Ditching Apple Music because I’m old

[philstubbington]

Wow you’re brave! Did you not feel like it’s a waste to delete? I’ve probably spent thousands on CDs in my lifetime plus with Apple Music I was just listening to the same stuff I owned but paying for the privilege.

I agree about iTunes Match potentially being switched off. I can’t even find the option to buy it on my iPhone so I’m guessing it’s Mac only

LOL. We still buy CDs (and having recently bought this beauty in red - https://www.project-audio.com/en/product/primary-e-phono/ vinyl) to play via our hifi. I also have a few hundred LPs and singles from my teenage years.

I don't really find it a waste - obviously, I was having to rip stuff to my MacBook Air M1, using an ancient external CD drive coupled up to a USB to USB-C adapter, and rarely played music from the MacBook so it was just taking up a lot of storage. It was a pain to sync to my iPhone and my wife's iPhone too.

I've tried iTunes Match more than once to my regret, and found it a pain. It doesn't work in quite the way I expected and doesn't help if you want to share music with other people in your household.

 

[Fishrrman]

I've never used Apple Music, nor any other "subscription" service. And never will.

I prefer the free internet streaming radio tuner from the old iTunes.

If you're using a newer Mac or OS that no longer has iTunes (but has "Music" instead, which has no free internet radio), you can use the free utility named "Retroactive" to install a modified copy of iTunes that will work on the latest Macs and OS releases.

I just tried iTunes via Retroactive yesterday on my experimental copy of Ventura and... it works.

 

[Lee_Bo]

Well, I’m not sure what “old” is, but I still have several spinning hard drives full of music. (probably what got me listening to Iced Earth and Blind Guardian)

Today I find subscriptions to be way more convenient, but only 3:
Apple One
Sirius XM
YouTube TV

And since the wife also uses them, happy wife = happy life.

 

[bogdanw]

you can use the free utility named "Retroactive" to install a modified copy of iTunes that will work on the latest Macs and OS

For online radio, iTunes can be installed without using Retroactive https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/itunes-12-6-5-3-on-apple-silicon.2354390/

 

[VincentPM]

For all the detractors, I'm going to expound I why I love iTunes Match.

Like many, I'm not really into the new music artists but love my old classic collection. The thing is, besides all the commercially released albums I have a ton of rare stuff (bootlegs, by another name). Or stuff never re-released and not available on the major services.

With iTunes Match, all that rare stuff is uploaded to iCloud Music and I have it available everywhere. On my iPhone, my aTV, iPad, etc. ( I don't have a HomePad yet, waiting for next version in 2023). And....it costs only $25 a YEAR!

The only problem I've run into is that there is a 100k song limit to uploads. So, I've had to bifurcate what is in my music library vs. what I probably won't want to hear very often. So, not my WHOLE library is available.

So far, I've think there are 2 solutions available for this limit:

1) There is some way, I've heard, of having 2 XML library files and I could choose between them upon opening my iTunes app. I'd upload only things I'm sure I want easy access (all the rare stuff vs commercial stuff). Not fully sure if that would work but I have to do more research to figure out how it's done.

2) Quit iTunes Match and buy Apple Music. Still has 100k song upload limit but I could not upload all the common and popular commercial released albums since they are probably in the Apple Music library already. That would reduce my upload need (all that rare stuff) to below 100k. But I'd have to pay a monthly fee for AM.

 

[JamesMay82]

For all the detractors, I'm going to expound I why I love iTunes Match.

Like many, I'm not really into the new music artists but love my old classic collection. The thing is, besides all the commercially released albums I have a ton of rare stuff (bootlegs, by another name). Or stuff never re-released and not available on the major services.

With iTunes Match, all that rare stuff is uploaded to iCloud Music and I have it available everywhere. On my iPhone, my aTV, iPad, etc. ( I don't have a HomePad yet, waiting for next version in 2023). And....it costs only $25 a YEAR!

The only problem I've run into is that there is a 100k song limit to uploads. So, I've had to bifurcate what is in my music library vs. what I probably won't want to hear very often. So, not my WHOLE library is available.

