Trust me, I had my files deleted (at least three that I know of, songs I play often) and I did not do it by mistake.
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Debate Rages Over Whether Apple Music Automatically Deletes Users' Owned Music Collections
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Original source files? Not possible without you choosing to do so. I think a lot of people lose files from mobile devices, but don't realize they weren't originals rather than Cloud or Apple Music temporary files. I've had original source files copied to my iPhone 5s and I've never experienced a single song being deleted with Apple Music. Same with my iPad.
If you say so Eddy. (I don't use AM or iCloud. I emailed the files back to myself from the phone when iTunes deleted them.)
I've used iTunes from the very first version. It has never "deleted" a single song by itself. There have been situations where the library file is corrupted or an update will break some of the links to ripped files, but no deletions. The files will always be available on one of the local drives unless I chose to delete it myself, the individual file corrupted, or the entire drive died...i.e., things that you can't blame on iTunes.
I was wondering - one day on my iPhone, when I wanted to listen to my music, it said I couldn't unless I had an active data connection (I turned off use of cellular data for it).
The songs I had loaded from my MacBook were all missing from my iPhone - including the ones I had ripped on my own or bought unlocked mp3's from elsewhere...
BTW - Steve is dead...
The songs I had loaded from my MacBook were all missing from my iPhone - including the ones I had ripped on my own or bought unlocked mp3's from elsewhere...
BTW - Steve is dead...
True, however you can save them to your local device library and GM will play them. Found that out
Google Music never deleted the original or on device songs. Just converted those I uploaded.[doublepost=1462635445][/doublepost]
Can you point out specifically where AM said it "definitely told me it would erase my music"? I didn't see that spelled out. Anywhere.
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Yes and No.
I had a number of these I uploaded. Unless iTunes has that specific .... or is it AM? on it's servers AND you have not updated the metadata or artwork you are likely SOL. Even then you may not be safe.
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Thumb / USB drives have become very inexpensive. Even a 128GB drive would allow you an emergency backup.
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I strongly suspect the OP did something wrong because if you change countries in your billing address and don't have a back up of your iTunes Music Match yes your uploaded match file swill be deleted off the cloud. You have to reupload them when you switch countries. And if do that you get a warning (BUT YOU HAVE TO READ) about it. - Operator error - I keep 2 backups of my music and I don't leave anything to chance. Nothing I ever had has been deleted without my knowledge.
That has been the problem. Inconsistency. Count yourself among the blessed.
I put AM Trial on my 6+. I also owned a Mini 3 but did not turn on AM on it at that time. My iTunes main was on my Windows system. I have an off-line backup.
Followed the walk-thru (definitely not enough genre's) and allowed everything to sync overnight. The following morning a significant portion of the music was a serious mess on both iDevices. Some were missing, some were greyed, some were changed, some were flat out wrong. So I figured I would resync from my iTunes. That was wrong also.
Keep in mind, that I only did AM on my iPhone. Yet over-night, all my internet linked systems had their music crapped up.
Apple was no help. Forums were full of seriously conflicting information. I left it alone for a couple of days hoping it would fix itself - nope. Continually got worse. Especially when Apple told me music from other regions that played fine on iTunes was unsupported in AM (greyed out then mysteriously replaced with something else or deleted).
After a few rounds of the AM mess, the best guess Apple Tech could offer was that it appeared to be linked to the fact I was a former Match user.
Apple Music. I was burned, flambéd, roasted, shredded, and punted by that mess. Won't be going back.
I started using iTunes just this year after not using it since 2011, and it is still pretty bad.
I just don't sync my iTunes library with my phone.
iTunes is terrible at managing synced information. I just use it to backup my device and photos and to transfer music files from other places but my iTunes library.
I just don't sync my iTunes library with my phone.
iTunes is terrible at managing synced information. I just use it to backup my device and photos and to transfer music files from other places but my iTunes library.
I think iTunes Match is one of the things that is confusing to users in regards to whether or not the files are temporary (available as long as you continue the Match subscription) or actual original source files. I also think that a lot of people don't understand the functional differences between iTunes Match and Apple Music. They're not intended to provide exactly the same access or functionality.
For example: Apple Music only provides access to songs/albums that have been cleared for use within that streaming service (which does not cover the entire iTunes store). iTunes Match provides access to ANY song that appears within the iTunes store, so long as you have a ripped copy on a local drive. See how that makes it easy for songs to "disappear" for Match users that discontinue their Match subscription for an Apple Music subscription?
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It happened to me. I know that I was never served with a dialogue asking if I want to delete anything, and my files were all gone after I signed up for Apple Music.
