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Jim Dalrymple: Apple Music is a nightmare and I'm done with it

Rogifan

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Original poster
Nov 14, 2011
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Ouch! Coming from Dalrymple, this should send shockwaves in Cupertino. When does Eddy Cue get taken go the woodshed over Apple Music failures? I'm lucky in that I am not a heavy iTunes user and didn't have much personal music in iTunes (though what I did have Apple lumped into a playlist called 90's Music even though much of it is not from the 90's). I feel for those dealing with these issues. If only Dalrymple could have the same effect as Taylor Swift.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/22/apple-music-is-a-nightmare-and-im-done-with-it/

I had high hopes for Apple Music. I really wanted it to work and become my default music streaming service, but after the problems I’ve experienced over the last couple of weeks, I’m disabling it altogether.

My problems started about a week after installing Apple Music. While Apple Music Radio and Playlists worked well, adding music to my library is nothing short of a mind-blowing exercise in frustration.
Click to expand...

At some point, enough is enough. That time has come for me—Apple Music is just too much of a hassle to be bothered with. Nobody I’ve spoken at Apple or outside the company has any idea how to fix it, so the chances of a positive outcome seem slim to none.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, Apple Music gave me one more kick in the head. Over the weekend, I turned off Apple Music and it took large chunks of my purchased music with it. Sadly, many of the songs were added from CDs years ago that I no longer have access to. Looking at my old iTunes Match library, before Apple Music, I’m missing about 4,700 songs. At this point, I just don’t care anymore, I just want Apple Music off my devices.

I trusted my data to Apple and they failed. I also failed by not backing up my library before installing Apple Music. I will not make either of those mistakes again.

I’m going to listen to what’s left of my music library, and try to figure out all of the songs I have to buy again. I’ll also download Spotify and reactivate the account I cancelled with them a couple of weeks ago.
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I was fortunate enough to read an alert and get directed to turn off iCloud Music Library before I accepted the free trial subscription so these issues never ruined my Library (I learned the hard way with iTunes Match).

BJ
 
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It seems as if he should add an extra "A" to his name - Dairymaple seems to make more sense.

Is that missing extra A a subtle implied protest against Apple?
 
The thing where Apple Music won't add any songs with names identical to those of other tracks on another album by that same artist existing in your library is infuriating. If you have an exiting Greatest Hits collection for some artist and start adding their albums on Apple Music you'll basically be missing each album's best tracks. Apparently that's by design too. :confused:
 
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Rogifan said:
Ouch! Coming from Dalrymple, this should send shockwaves in Cupertino. When does Eddy Cue get taken go the woodshed over Apple Music failures? I'm lucky in that I am not a heavy iTunes user and didn't have much personal music in iTunes (though what I did have Apple lumped into a playlist called 90's Music even though much of it is not from the 90's). I feel for those dealing with these issues. If only Dalrymple could have the same effect as Taylor Swift.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/22/apple-music-is-a-nightmare-and-im-done-with-it/
Click to expand...

Nice catch, Miss Rogifan.

The truth will out.
 
Rogifan said:
Seems to me just grafting it on to iTunes was a mistake. iTunes was already horribly bloated. Adding a streaming music service that has an overwhelming number of options itself is a recipe for disaster.
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I couldn't agree more.

If they really wanted to do streaming, they should have made the whole iTunes catalogue of music streamable, and kept it all within iTunes. That would have been a user-friendly experience. You could then stream a song, and if you liked it enough, you could buy it all in the same place.

But no, Cook had to waste $3 billion on Beats, because Cook is a politically-correct panderer, who puts diversity above quality of service.
 
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Don't get me wrong... Apple Music is far from perfect. I honestly feel for Dalyrmple, but the intregration with Siri & the Family Plan offering. I do see myself keeping it for the forseeable future.

I've read plenty of complaints w/ Apple Music while many citing fustrations with the service, but all I hope is that given time Apple can fix the necessary issues. I believe Apple deserves that...
 
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TheBean75 said:
I think I personally will stick with just purchasing the songs I like. Kudos to those that stick with it.
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I feel the same way, I tried it and it was pretty good at first but not good enough for the long haul.

Besides, I have four kids and at $120 a year plus data overages it just doesn't make any economic sense.

BJ
 
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I'm really amazed Jim D. didn't back up his music library before testing the waters, as I'm pretty sure that was one of his very own recommendations a few weeks ago (I followed the advice, thank god). I do feel for him as losing large chunks of one's collection is devastating- been there years ago. As someone said above, I also keep Apple Music in the Cloud turned off on my Mac.

Apple won't have an option but to fix this, especially with the attention Dalrymple's write up is bound to get.
 
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Benjamin Frost said:
I couldn't agree more.

If they really wanted to do streaming, they should have made the whole iTunes catalogue of music streamable, and kept it all within iTunes. That would have been a user-friendly experience. You could then stream a song, and if you liked it enough, you could buy it all in the same place.

But no, Cook had to waste $3 billion on Beats, because Cook is a politically-correct panderer, who puts diversity above quality of service.
Click to expand...

