes with some UI tweak that the brainiacs at Apple somehow think is Exactly What I Have Always Wanted, but with rare exceptions across the 15 years since they released and started updating the software, it's usually NOT What I Have Ever Wanted.

At this point they are trying to do too much with iTunes. They should divorce the video portion from the music side, most certainly. I think the only reason they don't is 1) the iTunes Store is sort of the "here is we sell Media" side of Apple, and 2) syncing devices across multiple programs can make for a difficult sync process.

I fully understand why people get frustrated with Apple, but I don't feel that frustration very often. I've spent a good portion of my life moving back and forth between MacOS and Windows and even low-level Linux/UNIX use, and every single one of these experiences has had it's different set of frustrations and rewards. I stick with the Apple ecosystem because I've used it forever and it fits with how my brains works. I respect those who have different experiences.

I think a basic problem with a lot of new Apple software is that it comes with a lot of Preferences pre-selected when there should be a bit of a set-up "interview" process about how individuals want the software to behave, rather than having to immediately go into the Preferences and start fiddling with checkboxes and settings that you have never seen before. Combine that introductory interview with follow-ups to each question, "Here is where you can change this if you want to change it in the future", and Apple would reduce a lot of the frustrations that users who are beyond the "set it and forget it" use of technology feel about these matters.
posted by hippybear at 1:02 AM on May 6, 2016 [3 favorites]


just to be contrary to the narrative here - I'm both a professional programmer and a professional dj, and I love iTunes + match (I haven't 'upgraded' to apple music from iTunes match, but the concepts are the same).

To me it's been fairly simple - I always add music to my primary laptop's iTunes, so that it has the original and highest quality copies, and that is matched/uploaded and immediately available to my phone and work machine. before that I was constantly worrying about syncing and blah blah blah; when I'm buying 60-70 tracks a month it was non-trivial.

I've never had it delete anything, I've always been happy that my metadata changes are reflected in the filesystem organization.

I don't deny that bug have caused deletion of files and other issues, but in my experience, with iTunes working as I'm pretty sure it's intended to, it's doing jobs there are no replacement for.
posted by flaterik at 1:33 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


For an iTunes alternative, I have a home server that runs subsonic which serves the ~60K songs that Mrs. Sauce and I own to any net-connected pc or phone.

With Subsonic, I am basically my own Spotify. I don't have to worry about Apple or Google "recognizing" my tunes and replacing them with "similar" ones in my cloud collection.

It doesn't take a ton of savvy to run Subsonic and there are turnkey Subsonic hosting operations advertised on the Subsonic site. (can't recommend any of the hosting providers; i serve from home.). Finally, the Subsonic price is right: $1/month or $99 for lifetime access.
posted by Sauce Trough at 1:33 AM on May 6, 2016 [6 favorites]


I love Subsonic. Until I went MPD, it was my go-to. I licensed the client and everything.

With that said, once I went MPD, it was "Game over, man, game over..."

[mike@orion ~]$ du -sh /storage/media/Audio/
316G /storage/media/Audio/

posted by mikelieman at 1:56 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


I hated iTunes before it was cool.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:34 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Rumor has it there's at least a major redesign of Apple Music coming pretty soon, which should at least make it something less of a baffling UI puzzle overall.

That said, iTunes works fine for me and I run betas of Mac OS and iOS and miraculously nothing too serious has happened to me, and pointing this out now makes me feel like I'm all #notallmen in here
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:19 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh, I have fought iTunes to a draw. I am no longer reduced to man-baby ragefits by it. I have my stuff where I can find it, I have playlists... time to sync? my iPod Classic isn't dead yet and I guess I sort of need it anyway, due to iPhone.
posted by thelonius at 6:25 AM on May 6, 2016


Ctrl + F "banshee"

0 results


I play most of my music on a shitty mp3 player (literally the only file extension it plays) from some generic company that I bought 7 years ago. But if I want to play music from my laptop, I use Banshee - free, cross-platform, got a couple foibles to its GUI but other than that it's been working great.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:31 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


So here's why I'm still stuck using iTunes: A lot of my music collection is a terra incognita of live versions, demos, alternates, etc. Also, a lot of the intake was from back in the music blog era, so there are digitized 45s, Indie Rock Playlist entries, SXSW all-inclusive torrents et cetera unto the heavens. Basically the "collect and listen to everything" instinct of an 80s/90s college DJ whose thirst was worthy of the firehose.