Only temporary files that are specific to a subscription service could be deleted by the software, not original source files. Otherwise, it's just broken links or a library file corruption. Both of those things could easily be mistaken for "deleted" files by someone who hadn't experienced it happening before.
Apple has had issues matching music ever since they upgraded to 256 kbps. I have been buying music on iTunes since its inception. When they enhanced the bitrate you were able to upgrade (protected to purchased AAC) for 30 cents. I remember hundreds of songs updating incorrectly. Some went from regular song to the live version. Most of this occurs because some albums purchased in the past are no longer available. So the match is inconsistent. Not to mention some of the the protected songs sounded better and deeper than the newer format. Therefore, what they are using is recognizing music properly. I use Spotify. I would only use Apple Music if it was it own app and not connected to iTunes. I don't want my library touched at all.
I think the only safe way to use Apple Music is to keep it only in iPhone and without iCloud Music Library
I don't trust them anymore
I don't trust them anymore
Apple has absolutely been lost in the wilderness with iTunes the last five years and seems to be utterly lacking direction and vision on where they're going. In the process, it's made a complete hash of their product. Did someone beat them with a stupid stick? Good heavens.
I'm not going to call out users who've been stung by the Apple Music situation as I would be *beyond furious* if this happened to my media files. But I've learned to avoid being an early adopter of technology because of these kind of issues, especially with Apple Music and iTunes.
I was excited by it's initial potential, but I have some legacy hardware on Snow Leopard that I didn't want to migrate beyond 10.6.8 because it's stable (what a concept) and I wanted to retain backward-compatibility. Then the early reports on Apple Music started filtering in and I thanked my lucky stars I stood pat.
Like many commenters, I purchased my media on CD's and I'm not going to subscribe to repurchase it for the so-called "convenience" of streaming it online. Maybe I'm 'old school' but to pay again is iDiotic (idiotic) to me. I've ripped it to iTunes and I'm accessing it with a bevy Apple hardware devices I purchased at thousands of USD at full retail prices. That's payment enough, isn't it?
Now, I understand that this overweening need for im-ME-diate gratification is helping Apple earn billions, but the needs of their core audience is being ignored while pursuing this new 'strategy'.
Hopefully Apple can regain their footing by offering these software applications in SEPARATE functions. For example, I would be fine providing Apple the list of artists, albums and songs in my iTunes archive to populate an 'interests' file for a streaming service application, but allow ME (the paying customer) to determine where, how and what I want to share. And keep your hands off of my moving or removing MY files!
This would enable users to elect if they wanted to receive a suggested playlist from Apple Music for use at parties, easy listening, etc. You could try it for 60-90 days to enable Apple to demonstrate a 'value-added' proposition for the service and determine if it's worthwhile to purchase.
Is that hard to understand? Or to execute? No, it's definitely not. It's the right thing to do and Apple should be doing it post haste. Why they're not doing it is the question Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple executive team should be answering to users.
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EXACTLY!
I'm not going to call out users who've been stung by the Apple Music situation as I would be *beyond furious* if this happened to my media files. But I've learned to avoid being an early adopter of technology because of these kind of issues, especially with Apple Music and iTunes.
I was excited by it's initial potential, but I have some legacy hardware on Snow Leopard that I didn't want to migrate beyond 10.6.8 because it's stable (what a concept) and I wanted to retain backward-compatibility. Then the early reports on Apple Music started filtering in and I thanked my lucky stars I stood pat.
Like many commenters, I purchased my media on CD's and I'm not going to subscribe to repurchase it for the so-called "convenience" of streaming it online. Maybe I'm 'old school' but to pay again is iDiotic (idiotic) to me. I've ripped it to iTunes and I'm accessing it with a bevy Apple hardware devices I purchased at thousands of USD at full retail prices. That's payment enough, isn't it?
Now, I understand that this overweening need for im-ME-diate gratification is helping Apple earn billions, but the needs of their core audience is being ignored while pursuing this new 'strategy'.
Hopefully Apple can regain their footing by offering these software applications in SEPARATE functions. For example, I would be fine providing Apple the list of artists, albums and songs in my iTunes archive to populate an 'interests' file for a streaming service application, but allow ME (the paying customer) to determine where, how and what I want to share. And keep your hands off of my moving or removing MY files!
This would enable users to elect if they wanted to receive a suggested playlist from Apple Music for use at parties, easy listening, etc. You could try it for 60-90 days to enable Apple to demonstrate a 'value-added' proposition for the service and determine if it's worthwhile to purchase.
