I got a new MBA M1, and as I'm setting it up, I noticed that most of my hard drive space is filled up with music files. I won't get into the horrors of re-syncing my iPhone with the new Music library and the duplicates it created on my phone. I'm thinking about getting with the times and ditching the old school method of storing music files on my phone and laptop, and just switching to a streaming service. Has anyone done that (has everyone done that but me)? Need some affirmation that's the right move.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Music Anyone ditch their iTunes/Music library for streaming?
- Thread starter Rob9874
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I did it soon after subscribing to Apple Music as their "matching" started screwing up the albums I actually had on my main Mac. The wrong songs would show on other devices. The only albums/songs of which I have actual copies on my main Mac are those that aren't available in Apple Music…and matching to other devices with those tracks seems to work well.
I have about 1TB in iTunes built over the last 15 years. I have more than I can ever listen to anyway, so why pay a subscription for streaming? Of course most people don't have as much music as I do on files. I don't have a smartphone currently so I would be confined to my desktop with streaming. The new Music app destroyed my library, luckily I prepared for this and have it all backed up, so I just need to redo it if I want it on my iMac. Fore the time being my library is streamed via a Mac mini on Mac OS X Tiger.
Different use cases for different people, I know that most people these days don't care to spend the time curating a huge library or building one, which is fine. But the music-aholics like myself I prefer to have complete control.
Different use cases for different people, I know that most people these days don't care to spend the time curating a huge library or building one, which is fine. But the music-aholics like myself I prefer to have complete control.
Great discussion. I'm a music-aholic, but my library is about 6000 songs, around 100GB. It's such a pain to manage, especially when you get a new laptop and sync to a phone. I imported my library to the Music app, but all songs are checked. So I went through and unchecked all the ones I don't want to sync, using my library on my other laptop as a reference. Took forever. Then I synced, and it duplicated every song on my phone.
I've been using Amazon Music HD lately, because it has such a huge library. Don't have to acquire new music. If a new album is released, just add to my library on the Amazon Music app. No files to manage, no hard drive constraints or external drives needed. It comes with downsides like the monthly cost and functionality on a plane. There's just something freeing about going cloud based and not worry about file management, storage space, and backups.
Apple Music has more tracks available than Amazon or any other service. And you can download as much music as you want to your phone in preparation for a flight. No internet connection needed in flight to enjoy music.
I used to have over 1TB of music. I have since moved to streaming as it saves space. I also found that when I was storing so much music, I wasn’t listening to most of it.
Yeah, I considered that, but I stream to my home theater system and prefer the higher quality from Amazon HD. When Apple Music adds high resolution streaming, I'll switch.
This is also another interesting point in terms of transitioning to streaming; content availability. I have a lot of classical music (in particular from 12th century to 17th century) that is not available on any streaming service at this point, only available in old CD pressings from the early 90s. This is a problem mostly on the niches, the majority of music in the last 55 or so years should be available on these platforms, and a good chunk of stuff before that I assume is also available. For most the library of streaming services should suffice, missing a song here and there. As it gets more popular, the amount of missing tracks will decrease.
There is something to be said for the instant availability of an already-sorted large collection of music, and for those that are unwilling to manage one themselves it's a bargain on time alone.
There is something to be said for the instant availability of an already-sorted large collection of music, and for those that are unwilling to manage one themselves it's a bargain on time alone.
It’s still too early to tell if streaming will completely or even predominantly with any permanence devour the music industry. A great many artists have independent, rebellious genes—not all or even the majority, of course. Rebellious artists synchronized with naturally rebellious young listeners could at any time create an altogether new trend.
I’ve searched numerous times for out-of-the-mainstream music at different providers over the past couple of years, including a few minutes ago at Apple’s offering. I’ve always been less than pleased with their collections of music. I don’t know whether the lack of availability of the vast majority of what I search for is caused by choices/philosophy of the services or of the artists (or current property owners).
I know services come with a match feature—my entire library, such as it is, could be uploaded to fill the holes. From what I’ve read, for some that can be an intermittently bumpy road to travel. I’ve no idea of the number who have problems, nor do I know if the problems have any association with the relative obscurity of their libraries.
As much as I’d like its convenience, I prefer local handling to the Cloud’s addition of point(s) of sometimes unexplainable, out of the blue, failure.
YMMV.
I’ve searched numerous times for out-of-the-mainstream music at different providers over the past couple of years, including a few minutes ago at Apple’s offering. I’ve always been less than pleased with their collections of music. I don’t know whether the lack of availability of the vast majority of what I search for is caused by choices/philosophy of the services or of the artists (or current property owners).
I know services come with a match feature—my entire library, such as it is, could be uploaded to fill the holes. From what I’ve read, for some that can be an intermittently bumpy road to travel. I’ve no idea of the number who have problems, nor do I know if the problems have any association with the relative obscurity of their libraries.
As much as I’d like its convenience, I prefer local handling to the Cloud’s addition of point(s) of sometimes unexplainable, out of the blue, failure.
YMMV.
Nope. It's over. Streaming has destroyed physical sales of media. Hell LP's outsell CD's now. The battle is over and streaming has destroyed the opposition. They still might exist, but only as a shell of its former self.