iCloud Music Libary vs. Sync'ed Music

[erikbailey]

I have ~40GB of music in iTunes that I sync to my phone. I have Apple Music and iCloud Music Library enabled. As has been noted by others, sync + iCML don't seem to play well together. Any options?

I have 100% cleared out iCML by creating a new iTunes library on my Mac, and deleting everything in it (it seems to take a few iterations, and about 15 minutes, to get it to clear it completely). Then, with iCML disabled on my phone, I do an iTunes Sync (old-style, using the cable). This is the "pre-Apple Music, pre-iTunes Match" way of doing things. Works perfectly, and all my album art appears correctly on my phone.

Then I enable iCML on my phone, which proceeds to make a mess of the album art. Clearly it is doing some kind of back-end matching, but not doing a very good job of it.

I assume this is just an "it is what it is" scenario, but wanted to see if anyone had any methods to work around this. For what it's worth, I really like Apple Music (we are on the $15/mo family plan), but I need both a) the ability to get at my local library (e.g., for Adele's new album which isn't available for streaming) and b) the ability to download AM for offline, so I think that pretty much requires me to configure it the way I have it.

Thanks for any thoughts! --Erik

 

[campyguy]

Ah, the conundrum of choosing. Bummer for you, and bummed for me - I want this "choice", but Apple's offering one or the other. I use iTM but not Apple Music. Most of my music is from other sources - CDs, Amazon/Xbox Music or Google Music, and some DVDs.

I have two workarounds, one I use for me and one for my GF - both use pretty much the same "trick". I have 3 libraries, you're only interested in the last two. My first library is of my ALAC/FLAC rips, for archival use only. I never use this music on iOS devices, but do use them locally on my network.

My second library is of my old rips (some of which are crappy!) new rips, and internet purchases, with a max bitrate of 256/320 AAC/MP3. I located artwork for and updated music without the desired artwork, and lyrics - a lot of my music has lyrics and I didn't want to hunt down artwork/lyrics a second time. I turned on iTM and let Apple do its thing. I use this library for iTM. Then...

My third library, pretty much identical to my second library, is a file-copy (read: duplicate) of my second library. For new ripped music, I manually copy, using the "Add to Library" Command new music to this library. This library gets synched to a local-only iPad, Mac, and 5th-Gen 80GB iPod. In essence, the iTS has matched and improved up my older rips and added the benefit of newer rips plus the music that the iTM engine didn't accept and my local artwork and lyrics. Whether or not iTM is turned on or off my local content loads onto my iOS devices that have iTM turned off and trusty old iPod.

I just hold down the Option Key to switch libraries and use the library I intend to. My "default" is the second library. Funny, that my synched iPad is also an LTE version, with a VZW UL data plan - sometimes I prefer my own content and not Apple thinks I want to see.

 

[bilibug]

I like Apple Music, but it definitely does not play nice with synced music which was not purchased through iTunes (the majority of my 35K+ library). What I did was clear my iPhone of all music. Then I created a new iTunes library on my Mac and enabled both Apple Music, and ICML. Because my new library was empty, nothing got matched or synced back up to the cloud. I use this library to maintain ICML and related playlists.

Lastly, seek out a program called WALTR. It will allow you to drag and drop your other music directly into the iPhone's music library. It will show in "Music" as if it were synced. The only caveat I found was that the album art for the tracks need to be jpeg and not png format (this may be an OSX issue).

Be aware that if you perform a regular music sync from iTunes, it will delete music transferred through WALTR, but that really doesn't matter much since enabling ICML will disable the ability to sync your phone with iTunes music directly.

 

[erikbailey]

Thanks bilibug and campyguy - those give me some things to try... Appreciate it! --Erik