New 'Music Tracker' App Monitors Your Apple Music Library for Changes and Raises Privacy Concerns

[rdlink]

I have no intentions of using any app that tracks anything!!

Then you'd better hold down that button on the right side of your phone, and slide the power off button to the right...
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An article that mentions Apple Music? Bring on the complaints about every single detail of Apple Music that people don't like.

Okay. Too much pinkish red being used.

 

[Tech198]

This seems more like a "wack-a-mole" kind of app, where Apple deliberately introduced these issues just so a developer can release an app for users to take notice of such issues.

How else would u explain why 5+ months or so have past and still nothing has been done? If Apple was keen, I really keen, on a service, there would be no excuse for taking this long.

But this looks like a useful app..... I wonder how good this app would be when Apple *does* finally (if at all) get these issues fixed though..

This 'Music Tracker' app. would go from 'highly popular' to 'zero' overnight. He's hoping ...

 

[rdlink]

...It's easy to snark, but what if your copy of the Bay City Rollers singing Saturday Night went missing and you wanted to play it again? You'd change your tune then.

I bought my copy of Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers instead of just downloading it on AM. I then downloaded it to make sure it would be available whether I have an internet connection or not. Then to be safe I burned it onto a CD and keep it underneath my keyboard on my desk in case of an emergency. And for disaster recovery purposes I keep a copy archived on a 32GB flash drive I bought specifically to store it and Barry Manilow's Mandy in my safe deposit box at the bank. Some things should not be left to chance.

 

[Tech198]

I guess another reason this app should just bring all concerns etc... 'front & center" that users might otherwise not be aware of. (I guess that's a good thing), but other than that, not really much users can do about it anyway.

More like "oh.. goody heaps of my songs are missing again, I would never never seen this happen without this app, this early on"

Kind of like Google slogan ... Instead of "Keep calm" would be "Freak out now"

 

[Jessica Lares]

I didn't really think about the music library being used for tracking, but it comes along just in the moment when people are talking about the privacy issues with Symphony. But that isn't anything new, there were other market research apps before it that you had to keep on your device and it did whatever.

I knew that Workflow had access to the Music Library data, because I have made workflows that read it...

And yeah, it really does matter if a few songs are missing, especially if you know an album from the first track to the last and things go missing there. So do metadata changes if you're using Smart Playlists or browse/organize your library in certain ways.

 

[480951]

I like to listen to entire albums so it's annoying when one or two tracks that previously played for a few months disappear. This app sounds useful.

 

[Glassed Silver]

Actually the media privacy settings iOS 9.3 adds are in relation to modifying the music library. Prior to iOS 9.3 it hasn't been possible for any app to change your library in any way. With iOS 9.3, an app can ask permission (if you're an Apple Music subscriber) to add songs to your library via the StoreKit framework and there is an authorisation step to go through. Confusingly, the privacy setting for this is called "Media Library" but you can still get read only access to the Media Library without your app ever even appearing in this privacy setting list (so this Music Tracker app will run on iOS 9.3 without being asked permission to access your library and you can't change that - I'm suggesting that shouldn't be possible and Apple should make read only access subject to a privacy dialogue).
[...]

Does this mean third party apps can finally update the play count and request iTunes Match songs that aren't downloaded yet?

The stock Music app is horrible in the car (I'm using my iPhone on a mount in the car and I'd like to have a vertical GUI with bigger buttons and sliders and an option to not turn off the display - without having to set this globally for the whole system, I know apps exist, but being subscribed to iTunes Match and relying on smart playlists and being the statistics junkie that I am every non-Apple app has been DOA for me.

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[HopefulHumanist]

Or Apple could just fix Apple Music making this app unnecessary

All streaming services have the problem of changing licensing deals and catalog. I don't see a way to guarantee that no such changes will occur.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Very interesting...

Apps scanning your library wouldn't know who you were, but they would know a whole heck of a lot about you.

 

[stanman64]

You'd be surprised. iTunes routinely misplaces music and vids. Just a few here and there, so it's hard to notice until I go to play something and find it's missing. I'd like to buy an app that would alert me when iTunes is being cranky.

That's unfortunate. Luckily, I haven't experienced that.

I have some albums where the artist did a complete acoustic version of the album, without changing the album title or any of the song titles, just changed the album art. It's a fantastic album, but on DAY ONE Apple Music screwed it all up and had acoustic tracks on the standard album, and standard tracks on the acoustic album. Small but extremely annoying.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

I would rather like Apple to stop pestering me to sign up for Apple Music every time I use my iPod Touch to listen to music. Their insesent reminder about the feature and free trial comes off as being desperate.

There is a reason why I am mostly using Spotify on my iPod Touch these days, so I don't have to use the ****** music app Apple has crippled with their service whoring; I wish Apple would respect my decision and let me say "NO" once and for all.

I couldn't agree more.

Today, my bloody iPhone and iPad both popped up with a stupid Apple Music ad in the music app. It was impossible to get to my music. I had to sign out of iTunes and the App Store, kill the apps, then re-sign in, then turn on iCloud Music again, in the process wiping all the local copies.

I have never hated Apple as much as I have today. If I wanted such despicable behaviour, I would have bought devices costing a third of the price. What has happened to Apple? Why are they so crap? Pisses me off.

 

[burraga]

Hi Ben,
This app doesn't seem to pick up all of the metadata changes only some of them. As a test, I made changes to an album in iTunes on my Mac (location of my master music library). I updated the BPM, Total Songs, Disc Number and Total Discs on an album and Music Tracker hasn't shown these changes. I checked that the changes had gone through to the iCloud Music library by checking on another Mac that is used for streaming music only.
Is the reason Music Tracker has not picked up these changes is because the iPhone Music app doesn't use this high level of metadata only main tags like Album, Song Name etc?
Cheers

 

[venividivigor]

Yup. iTunes Match, Apple Music, and iCloud Music Library.

Thank you for this app! I was wishing for someone to make an app like this. Literally, I HATE it so much when Apple Music keeps changing the metadata and ruining my organization throughout all my devices. This will help my OCD a lot. Thanks,

 

[Jessica Lares]

Just noticed that this was recently updated to work on older hardware. The scanning engine was rewritten too.