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

[AdeFowler]

I haven't been near Apple Music and doubt that I ever will. It's just not for me.
I was interested in iTunes Match, but that's never been fixed.

This would never happen in Steve's day. /s

 

[OllyW]

This would never happen in Steve's day. /s

You must have a short memory.

At one point, Jobs asked his team what MobileMe was supposed to do. Upon receiving an answer he quickly fired back, "So why the **** doesn’t it do that?"

 

[dotnet]

I haven't been near Apple Music and doubt that I ever will. It's just not for me.
I was interested in iTunes Match, but that's never been fixed.

Interestingly, it seems to be the Match portion of Apple Music that's most severely borked. I very much enjoy all other aspects of Apple Music, in particular the streaming (and downloading) of just about anything I like, and the curated playlists under For You. The last three weeks have been a tour de force of discovery and enjoyment for me.

 

[Narcaz]

You must have a short memory.

At one point, Jobs asked his team what MobileMe was supposed to do. Upon receiving an answer he quickly fired back, "So why the **** doesn’t it do that?"

History repeats itself. Replace a few names and the same thing could happen again:

"Mossberg (Dalrymple)," Jobs (Cook) said, "our friend, is no longer writing good things about us."

Apple was forced to publicly apologize to its users and subsequently offered subscribers a free month of service as a gesture of good faith.

Following the MobileMe (AM) mess, Jobs (Cook) reportedly fired Rob Schoeben (Eddy Cue) who had previously headed up the MobileMe (AM) initiative and replaced him with Eddy Cue (Drew Houston) who had previously been in charge of the iTunes store (Dropbox).

 

[lah]

I'm still on the fence with Apple Music and fortunately I haven't had any library syncing issues.
Now that I've gotten used/understand to the "workflow" of Apple Music, I'm starting to prefer it over Spotify. I definitely prefer the look. One thing that IMO is much better is the radio function. Spotify's artist radio is terrible, very repetitive, Apple music has much more variety and seems to keep the flow going. It really is "set it and forget it" when I'm at work. Also the "for you" tab is pretty spot on in my case, I've discovered A LOT of new music since its launch. What Spotify has going for it is really the overall speed of the app and the social aspect of it. Let's hope Apple is paying attention to the criticism of one its most loyal evangelist and will fix all the bugs soon.

 

[navaira]

I'm quite entertained by For You and how bad it is. It suggested I listen to "Justin Bieber: Influences" yesterday. Sure, right after I finish cutting my ears off with a chainsaw.

It's hard for me to believe Dalrymple didn't back up his music library. I'd think he's smart enough to have Time Machine running. Obviously he fell for "It Just Works!" a bit too hard.

 

[rwilliams]

As others have stated, the streaming aspect is working just fine. The problem is iTunes Match. If you have ripped CDs in your iTunes library with metadata from CDDB that doesn't match what's in the iTunes Store, you could have a mess on your hands. I've found that changing the names of some albums that I've ripped so that they match what's in the iTunes store has fixed the issues with album artwork being changed and incorrect versions of songs being used (especially with live albums).

Of course, we shouldn't have to go to such lengths to get this to work correctly. Apple should have fixed iTunes Match a long time ago.

 

[jonnyb098]

Ouch.....thats a big black eye coming from Jim.

 

[dk001]

I've tried Google Music but switched to Amazon - I can get all my stuff across all OS's.
Apple Music scare's the crap out of me. Too many people have lost their music and this thing with not allowing multiple versions of the same song is ludicrous. Then their is artwork, etc....
It's interesting (AM) but I'm not that risky.

 

[nebo1ss]

I never understand how anyone can go into this without a backup copy of their music. I keep three copies of all my media, it has taken too many years to accumulate my library of media to risk it.

 

[flur]

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.

THIS.

For those that are saying "they just need time" and "syncing is hard" and the various other excuses for the more serious issues of Apple Music - these issues for the most part come from iTunes Match. They've existed in Match since launch. Apple has had YEARS to fix these issues, they've been reported both in support forums and to Apple directly. Apple instead chose to NOT fix the issues, but instead tie them to a new service so that all of us non-Match subscribers can have the issues too.

I'm with Dalrymple. I ALSO had music files deleted from my hard drive (I had many, many backups, but still - what a pain!), and I'm done with it. I've signed up for Spotify (I was not a subscriber before) and I won't be subscribing to AM unless I hear that ALL of these issues are fixed, or until they allow me to use all the functionality of AM without uploading my music to the cloud.

 

[flur]

That is a huge error for someone who has worked and reported on the tech industry for such a long time to make.

Am I the only one who thinks he just said that to make it all more dramatic?

I bet he's got a backup. No one rips CDs and then never backs up for years.

 

[whsbuss]

THIS.

For those that are saying "they just need time" and "syncing is hard" and the various other excuses for the more serious issues of Apple Music - these issues for the most part come from iTunes Match. They've existed in Match since launch. Apple has had YEARS to fix these issues, they've been reported both in support forums and to Apple directly. Apple instead chose to NOT fix the issues, but instead tie them to a new service so that all of us non-Match subscribers can have the issues too.

