Apple Music Do I have to upload all my local music to the cloud in order to properly use Apple Music?

[Yoms]

Hi there,

I have accumulated around 200 CDs over the years. I ripped them using XLD and nos have them on my Mac. I decided to try the 5-month Apple Music offer. Then, I wanted to add a track from Apple Music (not from one of my CDs) to a playlist, but the Music.app tells me that I need to sync my current local library to the cloud first.

I mean... WTF!?! I do not need to upload all my local files to the cloud. Why would I want that? It's completely unrelated. I already have my CDs on my iPhone thanks to a good old sync (formerly via iTunes, now via the Finder). Moreover, after 3 days of non-stop uploading, it was still out of sync (despite having the pretty good internet connexion).

Am I missing something here? Or do I really have to send to Apple all my ripped local files in order to access mere functionalities such as creating a playlist?

Thanks,

 

[chabig]

I would expect that most of the music you've ripped is already available on Apple Music. So when you sync, I think the only songs that will get uploaded are those that aren't already on Apple Music. But that might not be correct. Apple does say that syncing large libraries may be slow. Be patient?

 

[Yoms]

I would expect that most of the music you've ripped is already available on Apple Music. So when you sync, I think the only songs that will get uploaded are those that aren't already on Apple Music. But that might not be correct. Apple does say that syncing large libraries may be slow. Be patient?

Thanks for your reply.

It's been days... But that's actually not really my concern. Why the F do you need to do that given it's already sync between my devices? And also why is it necessary to upload my CD rips so that I can create a playlist from Apple Music??? I don't understand why I can't use Apple Music features w/o uploading my CD rips first.

 

[SalisburySam]

Fair question, Apple support call?

 

[swandy]

Thanks for your reply.

It's been days... But that's actually not really my concern. Why the F do you need to do that given it's already sync between my devices? And also why is it necessary to upload my CD rips so that I can create a playlist from Apple Music??? I don't understand why I can't use Apple Music features w/o uploading my CD rips first.

Can't answer the first part of your question (I am just used to the way it works since I started with a LARGE music library) but Apple Music will only sync playlists that include tracks that are in your Apple Music Library already. That's how their servers are set up I guess.

 

[Crunchynut]

Thanks for your reply.

It's been days... But that's actually not really my concern. Why the F do you need to do that given it's already sync between my devices? And also why is it necessary to upload my CD rips so that I can create a playlist from Apple Music??? I don't understand why I can't use Apple Music features w/o uploading my CD rips first.

I fear it is worse than that. In theory the process only uploads unique rips from your local library to the cloud. That left me thinking that out of my 400 or so ripped (run of the mill) CDs only a couple might stand out as original. In fact it (ie Apple amusing sync process) decided that 90% of them didn’t match the Appple Music version and uploaded them. For the majority of these I can tell no difference between my ripped album and the Apple Music equivalent, but my rip was still uploaded as a unique item. I ended up with all sorts of duplicates across my synced devices and a complete mess. So, what I did was start again and not expose my local library to Apple Music apart from genuinely unique items, and just download their version (manually) for the run of the mill items. That has worked out quite nicely.

 

[Yoms]

I fear it is worse than that. In theory the process only uploads unique rips from your local library to the cloud. That left me thinking that out of my 400 or so ripped (run of the mill) CDs only a couple might stand out as original. In fact it (ie Apple amusing sync process) decided that 90% of them didn’t match the Appple Music version and uploaded them. For the majority of these I can tell no difference between my ripped album and the Apple Music equivalent, but my rip was still uploaded as a unique item. I ended up with all sorts of duplicates across my synced devices and a complete mess. So, what I did was start again and not expose my local library to Apple Music apart from genuinely unique items, and just download their version (manually) for the run of the mill items. That has worked out quite nicely.

Actually, I also thought of this at some point. I have FLACs of my CDs apart from my iTunes library. They are nicely ripped, tagged + embedded cover. So, I thought I'd simply erase my iTunes library and use another app to play my CD.

But after disconnecting and reconnecting my account, the sync worked with our messing things up. So I'll leave it there for the moment.