They couldn't make the whole iTunes catalog streaming, because there are entirely separate licensing agreements in place for streaming versus selling. Furthermore, just saying, "Here, go to the iTunes Store and now you can stream tracks or buy them or both!" doesn't suddenly make a streaming service, it's an added feature to iTunes and doesn't have a lot of key features that other streaming services offer.

Beats had been around for years, first as MOG, then as Beats, and had several high profile names associated with it who could give Apple leverage in making streaming deals. There was nothing foolish about buying Beats (you say wasted $3 billion as if it were your money they were spending), and I highly doubt Apple would spend $3 billion on a service simply for the sake of being "politically correct".

Now, Apple Music has some severe flaws, especially for people who use iTunes/iTunes Match a lot already, but that had nothing to do with buying Beats. Those were problems integrating a new service with existing services, and likely would have existed even if Apple hadn't bought Beats.
 
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Supermallet said:
They couldn't make the whole iTunes catalog streaming, because there are entirely separate licensing agreements in place for streaming versus selling. Furthermore, just saying, "Here, go to the iTunes Store and now you can stream tracks or buy them or both!" doesn't suddenly make a streaming service, it's an added feature to iTunes and doesn't have a lot of key features that other streaming services offer.

Beats had been around for years, first as MOG, then as Beats, and had several high profile names associated with it who could give Apple leverage in making streaming deals. There was nothing foolish about buying Beats (you say wasted $3 billion as if it were your money they were spending), and I highly doubt Apple would spend $3 billion on a service simply for the sake of being "politically correct".

Now, Apple Music has some severe flaws, especially for people who use iTunes/iTunes Match a lot already, but that had nothing to do with buying Beats. Those were problems integrating a new service with existing services, and likely would have existed even if Apple hadn't bought Beats.
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It is my money; I'm a shareholder.

I don't want Cook footling away my money on crackpot schemes; I want it back in the form of a dividend.

And yes, Beats was a politically correct purchase; Cook was going for the black vote. Pity he didn't buy Spotify and be done with it.
 
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You gave Apple $3 billion? Gee, I didn't realize you were such a high stakes shareholder!

Apple Music is likely going to do exactly what Apple wants it to do: Help sell more iPhones. There's your dividend right there.

Your comments on political correctness seem like they'd be more at home on a UKIP forum than an Apple one.
 
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McDaddio said:
It seems as if he should add an extra "A" to his name - Dairymaple seems to make more sense.

Is that missing extra A a subtle implied protest against Apple?
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Nah. Dalrymple is a small town in Scotland. Rhymes with "Pimple", "Dimple" and "Simple" :)

Probably where his ancestors are from?
 
Arran said:
You could always sell: It's how the market speaks.

You may have missed the boat however. I heard APL was down 7% in overnight trading last night, after earnings. Looks like it's down another 4% today.
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It's not down another 4%. That where it ended up today, so not as bad as the initial after market reaction to earnings.
 
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ElCharro said:
I'm really amazed Jim D. didn't back up his music library before testing the waters, as I'm pretty sure that was one of his very own recommendations a few weeks ago (I followed the advice, thank god). I do feel for him as losing large chunks of one's collection is devastating- been there years ago. As someone said above, I also keep Apple Music in the Cloud turned off on my Mac.

Apple won't have an option but to fix this, especially with the attention Dalrymple's write up is bound to get.
Click to expand...
The Loop doesn't usually get a lot of comments on articles but this one sure did. And it's all over Twitter. There's no way Tim Cook and Eddy Cue haven't seen it. I get the feeling that 1) this was rushed out and 2) it was built based on checking off a list of features from marketing and then the software engineers and UI designers had go figure out how to cram all this stuff into the iOS app and iTunes. Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue can talk about curation all they want but if Apple Music can't get the basics right nobody is going to stick with it even if the curation is better than the competition.
 
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Streaming is not the problem here. Streaming is the part people mostly enjoy. The iTunes Match-type functionality is the cause of most problems. Apple should have fixed iTunes Match before using the same basic functionality in Apple Music.
 
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So far, zero problems... But i started my library from scratch adding my songs from Apple Music. It was a complete mess my library, so i decided to go Apple Music first and then add the ones i couldn't find (only a couple of albums)
 
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Other than the issue where some people couldn't play things from connect (or sometimes stream anything at all), that seemed to be caused by DNS configuration issues at Apples end, I've had no real problems at all. That's not to say there aren't bugs and Apples attention does seem to be slipping in that regard.

That said, syncing is hard, no one does it right all the time. Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, One Drive, Exchange. All of them have problems from time to time. Data shouldn't get lost, Apple needs to do better, but it does happen with all providers. And whilst I have sympathy for Jim's plight, (acknowledging that the bug that caused his problem isn't his fault), he should, especially as a tech journalist, know to back up, back up and back up again. For me that is the most shocking aspect of his story, that someone who's livelihood depends on technology doesn't backup his critical data.
 
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