Apple Music Is there a way to stop Apple Music from changing songs?

[I Need a Drink]

Title says it all. I am very careful about the version of songs that I add to my Library as I like to pick the best sounding (to me) versions as well as keeping titles tied to original albums where possible. I have many examples where Apple Music changes the songs that I pick to other albums or compilations. For example, I had the Stone Temple Pilots first album Core added to my library. One day I open Apple Music and half the album is gone, but if I go to Various Artists the songs are there, littered across compilation albums or soundtracks.

This happens more often that I care to deal with, especially since I have a large library and huge playlists. The worst part is that I spend time trying to find the best sounding version of older classic rock songs only to have Apple Music change the song to a different version at a later time.

Is there any way to disable this behavior?

I'd rather have a greyed out song and have to choose a new version myself than to have an algorithm make choices for me and ruin the work that I put into curating my library. Makes me want to go to Spotify, but I have a bunch of HomePods which makes it more difficult.

 

[pup]

I always have the opposite problem. The record company will release a remastered or bonus track version and then pull the original from Apple Music. Then I’m stuck with greyed out tracks that I have to search out and replace in my playlists.

Either way, I think it’s an inherent problem with streaming services. You might have that song “saved”, but it isn’t yours and could disappear at any time. But I agree that Apple should find some elegant way of dealing with it. They could give you a choice of just greying it out or automatically matching it.

The technology is there - they have both iTunes Match and Shazam software ready to apply - but the interface involves both complexity and user choice, neither of which is something that Apple cares for. (Plus Apple has its hands full these days just getting songs to sync so I’d not want them to overtax themselves.)

But my recommendation to you is that if you really care about a specific piece, then buy it outright.

Also, not really a solution but something to help keep track of those changes is to make a smart playlist of songs with a cloud status of “no longer available”.