Somewhere in the mid-to-late aughts it became time to cull. I won't bore you with the dark night of the soul of realizing that not every single thing touched by Robyn Hitchcock or Nick Cave or John Darnielle or Robert Pollard was necessarily worth keeping. (Don't @ me.)

So the years-long effort continues: Dump onto the iPod, shuffle play, and use the iTunes rating system to mark for retention or deletion. Every once in a while after syncing back to iTunes, delete all the 1 and 2 star entries. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Oh, and don't *ever* update the iTunes app!)

Maybe I'm an edge-case, but I'm open to suggestions. (Podcast management also a must.)
posted by whuppy at 7:02 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


There's an option labeled "Manage my music manually", or something like that – but I've never, ever been able to figure out how to actually do that.

AFAIK, (admittedly, using an ancient iPod nano 2nd gen), it's just drag & drop. The iPod shows up as an icon somewhere in one of the control bars (it used to be on the left side, now I think it's on the top), just grab tunes/media out of the library and drag it over.


Count me another Mac & iTunes user who has no problem with using the thing to play, rip, convert, burn, transfer to iPod - but absolutely does not trust cloud, match, or letting iTunes control organization or device syncing. Like hippybear, I find every update seems to add more features I don't use and rearrange things so the first time I use the new version I have to do some poking around, but my settings almost never change; and I always check that they're correct before connecting the iPod.

The thing is, iTunes (since, like, the second version) has clearly been aimed at the casual music listener, not the deep fans, collectors, organizers, completists, or hoarders. It's designed for people for whom pop music or pop media is ephemeral - they grab the New Hotness from the store, listen to it for a week, then move on to the New New Hotness. IMO, most of the feature bloat is there to either encourage that behavior, or make it easier for people like that to get the Current Hotness everywhere with minimal trouble. It's not designed for people who care about the bonus tracks on So-and-So's 2000 CD re-release, it's for people who want the latest Top 10 all the time everywhere. (And I strongly suspect there are way more of Them than there are of Us, which, y'know, *shrug*; They can do pop media however they want, no skin off my nose.)

iTunes will let you (Us) collect and organize in lots of ways, as long as you're willing to tweak certain settings and do some (maybe a lot) of the work yourself, but first you gotta recognize that out of the box it's aimed at people with a . . . . how do I put this? . . . . a simpler, more casual relationship with music (or maybe even life.) And from comments above plus some of my own experiences with streaming media services, it seems like Amazon & GooglePlay and pretty much everyone is increasingly starting from the same point - currently, music & media delivery systems are designed for people who aren't that interested in keeping things around for a while. So those of us who are are gonna have to figure out the tweaks or tricks or relatively obscure software that lets us do that in a way we find satisfying and comprehensible.

IOW, in some ways griping about iTunes is missing the forest for the trees - the state of music delivery is not for us collectors and organizers, probably most users (and, obviously, most designers) don't care about what we would consider limitations or frustrations in the design and usage, so complaining that iTunes (or who/what-ever) won't let us do something or does other things without warning, is missing the larger point that we're not the target market. We approach media differently than (probably) the majority of people out there, so their desires set the rules, and we have to muddle along as best we can.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:09 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


The thing is, soundguy99, is that iTunes and the iPod started out as targeting collectors and organizers, so it's particularly galling that we've been cast aside and now Apple has turned it into another remora eel attached to our wallet.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:18 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


As a support engineer, the best mod Apple can make to it's software is to make it disappear.
posted by Burn_IT at 7:36 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


is that iTunes and the iPod started out as targeting collectors and organizers,

Sure, because those were the people who had any use at all for a music player back in 2001. Once the Store got introduced in '03, the writing was on the wall.

