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Mrkevinfinnerty

macrumors 68030
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Aug 13, 2022
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Ten years in and still bugs galore, simple functions like creating playlists don't work reliably. Awful.
 

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Ten years in and still bugs galore, simple functions like creating playlists don't work reliably. Awful.
I never have a problem with Apple Music, but to be fair I don’t create playlists. The picture you showed is because whatever music you’re trying to play is blocked in your country. That’s likely due to copyright restrictions or local laws.
 
I never have a problem with Apple Music, but to be fair I don’t create playlists. The picture you showed is because whatever music you’re trying to play is blocked in your country. That’s likely due to copyright restrictions or local laws.

It isn't, that's exactly the point, I can go to the album and stream it (see below). It's one of the many bugs that exist when trying to create playlists.



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It isn't, that's exactly the point, I can go to the album and stream it (see below). It's one of the many bugs that exist when trying to create playlists.



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That’s so weird. I’ve never ran into that bug. It’s only with playlists? Maybe that’s why I haven’t ran into it.

My issue with Apple Music is the algorithm isn’t smart enough to automatically play songs that I like. Spotify has a much better algorithm, but with all their legal crap going on I canceled them. I’m honestly too lazy to make dedicated playlists for music. I used to do it back in the day with my iPod but now I just pick a song I want to listen to.
 
That’s so weird. I’ve never ran into that bug. It’s only with playlists? Maybe that’s why I haven’t ran into it.

My issue with Apple Music is the algorithm isn’t smart enough to automatically play songs that I like. Spotify has a much better algorithm, but with all their legal crap going on I canceled them. I’m honestly too lazy to make dedicated playlists for music. I used to do it back in the day with my iPod but now I just pick a song I want to listen to.

anything that involves a playlist of any description. Adding tracks to favourites does the same thing.
 

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That’s so weird. You got me interested in the playlist thing now. I tested it with those songs and it seems to work fine for me. Are you in the USA? Are you using a VPN? Maybe it’s some weird glitch going on with your Apple account?


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No im in the UK, no issues with anything else, no VPN.

Its consistently terrible on Wifi or Mobile data, this is what my my ‘Home’ tab currently looks like on iOS
 

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It was frustrating enough for me that I ditched it and went back to ripping CDs and syncing via a cable. Not really a fan but I no longer feel like I’m throwing money out the window every year for a half baked service. I subscribed for over 10 years and had enough.
 
Sorted it. The payment card had expired, hows about some notification in the app ?
Wow. You would think it would tell you that instead of some weird notification about the song not available. I’m not sure if there’s a way to report this as a bug.

It was frustrating enough for me that I ditched it and went back to ripping CDs and syncing via a cable. Not really a fan but I no longer feel like I’m throwing money out the window every year for a half baked service. I subscribed for over 10 years and had enough.
Going to CDs and syncing with a cable… That sounds a bit extreme! It’s like if your car kept breaking down so you went out and bought a horse 😂
 
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Wow. You would think it would tell you that instead of some weird notification about the song not available. I’m not sure if there’s a way to report this as a bug.


Going to CDs and syncing with a cable… That sounds a bit extreme! It’s like if your car kept breaking down so you went out and bought a horse 😂
Well considering that your subscription to operate the car could be revoked at any time but you own the horse, maybe not such a bad idea. The car only operates in range of a cellular signal, but the horse always works? Again, the horse has an advantage.

PS, the latter case did happen. Some people took a rental car to go hiking way out in the hills. When they got back the car would not start. It turned out there was an undisclosed anti-theft feature to keep the car from starting when it could not receive a cell phone signal. Oops. Since I can be out of cell phone range in ten minutes this definitely caught my eye.
 
