Apple Music - anyone heard of it? Or not, I don't care.

Out of curiosity I enabled the iCloud library on my iPad. Later when I synced it with the iTunes on my PC somehow the contents of all the static playlists that had been on the iPad had been wiped in my iTunes library.
I could see the playlist titles in iTunes but when I opened the playlists there were no songs in the playlists. This was for 90 odd playlists!
Fortunately the files were all still there and could recover the playlists by using a backup copy of the itunes library itl and xml files.
Imagine if I weren't paranoid about my iTunes library and didn't take regular backups?

I've turned iCloud library off on the iPad and it's never getting enabled on any other device.
For context - my current ITunes library was started in 2007 and has full basic metadata and cover art for all ~30K tracks. Being a librarian (and prone to these things) I use the comments field to provide extended metadata for about 18K tracks. That metadata powers about 250 smart playlists. I've put too much effort into it to risk having it wiped by some iCloud library related bug.

It's not all bad. I've found the Apple Music streaming fairly useful so I'll keep using it for the length of the free trial. After that I'll need to decide between Apple Music and Spotify Premium.

This thread is serving as a reminder of the extent to which catalogue discrepancies reflect regional issues. With few exceptions (The Necks, Keiji Haino, The Dead C, Henry Cow and the new The Fall record) the artists/albums in this thread are on Spotify in my corner of the world.

I uploaded some songs and can see that this has been done in ITunes successfully. But they are nowhere to be found on my phone. Anyone have any ideas?

I had the same problem. Open the app, go to "My Music". There's a dropdown below recently added to sort - Artists, Albums, Songs etc. At the bottom of that dropdown is a toggle for "Show Music Available Offline". Set that to off.

Thanks, I tried that. Still no go. I must have done something wrong with the upload. But then, not sure the iCloud status would say "uploaded." Oh well. Things seemed easier back in the day.

Well overnight they popped into my library. But on the downside, everything else was wiped off of my phone. ?!?!?!

More thoughts:

• I think everything is coming together nicely. It feels like I have more control over my music collection than I ever had with Spotify. Sure, there are still issues, but hopefully they will be fixed with an update.
• Good summary of some of the issues I've had. http://www.idigitaltimes.com/apple-music-problems-how-fix-issues-syncing-playlists-icloud-library-offline-455939
• The one with offline files not downloading on mobile is the one bugging me right now. It's just impossible to make my larger playlists have offline access.
• Another issue is the matching of tracks. Pretty much ruins the flow of DJ mixes sometimes, because it will match album tracks that are completely different versions. This doesn't seem to be a new issue, subscribers to iTunes Match had it as well. It would be ideal to somehow designate a track to force an upload rather than matching with an Apple Music track.
• Can't wait for the match limit to be raised to 100K. Currently I changed my whole collection to voice memo for media kind and selectively switching the tracks I want to match back to music. It would be nice if I could tell how close to the limit I am, but I can't see an easy way to tell that.
• I still have concerns about profile switching. Really need to have it so we can maintain separate libraries/playlists/loved tracks, but still have access to the same local files.

OH, and the siri integration is great.

what can you do w/siri?

Lots! I particularly like play songs from 19XX.

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/07/learn-and-listen-top-siri-commands-for-apple-music

I also like the many ways in which you can display your music. I've seen people complaining that it makes the interface too complex, but I prefer to have options rather than be forced to view the music one way. Most of the time I have it in the Song's display, but I do switch back and forth to Albums/Artists/Playlist.

It would be ideal to somehow designate a track to force an upload rather than matching with an Apple Music track.

So if I have uploaded my own files of (e.g.) Martha Argerich playing Schumann's Kriesleriana and I go to listen to it in AM on my phone, I'll hear their defective version and not my undefective one? That super sucks and I wonder if it can be worked around by tagging my stuff with artist or album names that don't match Apple's before I upload them?

I've read about some workarounds, but wow, pain in the ass. Like this one: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4544764?tstart=0

It doesn't seem to affect me too much, but it can ruin DJ mixes for sure.

"play me the number one song in the country"

Here's 'Girl Crush' by Little Big Town

"play me the number one song in the UK"

Here 'Anarchy in the U.K.' by Sex Pistols

"play me the number one single on the official chart"

OK, let's hear 'Wavin' Flag (the Celebration Mix) (World Cup 2010 Official Anthem)' by Backing Force

that's a karaoke version btw

"play me the top selling song in britain"

I couldn't find 'in Britain' on Apple Music or in your library.

"play me the number one single"

OK. Playing your music (shuffled)...

"play me the most popular song in the charts"

Now playing 'Egyptian In the Night' by Nuttin' But Stringz...

"play me the number one song in the official chart"

Sorry, 'In Music We Trust (Official Wesermove Hymn 2014) [Video Version] [feat. Tabee]' by Linden & Senerano isn't available for streaming.

Does Siri work with a Scottish accent?

this may be of interest:

New app lets you transfer Spotify playlists to Apple Music
http://www.factmag.com/2015/07/09/new-app-lets-you-transfer-spotify-playlists-to-apple-music/

"As a testament to that simplicity it’s literally called Spotify To Apple Music Playlist or S.t.A.M.P. for short. You can download the app here and although it’s only available for Mac currently, a Windows version is said to be on the way."

it makes it an option, thanks.