I mean, I get it - like I said above, I use it in a very specific limited manner, and every update requires some time checking the settings and finding where the heck they put things, and a bunch of my tunes are barely organized because I just don't feel like bothering to manually correct stuff, but pretty much the entire 21st century has demonstrated a move towards making media consumption easier for people who don't consume it the way I do. The world has moved on, so to speak, and I'm out of step. Which, in practice, is my problem, not theirs.

(Now, if you wanted to postulate that the very existence and marketing of the iTunes Store and later imitators was a big element in creating an environment that prefers temporary disposable media consumption, I wouldn't disagree . . . . . )
posted by soundguy99 at 7:55 AM on May 6, 2016


I use iTunes to manage around 600-700 GB of music. I allow it to manage folders and file names in my iTunes directory, even though I don't entirely trust it. My favorite inexplicable bug involved the hundreds of songs in my library that had their metadata changed, seemingly at random, so that all of them became "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" by James Brown. For years, I would play an album by some artist, realize that one song was missing, and then go through all the songs called "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" to find the one that I was looking for so that I could manually rewrite all of the metadata to get it back where it belonged.

The thing is, soundguy99, is that iTunes and the iPod started out as targeting collectors and organizers, so it's particularly galling that we've been cast aside and now Apple has turned it into another remora eel attached to our wallet.

It reminds me of all those people working in post-production for film and television who built their facilities around Final Cut Pro 7 back in the day only to be abandoned on a whim when Apple decided to radically redesign Final Cut without professional users in mind.
posted by Mothlight at 8:01 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Artist/Album/song#.mp3 would work to organize... ...oh, about 35% of my music collection.

Classical music doesn't work that way. Because "artist" isn't the base information there, "composer" is. And, bless their hearts, people who create the metadata in classical music CDs, by and large, don't know what they are doing. (In the early days of the shift to digital media, they literally didn't know they were supposed to do things, sometimes. Let me tell you how many pieces of music I own are copies of this one song called "Track 1.")

Which means that I have been confounded since the days of the first Windows Media Player, when I first figured out how to rip CDs and subsequently was introduced to my first metadata-based filesystem organization... system... thing. The confusion lasted, with much swearing, until I found mp3tag. I still donate to a few bucks to those guys now and then because they have made things workable for me.

Things only got worse, especially once after I started buying videogame soundtracks in huge quantities, which is often better classified like classical music is; also since a lot of my music that isn't of those two types is self-published music by people who do medieval and/or folk music; and to put the cherry on the cake, I started creating conceptual recordings of arrangements myself and got some live recordings.

The "matching" '""""""feature """"""" is a nightmare for me coming and going; no, the East Nowhereistan Symphony Orchestra conducted by The Guy from the Pub recording of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony isn't equivalent to Karajan conducting the Viennese Philharmonic. For matter, I can't replace Pollini playing a Chopin nocturne with Kissin playing the same nocturne. And when you're actively collecting covers and adaptations, I don't even want to know what could happen.

I've stubbornly clung to directory-based organization and drag-and-drop as the only transfer method over so many years, because the other model has always had too much of "we know how best to do things, not you" to it. That's not unique to Apple, although they seem to be the worst offenders. I want to have a mental model of how things fit together and work — otherwise I'm always at the mercy of the contractor, the plumber, the mechanic; that also applies to how and where my data is stored. I was very glad to read in this thread that I am not a complete outlier for wanting that mental model.
posted by seyirci at 8:08 AM on May 6, 2016 [11 favorites]


It reminds me of all those people working in post-production for film and television who built their facilities around Final Cut Pro 7 back in the day only to be abandoned on a whim when Apple decided to radically redesign Final Cut without professional users in mind.

It's entirely possible I'm just old and cynical and don't expect much consistency from any company - I knew studio owners back in the early 90's who got boned more than once because new versions of ProTools required the purchase of thousands of dollars worth of external gear.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:11 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


This link offers several different upper end media players. Some MeFi faves like Foobar are there. But not all are free. I'm active on a couple forums frequented by audiophiles and the hatred these folks have for iTunes is of the type usually reserved for Donald Trump.