Is that hard to understand? Or to execute? No, it's definitely not. It's the right thing to do and Apple should be doing it post haste. Why they're not doing it is the question Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple executive team should be answering to users.
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EXACTLY!
When I had an issues with iTunes last November, after looking around for possible causes/solutions, it appeared that many people were having problems after cancelling their Apple Music free trial, that all their Matched music was replaced with AM copies.
This was not known to them until their AM free trial ended.
I wonder how many other people are affected and will not know it until the cancel their AM sub.
Edit: BTW, My iTunes issue probably did not have anything to do with Apple Music, because I did not sign up for it. But, when I called Apple support, they started blaming Apple Music even though I did not ever use it.
Let's stop misusing the word "confusing" when the correct term is incompetent. "Confusing" places blame on the user, as if the truth were in there to be ferreted out, if he thought hard enough about it.
That dialog is a great example. What does "remove download" do? What if the song wasn't a "download" to begin with? Does "remove download" delete the local file?
iTunes has always been a grossly incompetent mess in many ways, but its dialogs and concept of "syncing" are simply wrong. It's embarrassing and bad enough that Apple shoehorned the entire management console for its family of handheld Unix computers into a jukebox application, but even worse that the jukebox application fails at its original purpose.
This scenario is absolutely believable. Look at iTunes's previous transgressions: inexplicably duplicating your entire music library by default, renaming every file and destroying your directory structure without permission by default (until that bug was fixed). And the dire warnings about your library being wiped out when it shouldn't be (and won't be) just because you had to get a new hard drive. The lack of a "phone overrides computer" setting to guarantee that what you have on your phone will overwrite what's on the computer at your next sync. WTF, Palm Pilots had that IN THE '90S.
Apple and its shareholders should be very worried about its supposed transition to a "services" company, when it has repeatedly and spectacularly filed at providing services. This is where the fraud of endless fawning over Apple's "elegance" and "attention to detail" comes home to roost. Those claims were always illusory. Apple's attention to "detail" means ignoring basic functionality defects and essentially polishing a turd. And ignoring users, the industry, and even its own experts (examples: the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco, QuickTime's pathetic gamma problems).
Apple can't even get user IDs right. Look at the millions of people with multiple iTunes accounts, which Apple huffily refuses to fix by providing a means of consolidating them. Why does that arise? Because of amateur-hour bullshít like this.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to degrade its physical products to the point of near uselessness. Idiotically thinner at the expense of basically all battery. Computers with no ports. MUSIC-CENTRIC PHONES WITH NO HEADPHONE JACK. It's as if the management has shorted Apple stock and can't wait to drive the company into oblivion, while testing the public's stupidity.
Well, you can get away with that when selling defectively designed physical products. But when you destroy people's data, even the undiscerning are going to get pissed.
That dialog is a great example. What does "remove download" do? What if the song wasn't a "download" to begin with? Does "remove download" delete the local file?
iTunes has always been a grossly incompetent mess in many ways, but its dialogs and concept of "syncing" are simply wrong. It's embarrassing and bad enough that Apple shoehorned the entire management console for its family of handheld Unix computers into a jukebox application, but even worse that the jukebox application fails at its original purpose.
This scenario is absolutely believable. Look at iTunes's previous transgressions: inexplicably duplicating your entire music library by default, renaming every file and destroying your directory structure without permission by default (until that bug was fixed). And the dire warnings about your library being wiped out when it shouldn't be (and won't be) just because you had to get a new hard drive. The lack of a "phone overrides computer" setting to guarantee that what you have on your phone will overwrite what's on the computer at your next sync. WTF, Palm Pilots had that IN THE '90S.
Apple and its shareholders should be very worried about its supposed transition to a "services" company, when it has repeatedly and spectacularly filed at providing services. This is where the fraud of endless fawning over Apple's "elegance" and "attention to detail" comes home to roost. Those claims were always illusory. Apple's attention to "detail" means ignoring basic functionality defects and essentially polishing a turd. And ignoring users, the industry, and even its own experts (examples: the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco, QuickTime's pathetic gamma problems).
Apple can't even get user IDs right. Look at the millions of people with multiple iTunes accounts, which Apple huffily refuses to fix by providing a means of consolidating them. Why does that arise? Because of amateur-hour bullshít like this.
Meanwhile, Apple continues to degrade its physical products to the point of near uselessness. Idiotically thinner at the expense of basically all battery. Computers with no ports. MUSIC-CENTRIC PHONES WITH NO HEADPHONE JACK. It's as if the management has shorted Apple stock and can't wait to drive the company into oblivion, while testing the public's stupidity.
