Apple Music Advice

[fumi2014]

Hello Everyone,

I need to ask a question about iTunes. I would like to subscribe to Apple Music just so that I can stream music to my iPad.

With all the controversy and horror stories about lost music, artwork destroyed/replaced, playlists gone, metadata corrupted, I am worried about even signing up. I have a huge iTunes music library and I cannot afford to have it tampered with in any way.

Basically is there any way to have have Apple Music on my iPad but in a way that is totally isolated - unable to affect or upset iTunes on my desktop?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards

 

[Tech198]

Apple music is a cloud/streaming service... iTunes Match is still a cloud service, but i've heard the same thing happen to Match as well. The problem is the matching which either does, or doesn't always work.

To me, the only solution if u want to ganuentree noting is lost ever, is never rely on streaming services...

I keep both several backup's of my music local on different drives, plus i have Apple music... Knowing the stuff up's Apple, or any server may do, does not matter, since the way i do it, mine are DRM-free anyway, so i don't need to rely on playing them in iTunes.

I don't even worry abut backing up the playlist.... just the music folder (organised), unless u wanna preserve ratings, plays and all that.

 

[Rigby]

Do you want to stream your own library, or do you want to get a subscription to get access to more music? If the former, you can subscribe to iTunes Match only, which is unlikely to screw up your library. If the latter, consider another service such as Spotify which remains completely separate from your iTunes library (although it is possible to sync your own music to Spotify too if that's what you want). Of course, if merging your own library and the subscription music is what you want, that favors Apple Music. Generally the reports of AM screwing up libraries have decreased a lot. Judging from that it seems like they have fixed many of the bugs in Apple Music by now.

 

[bilibug]

Just don't turn Apple Music/iCloud Music Library on in your main PC settings. You won't be able to sync/stream your personal library to the iPad, but you will be able to fully use Apple music.

 

[fumi2014]

Just don't turn Apple Music/iCloud Music Library on in your main PC settings. You won't be able to sync/stream your personal library to the iPad, but you will be able to fully use Apple music.

That sounds good. Where exactly is the setting?

 

[Rigby]

Just don't turn Apple Music/iCloud Music Library on in your main PC settings. You won't be able to sync/stream your personal library to the iPad, but you will be able to fully use Apple music.

Last I checked you could not add Apple Music songs to playlists or download songs for offline use without activating iCloud Music Library. Has that changed?

 

[bilibug]

That sounds good. Where exactly is the setting?

Depends on if you are using a MAC or Windows machine. It is in the preference settings.
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Last I checked you could not add Apple Music songs to playlists or download songs for offline use without activating iCloud Music Library. Has that changed?

ICML would be active on the iPad, but not the desktop machine. Therefore it would not touch the regular iTunes library. The iPad would be able to store offline files and playlists, because it would be a connected stand-alone system, as specified in the original post.

 

[tubular]

This may be a minority opinion, because I'm a minority use case; mostly I'm listening to classical. And because classical metadata always sucks, ripping or downloading an album guarantees you're going to have to patch the metadata. Without it, iTunes and the music app is simply unusable. The metadata is the difference between being able to listen and not.

For a couple years I used Apple Match service and found it was generally a very good thing. Getting set up was slow because I needed to upload a lot of files that weren't in its library, but it was an automatic process and it was nice to know that I had an off-site backup of my smallish (~8000 tracks) collection.

So I tried Apple Music when they had their initial trial, and if your metadata matters to you, RUN AWAY AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN. It wasn't just bad; it was a Lovecraftian horror -- Apple Cthulhu doing dark multi-tenticular things with your metadata, spawning sulphur-mouthed hellwrack and steaming surging ruin into what was once an organized music collection. I shut off the trial a year ago, and literally only finished unborking the last problem earlier this week (sorting failures on the iOS music app, having to do with the bad juju Apple Music injected into my iTunes Store cache, or something, such that the only way to make files sort properly on my phone was to log out of iTunes). The experience was so horrific I let Apple Match expire because I didn't know when or from which direction those purple tentacles of chaos were going to come at me again.

Streaming is not really an issue in classical, because randomizing movements is like randomizing episodes of a series. It just isn't worth it. Purchasing from iTunes is okay, as long as you understand that you're going to need to change your metadata. Maybe Apple Match would be okay too if I wanted to splurge the upload bandwidth again.

But Apple Music? It'll be half a decade before I try it again. And the red line is: given a choice, does it use its metadata but ignore yours? If so, no deal, come back in five years when you can do it right.

 

[M. Gustave]

I have a huge iTunes music library and I cannot afford to have it tampered with in any way.

Then save a copy to an SD card and put it in your desk drawer. Problem solved.

I had 13,000 songs. Apple Music matched 10,000 in their catalog, and uploaded the rest. Nothing deleted, nothing messed up.

The interface could use some tweaks, sure, but I love AM. It's been a good choice for me.