Windows Media Player is my default player simply because so much of my data (tens of thousands of songs, mostly lossless) were either ripped with it or the tags work well with it. WMP recognizes those old concert boots better than anything else I've tried.

Of the "audiophile" players I have had the best luck with JRiver's Media Jukebox but none of these are perfect. I keep iTunes because it's the only option I have for controlling the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. The iPod is dying, the iPhone will likely be replaced with an Android because I'm sick of Apple, but you won't pry the iPad from my cold dying fingers. So I keep iTunes and keep its bloated mass far far away from the rest of my music library.

And don't get me started on the failure of all players to deal with properly tagging classical music.
posted by Ber at 8:51 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Weirdly, that list leaves off Winamp, which remains my audio player of choice.

(Some people in the comments claim that this is justified, because Winamp has been discontinued. Which strikes me as being irrelevant: as iTunes itself demonstrates, active development is not necessarily a good thing. All that ought to matter is how well it works. [That claim is also not actually true; Winamp found a new owner two years ago. That said, the core program has not been updated since the purchase, and the new Shoutcast DSP plugin can't handle some files with low bitrates. But the final versions of both from the previous regime are still readily available, and they work fine, so no worries.])

As for iTunes, I use it to download podcasts, and occasionally to buy music. This is despite the fact that it sucks at downloading podcasts—in particular, the bit where you need to continually monitor which ones it's stopped downloading because you never listen to them in iTunes—but I haven't found any other podcast downloader that doesn't suck even more.
posted by Shmuel510 at 9:10 AM on May 6, 2016


And don't get me started on the failure of all players to deal with properly tagging classical music.

yes that seems like a nightmare of curating tags by hand
posted by thelonius at 9:40 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


...Let me tell you how many pieces of music I own are copies of this one song called "Track 1.")

Unknown Artist sure is prolific, but man, their output over the years has been really uneven.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:15 AM on May 6, 2016 [13 favorites]


The thing that bugs me THE MOST about iTunes is that you can't shift+click multiple playlists. Sometimes I want to put all 7 Steely Dan albums in a folder, and it's a PAIN IN THE ASS to have to scroll down to the S's then back up to the folders in the sidebar 7 times.

Other gripes:

I seriously miss iTunes DJ, which they stripped out for no reason at all, & replaced with the crappy "up next" interface. They're suddenly in love with the right click & mystery meat menus, which I thought was anathema at Apple.

Detect Duplicates could look at more data than the song title if it wanted to be actually useful.

Also removed for no reason: the eject button to the right of the iPod icon & the burn CD button. grrrr.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:23 AM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also removed for no reason:
imagine the meetings
posted by thelonius at 11:53 AM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


The thing that bugs me THE MOST about iTunes is that you can't shift+click multiple playlists. Sometimes I want to put all 7 Steely Dan albums in a folder, and it's a PAIN IN THE ASS to have to scroll down to the S's then back up to the folders in the sidebar 7 times.

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to do here based on your description, but you can select any number of tracks from your library, entire albums or individual songs, and then hit command-shift-N and get a new playlist with all of your selected tracks.
posted by hippybear at 12:05 PM on May 6, 2016


Yeah, I know that. I want a folder labelled "Steely Dan," and a separate playlist for each album within that folder. It's laborious to drag each playlist individually to the folder at this point.

I also have folder labelled "metafilter" with playlists of all my Swap CD's inside it.

Folders are useful. They de-clutter your playlist... list... and serve as meta-playlists for the stuff in them, should you choose to hear all Steely Dan. But I still want individual playlists inside the folders. Getting them there is a "drag" hahaha... ahhh... *sigh*
posted by Devils Rancher at 2:36 PM on May 6, 2016


I suspect that “Apple knows best,” while generally obnoxious, and horrible for some users, does work quite well for the great majority of the hundreds of millions of Apple customers. Any ecosystem that is going to be used by that many people, most of whom are not tech savvy, is going to frustrate the hell out of a good proportion of the minority who are sophisticated or who have special needs.

