My experiments with Apple Music (and having an iTunes music cloud library turned on) are continuing. I really want to make sure I know how my libraries react to things I usually do but now do in a changed environment.
So today I’ve been working with playlists and playlist folders. People with multiple devices, and people who have multiple specialized iTunes libraries on their laptops or desktops need a way to keep some of their playlists localized, I believe.
Once you turn a device’s cloud library on, the playlists are global. Changes to their names are global. Changes to their content are global (although they may not look identical depending on how a given device has its view set, whether it’s online or offline, and whether its cloud view is current).
Playlist folders are also global. The lists in them are global. Their names are global. You can’t move lists in or out of a folder on a mobile. If you move them on a laptop or desktop, however, they will also move to follow suit on all other devices.
You can delete a playlist from within a folder on an iOS device, even if it was created on an iTunes library device, which is a BUG since there’s no warning about global consequences but the list, which belongs to the cloud, will delete across devices. You press the minus sign to delete the list from the folder and a red box at the right says Delete? and if you press it, et voila, it’s gone from the folder, gone from the device, and it will be gone everywhere as soon as the cloud gets that delete message.
You can’t make playlists that you create subject to living or not living in the cloud. If you could, that would approximate “global” or "local" and that would be great.
How about a right-click option to “make playlist local” or something like that? On an existing playlist from that point on, the list and its content would be the business of that device only. And when you create a new playlist, system should ask if you want this playlist to be local or across all devices.
I think all folder-related functions should be local, and location of playlists in or not in a folder should be local too, so you can at least folder irrelevant global lists on a particular device. This is not the case now.
Clutter factor: I thought maybe I could create a folder and call it “Irrelevant” and then on mobiles, shove all unwanted global playlists in there. But everything about foldering is global: the folder names and what lists are in them, and the list names. On my iTunes setup I would not want the folder to be called “Irrelevant” and I would probably want the lists in it to be in several different folders instead of one.
Apple: help us out here! (i am preparing a formal feedback)
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Well for those who are interested, below is more of what I found in today’s testing.
Regarding content: a given playlist’s content may not look identical across devices, depending on whether the device is looking at “all music” or “only music available offline.” Also, of course, changes to a playlist won’t propagate across devices until and unless they are brought online to piok up the changes. This could be confusing to some people and probably needs to be emphasized so people get used to checking whether a device is online/offline *and* whether it’s looking at everything or just downloaded content.
Probably for people meaning to minimize bandwidth usage, if you have the space then you should download “missing” tracks for a playlist that you mean to play often so it’s all locally available.
Smart playlists are also global, and so are their rules. And, the rules lack precision in a few cases.
The interpretation of the Smart playlist rule attribute called “on this computer” doesn’t seem to have quite the precision it needs for some Smart list purposes, i.e. it means “local as opposed to in the cloud” but it doesn’t mean “on my green 5c” nor does it mean “on my MacBook Pro” in the sense that it doesn’t distinguish between those two non-cloud environments.
A good thing: localized Purchased playlists. The only exception to global playlisting that I’ve found so far is that the Purchased playlist (or Purchased Music as it popped up on an iPod touch today) appears to be localized. I had deleted that earlier from the iPod touch because I wanted to see if it would appear again all by itself, or if it would delete Purchases folder from other devices, or act all crazed and suggest that I wanted to delete the content of that folder. It does not do any of those things. It regenerates on relaunch of Music app o the mobile. And, the contents are localized and automatically generated by the Store.
The tracks I bought yesterday on my laptop are still shown in its Purchases playlist. Today’s purchase on the iPod does not show up in the laptop’s playlist. So, good.
The iPod’s purchase today did quickly appear in “Recently added” at the top of the display but it didn’t show a regenerated Purchased Music folder until I had closed the Music app and relaunched it. The new track was in it. So, good enough. And, the new track also appeared on my laptop’s “Recently added” but not in its Purchased folders. So that’s good too.
So at least the automatically maintained Purchased Music folder is oriented to the device where you buy the stuff. and its content does not propagate across all devices. But see the iTunes Store back-ends that for us, and we don’t know how it does it. It’s not done with just the set of rules attributes that we can mess with now, when we are building Smart playlists.