Well, you can get away with that when selling defectively designed physical products. But when you destroy people's data, even the undiscerning are going to get pissed.
Google Play Music has been an excellent service.
It's rather strange that Apple simply cannot get it together.
So no AM, Match, or iCloud (paid) service, but I still have a "greyed out" song in my iTunes library because I tried to upload it as a separate song to my 6s+ with 9.2 at the time. Not only did it not upload (thru iTunes: what else?), it greyed out the song from my main library on my 2014 MBP 15" running 10.10.5. I can play the song if I click on it specifically, but can't copy/move it anywhere and when the tracks play in album mode it skips Ricky's Theme from Ill Communication.
Apple Music is the center of a heated debate this week, with involved parties arguing over whether or not the service is deleting Apple Music users' song collections from hard drives after uploading them to iCloud Music Library.
Vellum's James Pinkstone wrote a long complaint on May 4 accusing Apple Music of doing just that. According to Pinkstone, Apple Music deleted 122GB of his original music files after he joined Apple Music and had his music library scanned by Apple to make his personal content available across multiple devices.
The process Pinkstone describes above is not how Apple Music's matching feature works, according to an in-depth explanation shared by iMore. Apple will match songs and upload original songs by converting them into an appropriate format, but it does not delete without user intervention. iMore theorizes that Pinkstone accidentally wiped his own library by misunderstanding confusing dialog options.
Confusing the issue further is Pinkstone's conversation with an Apple Support Representative named Amber, who seems to be just as perplexed about how Apple Music functions when merging an existing music library with the Apple Music service.Amber's statement is inaccurate according to an Apple Music support document. Original files are never altered and remain available and deleting personal content is not the intended behavior of the service, but it continues to be unclear if Pinkstone and other Apple Music customers who have had content deleted have experienced a bug or mistakenly deleted their content themselves because of a confusing user interface. Multiple Apple Music listeners have disagreed with iMore's point of view and have said they too have experienced music deletions that weren't self-initiated.
Regardless of what actually happened, it's clear that Apple Music is in need of a serious overhaul. Rumors suggest Apple is working on revamping Apple Music and will unveil changes at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Hopefully that revamp will extend beyond cosmetic changes to clear up many of the confusing aspects of how music libraries are handled.
Apple Music users with personal music collections should create a backup on an external hard drive, which will ensure no music ever goes missing through user error or an Apple Music bug.
Article Link: Debate Rages Over Whether Apple Music Automatically Deletes Users' Owned Music Collections
I do play it on endless repeat often, as it seems to fit as background music to my life. If Apple knew that (they do), they would have a vested interest in me not having my compulsive song: buy/listen to something else. Otherwise, why would it happen?
p.s. I edit video/audio on FCS3, Adobe CS6, etc. so if there's an interface I'm not getting, at least provide a tutorial. Never had artwork for half my library, but it ALL comes up in the screensaver of cover art. Sure...
My problem seems to have been because apple is removing music from what they consider secondary libraries. Well... I move my library, stores on an external drive between machines. Music has been removed that was purchased in the iTunes store and others. I do not want this "intelligent" music management that would allow changes to my library such as having to download a track to okay it. Sometimes I have no connection, or have to work on something too confidential to work on it while on the net to begin with. So any external management of my music or data is completely unacceptable. I have turned off iCloud music, and photos for that matter. I want to be able to delete photos off my phone and not.just assume apple will take care of it for me.
DF
DF
Apple Music is the center of a heated debate this week, with involved parties arguing over whether or not the service is deleting Apple Music users' song collections from hard drives after uploading them to iCloud Music Library.
Vellum's James Pinkstone wrote a long complaint on May 4 accusing Apple Music of doing just that. According to Pinkstone, Apple Music deleted 122GB of his original music files after he joined Apple Music and had his music library scanned by Apple to make his personal content available across multiple devices.
The process Pinkstone describes above is not how Apple Music's matching feature works, according to an in-depth explanation shared by iMore. Apple will match songs and upload original songs by converting them into an appropriate format, but it does not delete without user intervention. iMore theorizes that Pinkstone accidentally wiped his own library by misunderstanding confusing dialog options.
Confusing the issue further is Pinkstone's conversation with an Apple Support Representative named Amber, who seems to be just as perplexed about how Apple Music functions when merging an existing music library with the Apple Music service.Amber's statement is inaccurate according to an Apple Music support document. Original files are never altered and remain available and deleting personal content is not the intended behavior of the service, but it continues to be unclear if Pinkstone and other Apple Music customers who have had content deleted have experienced a bug or mistakenly deleted their content themselves because of a confusing user interface. Multiple Apple Music listeners have disagreed with iMore's point of view and have said they too have experienced music deletions that weren't self-initiated.