As for edge cases like those with large collections of classical music, iTunes is never going to cut it. Librarians have solved all the problems of cataloging music and recordings with tools like authority control, unlimited numbers of added authors etc., but I know from experience that most library patrons find all that sort of thing very confusing — uniform titles showing up in searches causes people who struggle with the concept of author/title/subject no end of frustration. Trying to roll those kinds of advanced features into iTunes would make it ten time worse for most users.

Even the “simple” folder structure is beyond those whose experience doesn’t lend them to think naturally of classification and hierarchical tree structures. Having that sort of thing taken care of automatically might frustrate many of us, but it’s really a necessity. In the past have had to explain directory structure to people who don’t think of the world that way, and while they understand the explanation many of them don’t “get” the idea on a conceptual level because it doesn’t really fit their existing mental model.

iTunes works fine for me, but I agree it is a confusing mess that I have learned to coexist with rather than something that is actually good. Splitting it up would help me, but I wonder if that is necessarily true of the next few hundred million iPhone purchasers; they are the people that Apple (rightly from a business perspective) cares most about.
posted by Quinbus Flestrin at 4:24 PM on May 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Um... that's completely untrue. All my music files are on an external drive, and my iTunes library is stored locally, and it's all being kept in Artist -> Album -> Track directory trees.

You misunderstood the issue. A lot of my music is on an external drive, not all of it. I keep about 100GB of my favorites on my laptop so I always have access to them.

I know that you can choose where to put your automatically organized iTunes folder. But I keep my files in two locations. That's why I don't use the automatic organization. But it's not a big deal to me, because I don't find putting files into the appropriate folders when I download new music to be that big an imposition.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:27 PM on May 6, 2016


I spent a fair bit of time on the phone with Google Play support, and it is clear there is no way to get my own original files into their cloud to stream as part of the rest of my library.

You could probably get it to work if you change the metadata on those files.
posted by straight at 8:06 PM on May 6, 2016


The only reason I still use iTunes is because I do enjoy their podcast/subscription service.

Clearly the team working on making podcasts unusable need to work harder.
posted by Artw at 6:12 AM on May 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


The exact instant I started to hate Apple's treatment of music was when my carefully tagged collection, which has sorted perfectly in OS X for close to 10 years, abruptly stopped sorting correctly in iOS even though I did not change a Single. Goddamned. Thing. (Still sorts properly in OS X, though!)

Oh, I thought, it's just a bug... They'll fix it in the next point release. Or, worse case, major release. That was 2-3 years ago. Now, with all of their customers expected to pony up for their horrible music rental service, I know they'll never fix it.

Now, with Apple focused on making ungripable phones, slow wrist baubles, and underpowered laptops with cruddy keyboards, I'm definitely feeling adrift. Steve was a man of passion and vision, particularly about music. I don't get the feeling Tim is passionate or visionary about anything except shifting units.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:46 AM on May 7, 2016


I (a Windows user) was able to abandon iTunes for a long time, until a few weeks ago when I got an iPad. iTunes is a mess, but it's working OK, and my iTunes library doesn't have the only copy of my music. I've purchased most of my music from Amazon over the years, and Amazon Music works great on the iPad, not only for music I download from my Amazon music library, but the music iTunes put on the iPad as well. Amazon has never done me wrong, but I've never completely trusted it.

I'll stream music from Pandora now and then, but I'm old, and to me streaming music is a waste of precious bandwidth. I don't listen to much on the iPad anyway...it's mostly another place to stash music.
posted by lhauser at 9:50 PM on May 7, 2016


Obviously something went badly wrong here, but (a) he had backups and (b) he KNEW he was a corner case (with his unusual or rare files), and (c) he was adopting a music management system from a company that has had a seriously hard (and well publicized!) time accommodating corner cases for the entire life of the iTunes ecosystem.

So I kind of feel like this is axe-grindy, and wonder a little if he didn't set up or anticipate the failure just to have an opportunity to publish this angry little screed. Call me cynical, but Apple-clubbing is all en vogue, right?