Arrgggghh. Bottom line: playlists and foldering need some work in cloud environment.
So today I’ve been working with playlists and playlist folders. People with multiple devices, and people who have multiple specialized iTunes libraries on their laptops or desktops need a way to keep some of their playlists localized, I believe.
Once you turn a device’s cloud library on, the playlists are global. Changes to their names are global. Changes to their content are global (although they may not look identical depending on how a given device has its view set, whether it’s online or offline, and whether its cloud view is current).
Playlist folders are also global. The lists in them are global. Their names are global. You can’t move lists in or out of a folder on a mobile. If you move them on a laptop or desktop, however, they will also move to follow suit on all other devices.
You can delete a playlist from within a folder on an iOS device, even if it was created on an iTunes library device, which is a BUG since there’s no warning about global consequences but the list, which belongs to the cloud, will delete across devices. You press the minus sign to delete the list from the folder and a red box at the right says Delete? and if you press it, et voila, it’s gone from the folder, gone from the device, and it will be gone everywhere as soon as the cloud gets that delete message.
You can’t make playlists that you create subject to living or not living in the cloud. If you could, that would approximate “global” or "local" and that would be great.
How about a right-click option to “make playlist local” or something like that? On an existing playlist from that point on, the list and its content would be the business of that device only. And when you create a new playlist, system should ask if you want this playlist to be local or across all devices.
I think all folder-related functions should be local, and location of playlists in or not in a folder should be local too, so you can at least folder irrelevant global lists on a particular device. This is not the case now.
Clutter factor: I thought maybe I could create a folder and call it “Irrelevant” and then on mobiles, shove all unwanted global playlists in there. But everything about foldering is global: the folder names and what lists are in them, and the list names. On my iTunes setup I would not want the folder to be called “Irrelevant” and I would probably want the lists in it to be in several different folders instead of one.
Apple: help us out here! (i am preparing a formal feedback)
=====
Well for those who are interested, below is more of what I found in today’s testing.
Regarding content: a given playlist’s content may not look identical across devices, depending on whether the device is looking at “all music” or “only music available offline.” Also, of course, changes to a playlist won’t propagate across devices until and unless they are brought online to piok up the changes. This could be confusing to some people and probably needs to be emphasized so people get used to checking whether a device is online/offline *and* whether it’s looking at everything or just downloaded content.
Probably for people meaning to minimize bandwidth usage, if you have the space then you should download “missing” tracks for a playlist that you mean to play often so it’s all locally available.
Smart playlists are also global, and so are their rules. And, the rules lack precision in a few cases.
The interpretation of the Smart playlist rule attribute called “on this computer” doesn’t seem to have quite the precision it needs for some Smart list purposes, i.e. it means “local as opposed to in the cloud” but it doesn’t mean “on my green 5c” nor does it mean “on my MacBook Pro” in the sense that it doesn’t distinguish between those two non-cloud environments.
A good thing: localized Purchased playlists. The only exception to global playlisting that I’ve found so far is that the Purchased playlist (or Purchased Music as it popped up on an iPod touch today) appears to be localized. I had deleted that earlier from the iPod touch because I wanted to see if it would appear again all by itself, or if it would delete Purchases folder from other devices, or act all crazed and suggest that I wanted to delete the content of that folder. It does not do any of those things. It regenerates on relaunch of Music app o the mobile. And, the contents are localized and automatically generated by the Store.
The tracks I bought yesterday on my laptop are still shown in its Purchases playlist. Today’s purchase on the iPod does not show up in the laptop’s playlist. So, good.
The iPod’s purchase today did quickly appear in “Recently added” at the top of the display but it didn’t show a regenerated Purchased Music folder until I had closed the Music app and relaunched it. The new track was in it. So, good enough. And, the new track also appeared on my laptop’s “Recently added” but not in its Purchased folders. So that’s good too.
So at least the automatically maintained Purchased Music folder is oriented to the device where you buy the stuff. and its content does not propagate across all devices. But see the iTunes Store back-ends that for us, and we don’t know how it does it. It’s not done with just the set of rules attributes that we can mess with now, when we are building Smart playlists.
Arrgggghh. Bottom line: playlists and foldering need some work in cloud environment.