“It’s been an interesting and confusing day,” Jim Dalrymple reports for The Loop. “I arrived at Apple this morning to talk to them about my issues with Apple Music and to hopefully fix my problems. The good news is that I have about 99 percent of my music back.”
“Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. The missing and duplicate song issues that we’ve all seen in Apple Music are being fixed shortly,” Dalrymple reports. “They are certainly aware of what’s been going on, I can assure you.”
“I have the iTunes Match service that I pay for separately, and Apple Music, both of which use iCloud Music Library. There is really no way to get away from them if you want to use the latest and greatest from Apple,” Dalrymple reports. “I’ll admit, I’m still trying to get my head around how this works.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Excellent news (mostly).
That Jim worked with Apple directly and is still confused speaks volumes about the gnarled ball of confusion that is the current state of iTunes, Apple Music, iTunes Match, iTunes in the Cloud, iCloud Music Library, and whatever else freakin’ music/cloud-related “services” Apple offers.
Apple, in the interest of customer satisfaction, not to mention sound media relations (pun intended), ought to buy Jim the complete Ozzy library in order to completely restore his music collection.
Lastly: Always back up your data.
SEE ALSO:
Jim Dalrymple: Apple Music is a nightmare, and I’m done with it – July 23, 2015
Jim Dalrymple on Apple Music: ‘I’m damned impressed’ – June 30, 2015
I’m still waiting for Apple to offer Apple Lossless codec as an option on iTunes, purely just for music sales. Only reason I still buy CD’s and rip them myself as I suspect many do likewise.
I’m not going to trust Apple to fix their Apple Music mess. Going to stay with iTunes 12.1.2 for as long as I can and not subscribe to Apple Music EVER.😰
You are missing out. That’s coming from someone who once said he would never “RENT” music.
If I hadn’t tried this I would never have known.
iTunes match should be folded into iTunes music.
it should be one coherent, simple system that doesn’t require private seminars with Apple engineers to kinda understand.
Thanks, made me laugh – in a good way. I agree, but then, who wouldn’t?
So Daltympal starts with a pathetic whine and then backs off, realizing he is an inept idiot, and that has to be broadcast all over the Internet?
Are you serious? If you were paying attention you would realize that there are a lot of people having this same problem. And to insinuate that Jim Dalrymple doesn’t know how to handle Apple’s botched attempt is idiotic; he knows more about it than you ever will.
It’s a fact that iTunes is heap of confusion, and that something needs to be done about it.
I agree it’s a mess. iTunes still can’t talk to the iPhone properly on how much free space is really available. And Photos won’t allow me to host it on an external drive and still have Photo Stream running. Support documentation says Photo Stream only works if Photo library is kept on the local drive. Hopeless even with 512MB SSD on MBP. And I’m not willing to pay for 1TB of iCloud storage yet to enable iCloud Photo Library. So I’m stuck with my late-2009 iMac and its 1TB HDD to do this… Sigh… Whatever happened to “It Just Works”…. 😔
Where did you read that Photo Stream doesn’t work based on the location of your photos library? I see nothing in the Photo Stream FAQ:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201317
And here’s a guide for managing Photos on an external drive: http://www.imore.com/how-use-external-and-referenced-libraries-photos-os-x
Is that your take? Jim is a devoted Apple fan, a great critic, and is being kind. Looks like you’re the idiot.
Nicely said!
I think you are (mostly) right. I think he was (mostly) caught off-guard by the changes from being an existing iTunes Match customer. One important change is conceptual, and it affect the interface.
With previous iTunes and iTunes Match, your local iTunes music library was considered the “primary” source. The iTunes music library in iCloud was the “secondary” copy, which you can use for restoring songs and access from other computers and devices you own. The menu commands and dialogs reflected this concept. When you tried to delete a song in iTunes, it assumed you wanted to act on the local iTunes music library. Also deleting the song from the iCloud library was a secondary choice (done by checking a box in confirmation dialog).
With the latest iTunes and Apple Music (plus iTunes Match), your iCloud music library is now considered primary. Your local iTunes music library is now the copy, along with local libraries on your other computers and devices. That’s the conceptual difference. This changes the commands and dialogs, and how they work and are worded. For example, to get a local copy of song, the command was previously “Download”; it is now “Make Available Offline.” The command to delete the local copy was previously “Delete”; it is now “Remove.” The “Delete” command still exists, and the default option is to delete the song completely, from iCloud AND local.
That last one caught me off-guard. The first time with new iTunes, I did a Delete and did not read the confirmation dialog (I assumed it was the same as before). I ended up deleting some songs (completely) from my local library AND iCloud library. I wanted to only delete the local copy. I had to get the song files out of my Trash and add them back (or I could have used my Time Machine backup). My mistake was choosing to Delete, instead of Remove. If I did not notice immediately (to retrieve song files from Trash) and did not have a backup (because I used the iCloud library as backup), I may have lost those songs.
