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'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.
Backups, Dude. Backups.
If Microsoft had done this, people would be losing their minds. Since it's Apple, it's a non-story, wtf?
Sounds like Apple Music is functioning exactly as Apple designed it.
This isn't the first time Apple Music has deleted a users' locally stored music files.
You ran proprietary software on a closed source OS from a vendor that operates sweatshops with suicide netting and, most importantly, has a track record for disrespecting user rights. While I tune up the worlds tinyest violin and get going on my rendition of the Free Software Song, why not take a look at http://distrowatch.com/ for some examples of operating systems that put you in the drivers seat, and https://osalt.com/ for software that doesnt trample your ability to rock out mellow folk sensation Roger Whittaker at four in the morning.
Good people go to bed earlier.
For as much money as Apple makes, their software engineering teams seem to be a disaster. Single line OSX exploits that give root, iTunes is a mess, etc. What a disaster. Time to replace the CEO and executive team.
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.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Terrible design decision by Apple. No warning box that all your local copies would be matched/stored on their machines and then deleted? My guess is that this would be too "complicated". Putting a warning in the TOS is not enough in my opinion. The software is far too 'automatic', and now ventures into the area of being opaque and unmanageable by the user. Should be obvious that is you are going to delete a single bit of personal data off someone's drive you would give a warning. Also: silly headline on the story. Finally: backups or lack of them don't in any way excuse this appalling software design decision by Apple. That's just blaming the victim.
Any well designed system with a delete function should have an undo function.
Any well designed software should have an EASY way to designate which parts of a network it will have access to and which it will have no access to.
Any well designed software should make it very clear what it is doing and get permission, not assume it is granted.
Failing to do all three of these things in the hallmark of incredibly bad software - not being able to undo deletions, requiring full access, and unclear permissions are the kind of thing you expect from a Virus, not Apple
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I've got decade old music files that Apple Music did not delete from my Mac. Apple Music also properly uploaded those files to iCloud so I can stream them to my iOS devices.
After all, Apple is downloading his music from his machine and uploading it to Cupertino without permission.
...removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted....
I am sure that buried somewhere deep in Apple's ToS and/or EULA you have given Apple permission to provide this deletion service for you.
.
But this is just another symptom of how Apple is taking more and more control of your digital life.
I recently gave away my new AppleTV gen4 because it was a giant step backwards for me. The UI was slow, buggy and generally difficult to use. I've reverted to using my old AppleTV gen2. That is, I'll be using it until I free myself and my media from the Apple media infrastructure completely. Which is odd for me to say, because a few years ago I had started to make a wholesale move to transition completely to Apple products. What happened to that transition? Apple convinced me that it was not a good idea.
Like the OP, Apple has demonstrated to me that it is not an appropriate vendor to help me with my media enjoyment, indeed, Apple has made my attempts to enjoy my media content more of a hassle than a pleasure.
Their business model involves outright stealing.
No contract allows someone to steal from you, no matter what their lawyer thinks.
Don't sue them, insist on legal charges of theft being placed against them, specifically naming the programmers, lawyers, and CEO of Apple as the responsible party.
Agree to settle if they cancel the terms of their contract.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Should not delete LOCAL copies.
I mean, why would you? They aren't on Apple's storage, they don't cost Apple anything, it's stored on your own laptop or whatever. To delete, then giving ONLY ONE COPY of the user's files - original creations including commercial MP3's - is downright obnoxious behaviour from a piece of software.
It's like Google Drive deleting your My Documents but, don't worry, it's "in the cloud" so you can just download it again *
(*at your own time and expense, and assuming you aren't bandwidth limited and that you get them all before your subscriptions expire and your only remaining copies are deleted from the cloud).
They also do it with purchased applications. I lived in FL, moved to the UK with my gear, Apple decided to revoke access to everything I purchased through their store; support told me to fuck off - it's in the EULA. Strange that Microsoft, Stream, Sony and Google purchases were fine regardless of where I was.
"...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"
Wow, what a fabulous process. I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with this. Oh, wait...
Seriously, the idea that Apple (or any company) could remotely reach into your PC and remove arbitrary files is mind-bending. Yes, I'm sure their EULA "allows" it, but still, WTF??