So far, I've think there are 2 solutions available for this limit:

1) There is some way, I've heard, of having 2 XML library files and I could choose between them upon opening my iTunes app. I'd upload only things I'm sure I want easy access (all the rare stuff vs commercial stuff). Not fully sure if that would work but I have to do more research to figure out how it's done.

2) Quit iTunes Match and buy Apple Music. Still has 100k song upload limit but I could not upload all the common and popular commercial released albums since they are probably in the Apple Music library already. That would reduce my upload need (all that rare stuff) to below 100k. But I'd have to pay a monthly fee for AM.

The problem I originally had with iTunes Match was when it first came out it renamed loads of my music to the wrong albums and sometimes even the artist and changed loads of the album artwork which was heartbreaking when I spent so long perfecting it all.

Having said that, when I had Apple Music it did seem to work very well when I added the albums that were missing from Apple Music.

My main gripe with Apple Music apart from me not being able to justify the costs was the missing songs. i.e. Song A won't be on the movie soundtrack its mean to be on but it is available on the artists own album.

 

[SuperCachetes]

The problem I originally had with iTunes Match was when it first came out it renamed loads of my music to the wrong albums and sometimes even the artist and changed loads of the album artwork which was heartbreaking when I spent so long perfecting it all.

Having said that, when I had Apple Music it did seem to work very well when I added the albums that were missing from Apple Music.

My main gripe with Apple Music apart from me not being able to justify the costs was the missing songs. i.e. Song A won't be on the movie soundtrack its mean to be on but it is available on the artists own album.

I have had Match since it came out and have never been interested in much else as far as streaming. As others have said, as long as you are paying the annual fee, whatever is in your library (whether uploaded from your Mac, or already in Apple's cloud), you should be able to play the audio on Apple devices like HomePods with no issue.

In my library of 30,000 songs or so, I have noticed a little of the album art issue, but I've been able to manage it so far. More concerning to me is the occasional jumble of a studio vs. live album track, or the replacement of my version of a song with the (gasp!) clean version. I get the heartbreak of it (I am meticulous about metadata consistency and song title capitalization etc.), but haven't had a widespread catastrophe yet.

For the record, I consider myself "old" but am still very interested in new music, because I just listen to so much of it. Even the things I've been listening to for nearly 40 years, I have to take a step back from sometimes. So I have to feed my voracious appetite other ways, because I don't do Pandora or Spotify, and certainly not Apple Music. Good luck with your search for your own solution.

 

[imanidiot]

If you live long enough, not only will Apple Music not float your boat…. but no music will.
For some, music (all music) becomes irritating to listen to when the years really pile up.
So you’re not old yet … you’re just on your way

If you are speaking to contempory, popular music, yes, I very much agree. If you include classical then no, nothng could be further from the truth. Bot to each his own.

 

[filmboy]

I recently tried transferring my iTunes library from a 13-year old MacPro laptop to my current 2020 Intel Macbook Air and it made the same mess described in this and the other MacRumors thread on this issue. It took me about 4 hours, but I was able to reconnect the scrambled songs and split up albums by going into 'Get Info' and doing some re-naming.

But I really miss the simple, column view of the old iTunes. Anyway to restore that in Apple Music? If not, can anyone suggest a free, no frills music player that is really simple to navigate? Although I'd prefer to drag and drop my library, I'd be happy to re-upload my CD collection if it will grant me access to a music player as functional as the old iTunes.

Cheers!

 

[eduardodfj]

I recently tried transferring my iTunes library from a 13-year old MacPro laptop to my current 2020 Intel Macbook Air and it made the same mess described in this and the other MacRumors thread on this issue. It took me about 4 hours, but I was able to reconnect the scrambled songs and split up albums by going into 'Get Info' and doing some re-naming.

But I really miss the simple, column view of the old iTunes. Anyway to restore that in Apple Music? If not, can anyone suggest a free, no frills music player that is really simple to navigate? Although I'd prefer to drag and drop my library, I'd be happy to re-upload my CD collection if it will grant me access to a music player as functional as the old iTunes.

Cheers!

Command+B in Music.

I use Music just like I've been using iTunes since a long time ago. I have no subscription to any streaming service, and keep getting full albums on MP3 or AAC and enjoying them in the same way. True, whenever you use Music for the first time, the modern way of focusing in single songs and a only a bunch of them (to the glory of subscription services and monthly payments) shows up, but you can easily make it look they way iTunes always looked... And be happy ever after.