I'm with Dalrymple. I ALSO had music files deleted from my hard drive (I had many, many backups, but still - what a pain!), and I'm done with it. I've signed up for Spotify (I was not a subscriber before) and I won't be subscribing to AM unless I hear that ALL of these issues are fixed, or until they allow me to use all the functionality of AM without uploading my music to the cloud.

Its why I chose to start AM with a blank iTunes library, while keeping my main library offline. Then I added back those tracks so it would not damage all my work. Apple should have fixed Match long ago.

 

[flur]

One thing that IMO is much better is the radio function. Spotify's artist radio is terrible, very repetitive, Apple music has much more variety and seems to keep the flow going.

This is can absolutely agree with. They nailed it with the radio function. This appears to be free and usable whether or not you have an AM subscription.

 

[flur]

Its why I chose to start AM with a blank iTunes library, while keeping my main library offline. Then I added back those tracks so it would not damage all my work. Apple should have fixed Match long ago.

Yep. The rub is that you may still get the bug in which, if you ever turn off AM, AM thinks some of the music you added back belongs to it and removes your files from your hard drive. So make sure you have a back up.

 

[doug in albq]

The point is that the people being mostly affected are those like myself who already have large music libraries built up over time. Those that started with a blank slate shouldn't be seeing any major issues I wouldn't think. As someone else mentioned, it's ironic that those of us who have put a lot of care curating our own music collections are really seeing the worst.

I have my music backed up on 2 separate HDs not including my Mac though, so thankfully i've been able to fix my issues & turn off Apple Music Library in the Cloud on my Mac which seems to work for me.

Something definitely needs done though.

It is almost as if the purposeful destruction of users' personal music collections was part of the plan...one way to get more folks to stream music and make all the recording studio execs happy at the same time. If this is even remotely true, shame on Apple.

 

[bjjp2]

Interesting to see that MacRumours doesn't find this worthy frontpage news. They typically like to highlight Dalrymples 'nope'.. Sounds like this is a huge NOPE that won't be without impact.

Agree with this. I don't get it. They should be shouting this from the rooftops--"Apple Music f#%s with the music on your phone/computer!"

 

[doug in albq]

Interesting to see that MacRumours doesn't find this worthy frontpage news. They typically like to highlight Dalrymples 'nope'.. Sounds like this is a huge NOPE that won't be without impact.

IMHO, unfortunately, Mac Rumors has become much less objective in the last few years. Especially when it comes to being critical of Apple.

 

[navaira]

Breaking the search function in My Music and maintaining its correct functioning in Apple Music does seem to be purposeful. "It's a new feature!"

 

[Rogifan]

IMHO, unfortunately, Mac Rumors has become much less objective in the last few years. Especially when it comes to being critical of Apple.

Yeah because all of the negative Apple Watch crap on the front page isn't critical or negative at all.

 

[jdillings]

Honestly, I believe the roll out of Apple Music was just as bad as Apple Maps. Both were half baked at launch, buggy, and not thoroughly tested.

 

[d4rkc4sm]

welcome to tim cook's ****** apple

 

[flur]

Honestly, I believe the roll out of Apple Music was just as bad as Apple Maps. Both were half baked at launch, buggy, and not thoroughly tested.

Have they fixed it yet? I've just ignored Maps in favor of Google Maps, so I don't know.

 

[Itzamna]

Really some of you guys are so over dramatic in everything Apple related... So far it's a free service and it will be like that for more 2-3 months... Give it at least that time. Spotify needs a few years until they reached the amount of traffic AM is having at this point.

As for the problems, everybody I know personally that is using Apple Music has zero major problems. In my family we are four using it and my GF has a freaking huge library with a mix of iTunes and no iTunes song (she is a fitness instructor and has musics from several fitness programs that are exclusive to those programs and thus are not on iTunes) and apart a couple of wrong album covers she had no problems. We are happy with it and I cancelled my spotify subscription.

I'm not saying you guys are not having problems, what I'm saying is that maybe they are not that widespread... Every service at its launch has problems, so will AM.

As for this Dalrymple... So he is a major Apple user and has no music backup? time Machine? If he said that he lost those 4k songs he is clearly lying to be more dramatic. That, by itself, takes a lot o credit of what he is saying...

 

[whsbuss]

Really some of you guys are so over dramatic in everything Apple related... So far it's a free service and it will be like that for more 2-3 months... Give it at least that time. Spotify needs a few years until they reached the amount of traffic AM is having at this point.

As for the problems, everybody I know personally that is using Apple Music has zero major problems. In my family we are four using it and my GF has a freaking huge library with a mix of iTunes and no iTunes song (she is a fitness instructor and has musics from several fitness programs that are exclusive to those programs and thus are not on iTunes) and apart a couple of wrong album covers she had no problems. We are happy with it and I cancelled my spotify subscription.

I'm not saying you guys are not having problems, what I'm saying is that maybe they are not that widespread... Every service at its launch has problems, so will AM.

As for this Dalrymple... So he is a major Apple user and has no music backup? time Machine? If he said that he lost those 4k songs he is clearly lying to be more dramatic. That, by itself, takes a lot o credit of what he is saying...

Well said!