(Rant) What is the point of music subscription services having soundtracks.

[tonyr6]

Really they are useless. Most I find are missing half or more of the songs on all the services. I am not just talking about Apple Music. Play Music, Spotify all missing the same songs.

One soundtrack on all of them only has one song. Play Music does not show them but the other services show them grayed out. Don't even bother to add them then. Just add the regular albums even though the same freaking songs are missing from the soundtrack albums even on the artist album.

End of rant.

 

[cube]

Those are not all the services available.

 

[tonyr6]

I am trying to understand you but all of them I tried have the most missing songs from soundtrack albums. I am also in the states. Anyway I will most likely just buy more CD's of soundtracks that all the other services should not bother to have with missing songs. I have a bunch of soundtracks already I bought and ripped many years ago before there was any streaming services.

Also I forgot to say that soundtracks that are just music orchestrated like Pirates of the Caribbean have all the songs. It it the ones that are actually sung that are pathetic.

 

[cube]

The state of streaming is possibly worse in the US than most of the world.

 

[tonyr6]

Cube what country are you from?

 

[cube]

I am in Europe.

 

[tonyr6]

I am in Europe.

Thanks.

 

[Julien]

What you are seeing is caused by complex cross licensing. Often a soundtrack has tracks licensed from different record labels/companies/copyright holders. When offered on streaming the same contracts no longer apply.

 

[dugbug]

If you download man from uncle soundtrack it does miss several songs BUT Apple Music matches them from other sources and downloads them.

For example a classic 60's song missing from the soundtrack but is streamable from the artists catalog will show up as a song from another album.

It's a reasonable solution by Apple for something not in their control.

 

[bilibug]

If you download man from uncle soundtrack it does miss several songs BUT Apple Music matches them from other sources and downloads them.

For example a classic 60's song missing from the soundtrack but is streamable from the artists catalog will show up as a song from another album.

It's a reasonable solution by Apple for something not in their control.

Except when they match it to a completely different version of the song.

My biggest gripe with Apple Music is the matching algorithm. I have the original Communards CD which I ripped to my iTunes library. It contains extended versions of almost every song. The version available in AM only contains short versions. AM will not upload my versions to my iCloud Music Library because it thinks the albums are the same. If I don't keep the local versions on my device, AM will only stream the short versions.

 

[tonyr6]

What you are seeing is caused by complex cross licensing. Often a soundtrack has tracks licensed from different record labels/companies/copyright holders. When offered on streaming the same contracts no longer apply.

Then why is it that orchestrated music like from Star Wars etc has all the songs? I actually do love orchestrated music from the movies more than the songs but still either include the songs or don't list the album at all. This crap reminds me back when Netflix started streaming and use to have disc only episodes. It use to peeve me off so much. Thank goodness most of there new "licensed content as I don't bother counting originals" includes all the episodes of a series even ones like Supernatural that have a lots of copyrighted music in it.

 

[Julien]

Then why is it that orchestrated music like from Star Wars etc has all the songs? ....

Because it is composed, recorded and produced for the film by the label and not a licensed work from another copyright holder.

 

[dugbug]

Except when they match it to a completely different version of the song.

Oh just to be clear in my case the song versions were correct

 

[navaira]

If I don't keep the local versions on my device, AM will only stream the short versions.

How do you get local versions in without iCloud Demolition Crew being used?

 

[bilibug]

How do you get local versions in without iCloud Demolition Crew being used?

I currently sideload them using WALTR.

However, I may have discovered my problem. I originally merged the local files stored on my phone into ICML. I've been experimenting with deleting them from the phone, and adding them to a new iTunes library on my mac, and then uploading them to ICML. So far the correct versions are remaining streamable from the phone. I'm wondering if this is something recently improved upon in the new iTunes update.

I also discovered a way to fix many of the album art issues - delete downloaded album art, then go into "get info" for the album, and cut/paste/save the correct album art. Then repeat the "delete downloaded album art" step again. I've been pretty successful.

Sadly, I also discovered that playlists that contain both local and cloud stored files can be a bit flakey. I lost the contents of one which took me about 4 hours to compile the other night. Needless to say, I am not pleased.

Apple Music still needs to work out the various unexpected quirks. It should not need hours of experimentation to figure out.

 

[navaira]

Magic. Now I need to know whether AM Android app sees local files or not and my woes are sorted.

 

[bilibug]

Magic. Now I need to know whether AM Android app sees local files or not and my woes are sorted.

OK. Bad news update:

While it seemed everything was going well, with my versions of songs uploaded to the cloud and streamable upon first import, this afternoon I tried playing them on my phone again. *AS* they played via streaming, the songs were replaced in my iCloud library with the AM versions, once again hosing my music collection. It seems that there is a latent matching process being done well after the upload is complete, which may explain why so many are finding unexpected changes to their libraries hours or days later. Oh well. Not sure this will ever get sorted out. It is tedious and annoying.

The album art trick still works. I don't think the second "delete downloaded art" step is needed, just time for the library to update.

 

[navaira]

ARGH!

With all its errors Spotify doesn't attempt that and when I have a local file it is downloaded to my phone exactly as it is. Mind, one of them changed its name to what Spotify THINKS it is (live performance became "Losing My Mind – 2001 Remix" or something like that). But it plays correctly.

I'd really like to hear an explanation of why AM doesn't use Apple's own Match technology, flawed as that is. Surely there is a way to determine a 3:43 song is not the same as the 6:02 one.

 

[bilibug]

And more confusion.... now the longer version of the Communards Don't Leave Me This Way from my original import is the one streamed, but the rest of the album tracks are the short versions. This is insane.

UPDATE: Even crazier. If I play the song on my iPhone, it is the long version, I assume from the cache. If I try to stream it on another PC, it is the short version. If I download it from the cloud on the phone and play it, it is the short version. If I delete the downloaded file and play it (again streaming) it is the long version. None of this makes sense, other than the long version is being stored in a cache someone on the phone, which I would think would be deleted after I downloaded the track.

 

[navaira]

^^ this is why I haven't renewed Apple Music after the trial.

 

[Tech198]

Really they are useless. Most I find are missing half or more of the songs on all the services. I am not just talking about Apple Music. Play Music, Spotify all missing the same songs.

One soundtrack on all of them only has one song. Play Music does not show them but the other services show them grayed out. Don't even bother to add them then. Just add the regular albums even though the same freaking songs are missing from the soundtrack albums even on the artist album.

End of rant.

i agree... The same can be true with albums not having all songs or they grey out following day

They wanna play it the hard way. I do have a few soundtracks.

^^ this is why I haven't renewed Apple Music after the trial.

I only renew mainly to rip