I've never very much understood the criticism to iTunes and now Music. It works quite well.

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

I'm not that old, but I don't see the point in paying for Apple Music either. I have accumulated enough CD rips by scourging through the racks of thrift shops that it makes absolutely zero sense to pay 120/year for music.

Even then, if I do buy a new album, it's maybe once or twice a year. I am set up at this point, and I firmly believe everyone is eventually going to regret going to streaming subscriptions just like they hate paying for cable subscriptions.

I stopped using iTunes/Music for the most part. All of my stuff lives on a home hosted Plex server, and I use the Plexamp app to listen to stuff. It's the convenience of the streaming world, with a collection I own and maintain entirely myself without any cloud services mangling my stuff.

 

[tubular]

The problem I originally had with iTunes Match was when it first came out it renamed loads of my music to the wrong albums and sometimes even the artist and changed loads of the album artwork which was heartbreaking when I spent so long perfecting it all.

That's what turned me off from iTunes Match -- it stomps your metadata.

 

[OneSon]

I went in my local record shop today and bought a Deftones CD. I was chatting to the guy who runs it and he said he's perfectly happy with the amount of business he's doing. Loads of the local student population go in and buy vinyl, CD and even cassettes. This is in Sheffield, England. Made me think of this thread.

 

[T Coma]

"I was seriously thinking about hidin' the receiver..."

My mind went instantly to that 45 year old (!!!) song when I read the heading of this thread.

Dang, I'm old too.

That being said, I did get Apple Music, just for the karaoke. We have a basement tavern with a stage, and all it was missing was a karaoke setup, and Apple Music on the iPad (mirrored to the big screen) is better than the most of the karaoke kits I've seen.

 

[Silencio]

At a certain point, my massive music collection became simply too unwieldy to manage, and I'm never in front of my old Mac Pro to provide the care and feeding it requires. Our family has an Apple One subscription because we all use Apple Music, Apple TV+, News+, etc., and make good use of the 2TB storage. Apple Music has pretty much everything I want, and I am still an omnivorous listener of new music. (Though yes, I do fall into my ruts of listening to the "oldies" as much as any other older person might.)

I deliberately avoided iTunes Match for a while because I didn't want it to mess with my collection, but the recent times I've found I wanted to rip a CD and have it available from my iPhone, it's been dead simple and dead reliable. I haven't tried ripping and uploading older versions of albums that are no longer available on Apple Music, having been gazumped by more recent remasters or whatever. That's my wife's main sticking point with the service.

I still buy and listen to vinyl records, but I try to stick with only the best records or my most sentimental favorites, so as to keep our collection from getting as unwieldy as our digital collection.

 

[philstubbington]

I went in my local record shop today and bought a Deftones CD. I was chatting to the guy who runs it and he said he's perfectly happy with the amount of business he's doing. Loads of the local student population go in and buy vinyl, CD and even cassettes. This is in Sheffield, England. Made me think of this thread.

Good to hear. We still buy vinyl, CDs, and use Apple Music. Our nearest record shop is half an hour drive so we buy from Rough Trade online.

 

[JamesMay82]

I went in my local record shop today and bought a Deftones CD. I was chatting to the guy who runs it and he said he's perfectly happy with the amount of business he's doing. Loads of the local student population go in and buy vinyl, CD and even cassettes. This is in Sheffield, England. Made me think of this thread.

I actually work in home entertainment on the DVD and streaming side which are comparable to the music side of things. While he might be doing well the industry is a shell of its former self from 10-15 years ago.

Our sales team was a team of 5 and now we only have and can afford 1.

All supermarkets have mostly pulled out of physical media apart, our price is gone, virgin mega stores, play.com who were huge and then all the indie accounts throughout the UK.

It’s shame really but all in the name of progression but I suppose I would call it convenience

 

[Juraj22]

Every CD I've ripped in the last 10 years have been ripped to AAC format and plays perfectly fine in the Music app.

You are right, but that is not what I have written. Try to download acc from youtube (with Downie for example) and play it. In that case, I could not make it work. On youtube you can find some nice mixed music I would like to have on mac and iPhone, but you may forget about acc. mp3 works, acc not.