Regardless of what actually happened, it's clear that Apple Music is in need of a serious overhaul. Rumors suggest Apple is working on revamping Apple Music and will unveil changes at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Hopefully that revamp will extend beyond cosmetic changes to clear up many of the confusing aspects of how music libraries are handled.
Apple Music users with personal music collections should create a backup on an external hard drive, which will ensure no music ever goes missing through user error or an Apple Music bug.
Article Link: Debate Rages Over Whether Apple Music Automatically Deletes Users' Owned Music Collections
I've used Apple products since I purchased an Apple II in 1982, and have dozens of Apple products around the house .... probably 2-3 dozen! But Apple now scares me with their failure to stick with their core business and abandon the products upon which Steve Jobs built the company. I am a huge music collector and have about 400GB of MP3 files, but I've been forced to totally abandon iTunes for fear of what Apple may intentionally or inadvertently do with my music files. iTunes has slowly become primarily a marketing tool to sell Apple users products! And my Safari home page on my iMac jumps around so much that I am having more and more trouble just opening simple links. Both these problems have slowly developed over several years. Why isn't Apple listening to the voices of it's customers??
So what has Apple done to fix these glaring problems that are being discussed on blog after blog ... what have they done to restore some semblance of confidence in the Apple brand?
They've tried to sell us useless watches and, OMG, they're rumored to be working on an Apple automobile. This is just incredible .... "Nero (aka Tim Cook) fiddles while Rome burns". Can you believe it ... a CAR?????
iPhone sales revenue has been enormous and has effectively masked the problems Apple has created, through neglect, in their core business. A day of reckoning will come someday ... hopefully soon!
So what has Apple done to fix these glaring problems that are being discussed on blog after blog ... what have they done to restore some semblance of confidence in the Apple brand?
They've tried to sell us useless watches and, OMG, they're rumored to be working on an Apple automobile. This is just incredible .... "Nero (aka Tim Cook) fiddles while Rome burns". Can you believe it ... a CAR?????
iPhone sales revenue has been enormous and has effectively masked the problems Apple has created, through neglect, in their core business. A day of reckoning will come someday ... hopefully soon!
This is 100% true and I am sure the issue. I recall that it was confusing trying to understand what Apple Music was planning to do.
This is about good design and usability. Things Apple prides itself on but of late, seem missing from their software products.
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Stupid design then. Apple should do the heavy lifting in all cases. You should need on back up and never have to use it.
That was part of the "huh?". AM killed, maimed, mutilated, replaced, all kinds of stuff. Even music that never was impacted by iTunes Match. Match was not active on my system for a while prior to AM. Still that makes no sense.
I had iTunes. Added iTunes match for my current iTunes library. Finally got it working well. However I discontinued Match and replaced my iTunes library with a bigger more complete library. Times go on ... I see and am invited to AM. Turn that "bad boy" on for my iPhone and WHAP! BIFF! Ker-POW! BAMMM! My library across all my interconnected devices gets hammered.
AM access I understood. What I didn't understand was that the AM versions would be totally different songs in many cases, DRM for others, and arbitrarily deciding to butcher my music library without user permission.
I did my due diligence with Apple trying to find a solution. It didn't work and I am not willing to do it again.
+1 on the itunes match "debate" expereince:
I had an external drive with all my carefully ripped cds (took days and days and my internal dvd drive on my imac hasn't been the same since) on it; about 250gb.
Subscribed to itunes match and all was fine for a few weeks.
Then, my external drive was accidentally unplugged for a day or two, and I guess Itunes match decided to create a new library on my internal drive.
Plugged my external drive back in and repointed my itunes library back to it.
....next day, more than 50% of my music had been deleted from the external drive, and not accessible from the cloud.
User error? Well, I guess it was my bad that the external drive got unplugged. However, I have never experienced unrecoverable data loss in my 20+ years with computers until that day. Thanks, Apple!
I had an external drive with all my carefully ripped cds (took days and days and my internal dvd drive on my imac hasn't been the same since) on it; about 250gb.
Subscribed to itunes match and all was fine for a few weeks.
Then, my external drive was accidentally unplugged for a day or two, and I guess Itunes match decided to create a new library on my internal drive.
Plugged my external drive back in and repointed my itunes library back to it.
....next day, more than 50% of my music had been deleted from the external drive, and not accessible from the cloud.
User error? Well, I guess it was my bad that the external drive got unplugged. However, I have never experienced unrecoverable data loss in my 20+ years with computers until that day. Thanks, Apple!