And yeah, iTunes is kind of awful. I never use it to play music; that's what Sonos is for.

Oh and this
It seems like a big part of the problem (and I see this in other Apple products, as well) is that the abstractions presented in the UI just don't map well to the abstractions that actually exist under the hood.
isn't at all wrong, but at least iTunes has typically been closer to reality than iPhoto, which typically put your pix in an impenetrable rabbit-warren of folders. Even so, the abstractions that MOST people use for music (by which I mean pop music) fail completely for classical, which is sort of Issue 1 in the category you're touching on here. It's not a problem for me, but it's a problem for lots of people.

The other thing it sucks at is remote management. My library is WAY too big to live in my main computer, so it sits on the media server. This means I have to sync to iTunes running on THAT computer, which is stupid, but is apparently a holdover from when Apple was afraid of the music labels.

About some other bits, though, escape asks:

>Am I misunderstanding?

Yes, you are, but explaining it would be drift. You can control what gets synced with pretty fine granularity. Your Apple store can help you.

I've never had an iTunes crisis of any kind, but I just use it for the odd CD rip and syncing my iPhone. Interface is objectively terrible, but since I don't really have to use it much I don't care. The idea of a service that would, as part of its plan, remove or replace my music files is absolutely unattractive to me, and should be to anyone who has a carefully curated library. Expecting an automated system to respect what you've assembled is lunacy, and it's not like it's a secret what AM does (or can do, if you tell it to) at this point.
posted by uberchet at 4:10 PM on May 8, 2016


Well, it's certainly not a secret now that it can and will delete your files if it sees anything even a little bit variant, yes. Wonderful job blaming the victim for everything about this though. If you allow a program to scan your media files, that's just assuming the risk that it might delete everything, huh? He must've done it on purpose for the blog hits.

Jegus, is that really where the overton window of corporate mouthpiecing is now? False flag accusations?
posted by kafziel at 4:47 PM on May 8, 2016


Well, it's certainly not a secret now that it can and will delete your files
This isn't the first such story, and the feature has been out for a while. People have been complaining about issues with this feature of Apple Music for a while.
Wonderful job blaming the victim for everything about this though.
I likewise commend you on your uncritical acceptance of a buzz-generating post on a blog that exists to market a design agency.
If you allow a program to scan your media files, that's just assuming the risk that it might delete everything,
It seems like you might have read something other than what I wrote, but it also seems like it'd be pointless to try and explain further.
corporate mouthpiecing
Oh, FFS.
posted by uberchet at 6:41 AM on May 9, 2016


But really, I think this is a further example of how the complexity of the software we use, and the operating systems that run the software (whichever they are) causes us to cede any kind of control over what we supposedly own. Hell, I think it's now illegal to reverse engineer stuff to figure out what it does.

I'm seeing this in science a lot lately...


Overcomplicated! Technology at the Limits of Comprehension - "it's about the forces that make systems more complicated and more incomprehensible over time, despite our desire for this to be otherwise."

also btw :P
Why code is so often compared to magic - "In science, we are on the verge of replacing the messiness of laboratory experimentation with cleanly written computer code: an automated robotic lab will run complex biological experiments based on the instructions we write. "
posted by kliuless at 10:04 AM on May 11, 2016


Apple now admits that there might actually be a problem.
posted by Ber at 11:50 AM on May 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


That article doesn't have anything to do with Apple admitting it might be a problem. The last sentence of the article makes it clear that nobody actually involved with Apple in a professional sense was willing to talk to the author.

It does seem to provide evidence that there is a lot of bullshit going on. I'm glad I back up my iTunes library as part of my Time Machine scheme. (The article does seem to say that it is mostly affecting Windows users using iTunes.)
posted by hippybear at 1:29 AM on May 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


That would certainly explain a lot, as iTunes for Mac OS is merely inconvenient for many much of the time, as opposed to the Windows version, which I seem to recall was so janky that it felt like an open-source clone of itself
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:21 AM on May 19, 2016


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