'Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously' (vellumatlanta.com)

Vellum's James has written about his ordeal with Apple Music which many people can relate to. Apple Music, the Cupertino-based giant's online music streaming service, deleted 122GB of music files that James had stored on his computer. He writes: What Amber (supposed Apple Support representative) explained was exactly what I'd feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users' computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple's database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn't recognize -- which came up often, since I'm a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself -- it would then download it to Apple's database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted. This isn't the first time Apple Music has deleted a user's locally stored music files. Long-time Apple watcher Jim Dalrymple canceled his subscription last year and called Apple Music a "nightmare" after the service allegedly deleted over 4,700 of his previously bought songs. At the time, he wrote: 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.Incidentally, Apple Music is rumoured for a reboot at the company's developer conference in June. It's not clear if fixing the aforementioned glitch is among Apple's imminent agenda.

Comments

Software should not think for users.

[captaindomon]

This is a classic example of when a software system is trying to make decisions, instead of helping them perform tasks, and it's a critical difference. I'm a big Apple fan, especially for mobile devices, but the fact that I still can't access the file system without hokey workarounds makes me really angry, for example.

Copyright infringement lawsuit?

[Lisandro]

After all, Apple is downloading his music from his machine and uploading it to Cupertino without permission.

Re: It can't be said too many times

[dmoen]

"What kind of software removes files from a local disk without even asking for user confirmation?"

Malware.