And the complaint about Apple Music not adding all songs on an album may be due to the system trying to account for songs you already own through previous iTunes Store purchases. Or existing songs (from album) that are “matched.” When adding a complete album from Apple Music, it tries to account for songs it knows you already have, and only adds the remaining songs. That may be why songs appear to be “missing” from album when Apple Music adds it. Unfortunately, this implementation is sometimes (often) faulty. When I add a new album where I don’t already own any of the songs, it works fine (all songs are added). But if there are songs on album that are already in my iTunes music library (identified as Purchased or Matched), the results are inconsistent at best. I end of having to manually fix duplicates (remove the Apple Music version of song). If a song on album is missing (after adding complete album from Apple Music), the system incorrectly thinks I already have it, so it is not possible to individually add that song from Apple Music.
Bullshit! Even Microsoft wouldn’t fuck things up this badly. i’ll give Apple credit for one thing, they’re consistent.They just can’t get services right. Year after year they continue to fuck up. No more excuses. They need to clean house and hire people who know how to organize and run services. try hiring some people from evil Google. They may be evil, and they are, but at least they know how to make services work properly. Or try Facebook. Maybe they can let go of a few honchos.? but enough already. Tim Cook needs to clean house. It’s pathetic.
And lets not forget the millions of people who used and loved Aperture and that Apple just told to piss off elsewhere. What is wrong with this company now?
My music is extremely important to me. Imported from 1000s of CDs. Most not available on iTunes. Still using 2009 iMac with iTunes 10.7 which is beautiful and easy and works. No way will I upgrade. All the software has gotten worse and worse since Steve passed, more complicated and less features. Apple, pull yourself back up before you topple. SOFTWARE.
Why not just use a Walkman?
Actually, the biggest problem with iTunes is that Apple eliminates features that worked quite well (e.g., Cover Flow and My Stations) and replaces them with less functional revisions in order to unify everything into iCloud.
I was forced to upgrade to iTunes 11 when I bought an iPhone 5s. And all newer iOS devices will require iTunes 12. iTunes 12.2 breaks more basic functionality than past versions because Apple’s trying to merge local music libraries into Apple Music. People who currently use iTunes Match have had major problems, and that has stopped me from even trying Apple Music.
Past experience has shown that once you make the upgrade, Apple does not provide a path back if it turns out that you don’t like the new service. And given that my iTunes library is the result of more than a decade of careful cataloging and curating, no way will I risk borking all that work in one shot, as has happened with many other users.
It will be interesting to know if having AppleCare for one or more Apple devices running Apple Music will get you anything close to the attention Jim got at Apple headquarters with a personal connection.
I’m delighted he posted his original post, delighted Apple has helped fix the problem and delighted he’s updated his post but like you say in your take: if he’s still mixed up about all of this with lots of inside help, god help the rest of us.
Independent of Jim’s problem, Apple needs to put a lot more resources and money into beefing up iCloud. Apple’s cloud-based services have always been a sore point and now that so much of our use of Apple devices depends on iCloud it really is time for Apple to put as much attention into it as it does into the details of its physical products.
I’ll be glad when iTunes doesn’t require me to log out and then back in to activate Music. (Although I’m only in for the free 90 days.) And maybe, during the free trial, I’ll be able to get rid of things that have nothing to do with me in the ‘For You’ section. And maybe the iOS and the OS X versions will have similar features. I don’t use iCloud for any of my music and never have. Probably a good thing.
iTunes is a hot mess that keeps getting incrementally worse — especially now that they’ve mysteriously dropped the separate Downloads window. What next I wonder…
I’ve often complained about Apple PR,
in this case they seem to have acted quickly and got Jim D quickly to the office to try to sort it out. He’s a well known writer and techie.
Glad to that they are trying to resolve the issue.
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Apple should always aim to keep their PR, Marketing, and Customer Service (including bug fixing) top class like their hardware and retail stores. The ‘whole package’ is important.
Support real music – boycott streaming services.
Music should be seen as a renewable resource and streaming does not do that. Streaming reallocates resources to big-tech and to a few chart-topping acts from music that is more “deep listening”. All music that is not chart-topping is now endangered species – and here you find any new, serious and creative music.
On top of this companies like Spotify and Google-Youtube is hiring very expensive top lobbyists both is the US and EU to change copyright law so they can force artists to supply their work to the extremely low-paying “ad-based” streaming services Spotify/Google provides (to refuse would be considered antitrust/monopoly).
Apple Music is such an epic disaster its scary. I’d say a two year moratorium on any new software is in order. WTF happened to the software side of the house?
Stick to hardware upgrades for two years, and re-think the entire software strategy from the top down.
if Jony’s team had anything to do with Apple Music UI design. Then fire them from software. Sorry but just do it.
signed
//pissed
Nothing with a wide range of features is ever going to be as simple as pie, no matter how much one might like… And unfortunately stability can never be fully tested with beta testers as there are never enough of them.
Todays Joy of Tech does describe Jim’s problem though…
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/index.html