OH MY GOD, don’t get me started on Apple Music.
Quick question: was there ever a song REPLACED in your library?
By replacing I mean you either have it swapped out for the same song in a different album or the song in the album was changed?
I hate Apple Music for this because it happened to me sooooooo often! The entire Exodus album by Bob Marley now is filled with alternative versions while the ORIGINALS where moved to the Best Of Album… I don’t get it, it’s infuriating. Same with other artists and songs.
When I look up a song I look up its most original version available, for example with 80‘s that have been reproduced too many times. So when a song is in a different album than it’s release album I notice it, and I do notice at least one song being different every time I shuffle. It’s insane.
And that there is still no true feature parody between iOS and macOS is insane, too.
 
OH MY GOD, don’t get me started on Apple Music.
Quick question: was there ever a song REPLACED in your library?
By replacing I mean you either have it swapped out for the same song in a different album or the song in the album was changed?

I hate Apple Music for this because it happened to me sooooooo often! The entire Exodus album by Bob Marley now is filled with alternative versions while the ORIGINALS where moved to the Best Of Album… I don’t get it, it’s infuriating. Same with other artists and songs.
When I look up a song I look up its most original version available, for example with 80‘s that have been reproduced too many times. So when a song is in a different album than it’s release album I notice it, and I do notice at least one song being different every time I shuffle. It’s insane.
And that there is still no true feature parody between iOS and macOS is insane, too.

Yes, it quite regularly swaps out explicit tracks for the edited version which is annoying.
 
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Yes, it quite regularly swaps out explicit tracks for the edited version which is annoying.
Oh yesss that to. It’s becoming harder and harder to listen to old Eminem songs. It’s already annoying that they don’t publish the lyrics but actually swapping out songs for their censored version is literal censorship on another level. But for me it doesn’t matter if it’s explicit. For example Lorde‘s Royals from its release album was swapped for the same version in a „New years eve 2013“ album… I don’t care who listened to it on New Year’s Eve, I didn’t so leave my library alone.

Also with Eminem I have this problem that it doesn’t save songs from a specific album. Playing a song from the Marshall Mathers LP shows one album cover but going to the album shows a different album with a different sort order. Playing them in chronological order makes everything even weirder.
 
Wow. You would think it would tell you that instead of some weird notification about the song not available. I’m not sure if there’s a way to report this as a bug.

Weird because it was still letting me stream music just not add anything to a playlist. I updated the card and restarted and it seems back to normal now, assuming it was the card.
 
Going to CDs and syncing with a cable… That sounds a bit extreme! It’s like if your car kept breaking down so you went out and bought a horse 😂
It is extreme, but at least if my car breaks down, I can get out my tools and fix it or I can buy another car. If Apple Music doesn’t work out, I can’t fix it and I can’t buy another Apple Music. Amazon/Tidal/Spotify don’t cut it for me, so CDs it is. It’s actually been kind of fun, albeit a pain. It takes me back to being a kid and ripping my dad’s CDs and loading them onto my iPod classic. It’s a pain but I don’t hate it. It gave me a reason to buy a new MacBook.

It was not only functional issues that led me to ditch it but also just the fact that for copyright issues, music can and does disappear at any moment. That can really ruin a good album if a song disappears. I love the idea of having access to any and all songs, but overall it just didn’t work out once the frustrations wore me down.
 
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OH MY GOD, don’t get me started on Apple Music.
Quick question: was there ever a song REPLACED in your library?
By replacing I mean you either have it swapped out for the same song in a different album or the song in the album was changed?
I hate Apple Music for this because it happened to me sooooooo often! The entire Exodus album by Bob Marley now is filled with alternative versions while the ORIGINALS where moved to the Best Of Album… I don’t get it, it’s infuriating. Same with other artists and songs.
When I look up a song I look up its most original version available, for example with 80‘s that have been reproduced too many times. So when a song is in a different album than it’s release album I notice it, and I do notice at least one song being different every time I shuffle. It’s insane.
And that there is still no true feature parody between iOS and macOS is insane, too.
sting made an album in 1994 that them  removed a song,
a good song, my favorite song on that one!
 