To transfer more than 10 tracks you must buy then activate the app.

Sneaky

i'm enjoying this for the convenience but it appears that I can't, now, add music to my iphone from my computer. and I can't seem to get upload to icloud music to work either.

Yeah. Not sure why the delay between uploading and having the songs appear on the phone.

suddenly (well, not suddenly, just at some point later) there they were. but itunes doesn't give me any indication that's uploading things to the cloud; i click that cloud icon, and then some time later it's gone.

The missing social and sharing features are sorely lacking. They should have had embeddable playlists at launch. And I miss the passive friends listening feed on Spotify.

Also missing popularity meters for individual songs (the best thing spotify borrowed from audio galaxy)

Uploaded tracks seem to appear faster on iPad than the phone for some reason

my experience as well.

Actually, the missing popularity meter is nice. On Spotify it made me a much more mercenary listener.

i heard a guy from apple give a spiel about this today. he kept saying "this is version 1.0" so who knows, maybe the popularity meter will make an appearance.

• The one with offline files not downloading on mobile is the one bugging me right now. It's just impossible to make my larger playlists have offline access.

this is probably the biggest reason Apple music has suuuucked for me (i use a playlist to sync selected music to my iphone as per an ilx user's suggestion years ago). some stuff went missing altogether (including study material i really needed last weekend) and some icloud-matched stuff was greyed out and inaccessible, but beyond that just all the shitty bugs everywhere: duplicated downloads, missing downloads, the heart button not registering half the time. in the end i turned the whole bloody thing off and restored my full itunes library from a time machine backup, and now i'm planning to just rely on spotify for music and some reliable third-party app for my study audio.

xp did he mean to say "this is version 0.1" or

he was stoked about "for you". i have never really rolled with recommendations or dynamic personalized playlists so i wouldn't know

"for you" was fun, apart from it repeatedly recommending mariah carey even after i said "i don't like this suggestion" four hundred times

it's duplicated the experience of having the lex for a friend!

nice

The benefits are outweighing the negatives for me. Nice to have a decent UI (ie NOT google play) and the ability to purge existing downloads.

Almost to 20K songs of my limit. Dag.

• The one with offline files not downloading on mobile is the one bugging me right now. It's just impossible to make my larger playlists have offline access.

this is probably the biggest reason Apple music has suuuucked for me (i use a playlist to sync selected music to my iphone as per an ilx user's suggestion years ago). some stuff went missing altogether (including study material i really needed last weekend) and some icloud-matched stuff was greyed out and inaccessible, but beyond that just all the shitty bugs everywhere: duplicated downloads, missing downloads, the heart button not registering half the time. in the end i turned the whole bloody thing off and restored my full itunes library from a time machine backup, and now i'm planning to just rely on spotify for music and some reliable third-party app for my study audio.

― Autumn Almanac, Saturday, 11 July 2015 01:33 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My experience as well but i'll stick with it a while more. So frustrating not to be able to transfer/sync playlists through USB and have to rely on shoddy icloud uploads. My huge "iphone" smart playlist (approx 15 GB) always appears empty now.

I like the new interface

fuck iCloud forever tho

Good summary of some of the issues I've had. http://www.idigitaltimes.com/apple-music-problems-how-fix-issues-syncing-playlists-icloud-library-offline-455939

wait hold on ... am I going to have these issues regardless of whether I choose to use the new streaming service? like as soon as I upgrade my phone to 8.4?

most likely not tbh

So frustrating not to be able to transfer/sync playlists through USB and have to rely on shoddy icloud uploads.

that would be fine and make perfect and brilliant sense if it worked, given what a 20th century pain in the arse usb syncing is.

i tried doing this to clear my icloud music library but the 'reset' button doesn't exist, either because it knows i never had an itunes match subscription (why that would matter is beyond me) or apple just doesn't know what it's doing.

oh and lukas, if you back up your whole entire music library (including all your music files and directories and your 'itunes library.itl' file) before upgrading, the worst that can happen is that all your music is intact somewhere that's beyond apple's reach. technically speaking upgrading ios shouldn't impact your mac, but this whole thing is so buggy that doing anything seems to be a risk now.

iTunes is refusing to put the Babymetal album on my phone ;_;

Side loading music onto iPhone, regardless of whether Apple Music is involved, is a fucking nightmare and I feel like I'm risking a corrupted database every time I do it.

main problem I've had is that saving things to 'make available offline' doesn't seem to work reliably at all. not sure how and when it actually downloads and saves it and how long that takes. but it def doesn't do it right after you select that.

I like this service overall, but I am surprised by how complicated it can be to manage the music on my phone now. I feel like for the last three or four years I've been at war with Apple over what I get to put on my phone. It wants to sync automatically with a library I don't spend much time grooming, while I want to manually allot the limited storage on my phone, the way I was conditioned to do back in the day with iPods. Slowly but surely I am losing this war.

^ feeling this post