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I'm not disputing that this happened to this guy, but deleting local files is not the standard behavior. I am also an indie musician with dozens to hundreds of my own compositions in my iTunes library. I signed up for Apple Music and none of my local files were touched at all. Sounds like he got hit by an unfortunate bug. Sucks that it happened, for sure. Hopefully anyone who signs up for a streaming service in the future will think to make a backup first, but it stinks that you have to do that.
no longer working for cnet
You would know if you had read the articles that Apple's terms of use explicitly state that they are going to delete your local files. It was quoted in the article. This was an intended feature along with the inability to recover you music after cancelling the service. This is no bug. It is blatant theft of digital property.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
That is how iCloud music library works. It uploads your files and stores them. If there is a match, you can download a high quality version. If not, it stores your original version. You can download your music at any time, permanently. Nothing has been deleted or 'stolen'.
Did you actually RTFA? He *couldn't* download a copy of rare alternate versions he had; those are gone, replaced with the standard version of tracks, because the band and song names are the same. Nor could he download his own music, the music he wrote and performed and recorded himself, in the full WAV 16 bit/44.1k form he had it in -- only in a lossy format, because Apple converted the WAVs to a lossy format and threw them away.
I'm happy to report that Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and all of the other desktop Linuxes I have tried have never deleted any of my files without my permission. I also don't lose my work because my OS has decided to update or nag me to upgrade while I'm the middle of something.
My computer and my data belong to me. Not to Microsoft. Not to Apple. Not to Google or Oracle or HP or IBM or Samsung. Nobody but me!
Our family is pretty much all on Apple products. We have 3 kids who use iPads or iPhones regularly and my wife and I work in I.T. and both own Mac desktops and laptops. We're also all into music and my wife and I both have large music collections in iTunes on our primary computers.
So when Apple Music was first released with the 3 month free trial, we jumped at the chance. BIG mistake! We set up the "family account" pretty quickly, realizing that would be a better value. Problem was, soon afterwards, my wife's iCloud account essentially locked her out of all of her purchased content of ALL types. On any given Apple device, if she signed in with it, it would work (at most) for a few seconds, and then cancel any updates that were downloading and/or freeze up.
That became a nightmare of putting in multiple support tickets with Apple and not getting any resolution or promised callbacks. Meanwhile, it meant that 10+ years worth of applications, movies and music content she'd paid for was rendered useless. The obvious culprit was Apple Music. The problem only happened after she enabled it on her account and it started trying to sync all of her music content.
At the Genius Bar, a tech spent over an hour trying to help with the issue. He gave her a brand new iPhone 6 AND a brand new iPad, insisting it HAD to be some sort of hardware malfunction or glitch. But nope ... same issue crept up on the new devices shortly after she signed in to them.
At that point, someone in Engineering finally called us back (guess they got irritated the store was giving us thousands of dollars of unnecessary new hardware and not getting anywhere). They promised they were "working on it" and "had an idea where something was wrong". All of a sudden, her ID just started working properly again. No explanation was ever given.
I've had two computer service calls from people with small (128 GB) SSDs complaining their drives are full even though they hardly have any programs or files. The culprit turns out to be Apple's Mobile Sync. When you plug your iPhone or iPad into your computer to transfer some files, it defaults to keeping a copy of everything on the mobile device on your C: drive. No user queries, it just does it automatically. I can sorta understand that for photos and videos, but it makes no sense for iTunes music since that can be downloaded again if needed. Somewhere buried in the software, I found an option to disable it. A better solution would've been to move the backup location to the mostly-empty 2TB HDD, but I wasn't able to fine a setting for that in the short time I had (there were other more serious problems to fix).
I really like how Apple simplifies user interfaces so a monkey could use it. But this has to be backed up with the ability for users to easily drill down and change options if they want. This "one size fits all" attitude which has become the mantra of many Apple fans after Jobs introduced the iPhone (any size screen you want, as long as it's 3.5") is pure poison.
It has been known for years that iTunes is a deeply flawed software and that Apple just doesn't care. Anyone using it deserves whatever pain Apple inflicts upon them.