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OH MY GOD, don’t get me started on Apple Music.
Quick question: was there ever a song REPLACED in your library?
By replacing I mean you either have it swapped out for the same song in a different album or the song in the album was changed?
I hate Apple Music for this because it happened to me sooooooo often! The entire Exodus album by Bob Marley now is filled with alternative versions while the ORIGINALS where moved to the Best Of Album… I don’t get it, it’s infuriating. Same with other artists and songs.
When I look up a song I look up its most original version available, for example with 80‘s that have been reproduced too many times. So when a song is in a different album than it’s release album I notice it, and I do notice at least one song being different every time I shuffle. It’s insane.
And that there is still no true feature parody between iOS and macOS is insane, too.
I could go on and on about things Apple Music did that drove me nuts. Just a few…it would upload a CD using the match service. I was lucky if the explicit versions matched to the explicit versions and not clean. This was also a problem with the official iTunes Match service when it came out in 2011 or 2012. What it also did was it would match those songs to the library, and if the song ever disappeared from the AM catalog (if the right ended or for whatever other reason), then it would grey out the song in my library. My own ripped song that they matched!! In my eyes, if a matched song disappears from the catalog, then the computer where the original lives should automatically upload it to the iCloud Music Library to replace it, instead of rendering your own ripped song useless.

Another thing it did was caused me tons of headaches managing metadata. Often times changes I would make wouldn’t sync, or Apple Music in its own would randomly split albums and make it impossible to rejoin them. Even if I could get the computer to rejoin them, they may not show up that way on the other devices.

Another thing is it really didn’t like duplicates of songs in the library. For instance, greatest hits and an album having the same song. Often times the song would disappear out of its main album. Lo and behold, I’d still find it in the greatest hits. So I still had the song, but not in both places. Other times, I wouldn’t even have the greatest hits in my library, and yet it would switch the album version of a song for the greatest hits version. So let’s take Eminem “My Name Is” for example. I have the slim shady LP in my library and do NOT have Curtain Call: The Hits. One day My Name Is disappears from the LP and shows up in my library under Curtain Call. I open curtain call and go figure, My Name Is is the only song in there because I didn’t have Chrtain Call in my library.

All of that type of crap happened all the time. I had a 30k song library. Jay is a lot to constantly manage when so many issues pop up. I just couldn’t deal with it anymore.

At least with my CDs I pretty much manage the library and leave it alone.

I have said it before, what I think Apple should do is redo iCloud music library and how it works in theory. Let it be a hard drive for your music and let it use iCloud storage. I would happily pay for 2TB of iCloud storage to store my whole library on iCloud and upload exact copies. I don’t even need the Apple Music catalog. Songs disappearing at random makes Apple Music not worth it for me. I’d rather just own the music. The problem is getting the music to my phone. Syncing over a cable works fine, but it is Stone Age level. If iML was a hard drive in the sky built into the music app that runs through iCloud, that would solve every complaint I have as long as they built it to sync properly. Knowing Apple, they would probably ruin the syncing somehow though.
 
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That’s so weird. I’ve never ran into that bug. It’s only with playlists? Maybe that’s why I haven’t ran into it.

My issue with Apple Music is the algorithm isn’t smart enough to automatically play songs that I like. Spotify has a much better algorithm, but with all their legal crap going on I canceled them. I’m honestly too lazy to make dedicated playlists for music. I used to do it back in the day with my iPod but now I just pick a song I want to listen to.
I've actually gotten some decent stuff out of the the Discovery station. Not everything, but it definitely is picking some new music out that matches. Granted - I've had to select specific songs and elevate them to get Discovery working - in its first try - it was worthless. But about a year ago, and possibly with enough "likes" it started providing better selections.

Note: I'm explicitly NOT looking for the pandora/spotify "you are listening to x from 20 years ago, here's y from 25 years ago you might like". Absolutely not what I want at all, as I'm looking for new things similar to a selection of music I own. Apple Discovery does this better than anyone else, for me anyways.
 
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