It can. I've done so for a while. Super convenient, as Spotify is better at new music for me, but I prefer to use Apple on my devices. The app is really handy.
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Apple Music Transfer Tool for Switching From Spotify Now Available in US and 8 Other Countries
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Since the PowerPC era I've used XLD to convert FLAC to Apple Lossless. I can convert hundreds of songs in a minute on an M1 Air.
You can wait for Spotify to implement the feature.
Oh wait a minute, they‘ll throw a big fuss and then never implement it, like lossless audio or native HomePod playback (remember Spotify threw a big fit for HomePods to be opened for third party services, only to not implement the feature to this day).
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Interesting...
I had read this https://support.apple.com/en-us/118283 and thought that "cancelling" would mean losing the library.
That is fantastic and I am very happy for you, but they are not equivalent formats and therefore conversion is not an appropriate solution. You are far from the first person to ever mention that this is an option, I understand it is simple and “works” but this response ignores the actual issues at hand and excuses Apple’s blatant anti-consumer practices.
This would be on Spotify to implement but, like higher bit rate music files, they refuse to do anything about it. Daniel Ek is just there to take your money, he doesn’t care about music or Spotify users.
There are apps like SongShift and others that will convert Apple Music playlists to other streaming services if you really want that and are not just posting rage bait.
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EU regulators have indicated that they’re looking into the app. Their reasoning is that making it easy for people to use another ecosystem is only legal for tools that allow folks to move AWAY from Apple. Moving TO Apple is, of course, anti-competitive because it allows people to choose Apple. Choosing Spotify is OK because it’s an EU company. /s
I just want to be able to import by artist, and for them to fix how many artists you can see at one time…
yet we still can't merge two apple ID's and bring over music/libraries if we've had Apple Music/iTunes Match. 🤨
I used it to ditch Spotify 18 months ago.
It was pretty seamless and painfree.
About 99% of my 17000 playlists went across without any issue.
I can live with that.
And knowing I'm not giving Spotify money anymore...
Their broken promises on hires music, their low payments, their use of EU to push AppStore changes.
Yeah nah, not supporting you anymore after quite a long time being a subscriber.
I still think bot Apple Music and Spotify could improve their memory of Shuffle mode in playlists.
It's crazy that a 10 hour long playlist on Shuffle still seems to pick and replay the same songs way too often.
Can they not remember when last played and play something longer in the memory list?
How are they not equivalent if both are lossless?
Yes converting takes work but as pointed out, quick painless tools are available.
Not supporting a particular file format is not "blatant anti-consumer practice".
It's always gone on in computing.
Apple obviously believe in their format.
The rest of the world may not. That's life.
But you can play Apple Lossless files on other non Apple devices so its not that locked up.
This has been gone over so many times. There are technical limitations to ALAC that go beyond “but the audio is lossless!!!”
I would encourage you to do your research, but the fast version is
• FLAC is much more widely supported by other hardware/software outside of the Apple world
• FLAC compression is significantly more efficient, space savings do add up when considering the scope of a large audio library
• FLAC is an archival quality format, since by default it includes built-in checksums per frame, plus an overall MD5 hash of the uncompressed audio. ALAC has no such function and has no way of verifying the data integrity. A FLAC file converted to ALAC loses this, and converting it back to FLAC is pointless as the provenance of the original source file is already destroyed.
I very strongly disagree that the way Apple treats FLAC files is not an anti-consumer practice.
What reason would you have to use Apple’s format if Apple supported them both the same way?
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in my point of view this should be regulated to force all music service providers to allow smooth, easy and free migration from one service to the other.
How do we write to the EU? They love these kind of things
How do we write to the EU? They love these kind of things
being supported more widely is not a killer. there's plenty of players that do support them.
FLAC isnt supported on many USB inputs for speakers. most Sony bluetooth speakers I've had over the years support WAV as lossless or MP3.
storage is cheap these days. i've been ripping my CDs to FLAC and it takes up very little room really.
years ago when storage was expensive i was ripping MP3s at 56kbps to get as much on one CDR
A FLAC with checksums is maybe going to report an error but how much correction is possible?
CDs often have errors. I have some that refuse to rip ... and then CD rot is starting to affect some early discs as well.
You can play FLACs on Apple devices with other players as has been pointed out.
iTunes and Apple Music were never general file players.
I choose to rip to FLAC but wear the fact that I cant play them so easily.
That's life.
Better support is only a positive, and it’s definitely a dealbreaker for those who might to make use of some hardware/software combo in particularbeing supported more widely is not a killer. there's plenty of players that do support them.
FLAC isnt supported on many USB inputs for speakers. most Sony bluetooth speakers I've had over the years support WAV as lossless or MP3.
storage is cheap these days. i've been ripping my CDs to FLAC and it takes up very little room really.
years ago when storage was expensive i was ripping MP3s at 56kbps to get as much on one CDR
A FLAC with checksums is maybe going to report an error but how much correction is possible?
CDs often have errors. I have some that refuse to rip ... and then CD rot is starting to affect some early discs as well.
You can play FLACs on Apple devices with other players as has been pointed out.
iTunes and Apple Music were never general file players.
I choose to rip to FLAC but wear the fact that I cant play them so easily.
That's life.
I’m only aware of one non-Apple audio device currently on the market which does not support FLAC playback, if you have others I would be interested in noting them down.
Storage IS cheap these days but that’s no good reason to choose the file format that unnecessarily bloats the capacity needed to store the same amount of data
How much correction is possible? This of course depends on the severity of the error, but you definitely can’t correct an error you can never detect.
As someone with a good amount of early CDs I am not aware of any early releases with known rot issues. I’m also not sure how this relates to FLAC vs. ALAC
iTunes and Music were never general file players, but they were designed to be music file players. They handle AAC, AIFF, ALAC, WAV, WMA, and MP3 just fine. I have yet to hear a convincing argument for why FLAC should not be among those. No other manufacturer on the planet seems to have this problem.
I choose FLAC as well but I would rather be a bit more vocal about it when the trillion dollar tech company tries to restrict my freedom of choice. This is not a c’est la vie moment for me.
There are heaps of audio devices that will play MP3s or WAVs off a USB stick.
But not FLACs. Sony speakers are ones I have numerous over the years but I have a Harmon Kardon soundbar that doesnt support them either. Plenty of small speaker/radios. Some with handy TF card support.
As for meta data with Apple format, you can choose AIFF instead of ALAC.
Sure it's not compressed but also seems to be a both ALAC and AIFF get the nod from sound engineers perhaps because their audio software doesnt have to decompress before it can be used.
There are plenty of other huge companies who choose what files and formats they support.
Adobe and many CAD companies come to mind.
They support open file formats but then tie users in with proprietary ones as well...
Audio always seems to polarize people. In an ideal world we would have open file support by all vendors.
As I said, I rip my CDs now in FLAC (having done it before in MP3 and AAC) so this is the last time to archive it all.
I can now put everything on a large capacity SD card. Sure beats carrying around physical media.
You can always post a suggestion to Apple to support FLAC natively...
I doubt they will listen though.
I've had similar issue with Hisense... their projectors (and tvs) no longer enable simultaneous output of audio to speakers/bluetooth AND SPDIF port. This makes the job of enabling my partner's hearing aid more complicated than it should be. Most TVs allow it. Hisense used to their tech support tell me. Obviously some licensing issue for a few bucks...
