
Apple Stole My Music - panic
https://blog.vellumatlanta.com/2016/05/04/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously/
======
funkyy
I am surprised at people trying to rationale Apples wrongdoing by pointing at
Google and bringing some crazy examples.

There is no rationale in this - this is outright breaking your privacy and
ownership rights. No terms and conditions can be above law. It doesn't matter
what others do - Apple is doing those crazy things here and there trying to
test the ground which indicates they are not pro privacy and pro user, but
rather are willing to go huge lengths to please music industry.

Only because you eating in the restaurant it doesn't mean waiter can run to
your house and smash all of your food in the fridge reasoning "from now on you
are covered".

~~~
clapinton
Remember the U2 fiasco, when Apple decided to break into your computer and
push their new album through iTunes? It seems like whenever Apple decides to
take control of your files, shit happens.

Back in the day, I tried to use iTunes for a while when I bought my iPod. One
of the first things that it asked me was to take control of my music, as it
would reorganize it by itself. I agreed, but tested it first with a small
sample. When I saw the mess it had done to the way I organized my music,
specially with the files' names, I backed out of the auto-organize option and
preached heavily against it to everyone I knew.

I learned my lesson: never let whatever service control your files. And
always, ALWAYS have backup. Remember: The answer to life, the universe and how
many backups you should keep of your stuff is 42.

~~~
Hydraulix989
I've survived for 20 years now with zero backups (across at least 10
mechanical hard drives, some of them Seagate) and have never lost data.

~~~
grmarcil
“There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold
pilots.”

------
rossng
Every time I am asked to set up someone's Apple device, I find it incredibly
difficult to:

* Get it synced properly

* Determine what is stored in iCloud/on-device

* Ensure that device contents are actually backed-up, unless done manually

* Set up simple things like email accounts

Just a month or two ago, I was helping someone whose iTunes music wouldn't
sync to their iPhone. It turned out that, when they signed up to Apple Music,
iTunes had silently flipped on a setting that prevents this. Working out what
on earth was happening took me almost an hour.

Yet everyone tells me that their Apple devices 'just work'. I don't have the
same experience - I find their behaviour to be utterly opaque and non-
deterministic. Am I alone?

~~~
pjsg
No -- you aren't alone. Whenever I connect my daughter's iPhone to iTunes (say
to add more music) we take our lives in our hands. You get scary popups that
ask you a question and provides two options -- neither of which is what you
want.

I don't know whether this is deliberate on the part of Apple to discourage the
use of iTunes, or whether they really think that it works well and is
intuitive. For anybody from Apple reading this -- iTunes is not intuitive. It
is horrible.

~~~
mtreis86
Itunes is the worst.

It can, without asking, delete the music from your device or your folders,
reorganize your folders, rename your songs and reset their id3 tags.

The mentality of "our users are stupid, just do everything for them" seems
pervasive throughout apple's products.

~~~
gglitch
I only just started using a mac/iphone after many years of only using Linux
and Android, and my impression is that although they'd object to the language,
yes, that's pretty precisely their business model, and its an insane success.
I'm not saying most people actually are stupid, but I'm saying that probably
the set of people who either (a) are not stupid and want their computer to do
something different than what iTunes automatically does, or (b) somehow,
whether by ignorance or villainy, get screwed by a situation like the one in
the post, barely register in Apple's statistics. I'm (a). The author is (b).
We're edge cases. The moral flavor of Apple's business model will continue to
not matter while people keep shoveling over the dollars.

~~~
Bartweiss
Although (b) is small, it does tend to produce truly vocal enemies enemies of
the company.

I had the joy of buying a product that Apple swears doesn't exist ("Our
records say we never made a machine with that serial number, so I'm not
allowed to put you into the support system.") Three dead logic boards later,
I'm done with the company altogether.

I'd like to think that with market penetration nearly complete, Apple will
start to face consequences for this. They're depending on beating competitors
and pushing upgrades now (instead of selling to new buyers), so lost customers
are a bigger threat. I'm not holding my breath, though, it's just too rare.

------
6stringmerc
At first I thought the tone of the article was a bit hyperbolic, but upon
reading further, no, this totally fits with the emotions that I'd probably
feel upon such a situation. Shock, then horror, then anger. Then solution
minded...then when hitting a wall...

> _When giving the above warning, however, even in my most Orwellian paranoia
> I never could have dreamed that the content holders, like Apple, would also
> reach into your computer and take away what you already owned._

It just feels dirty, and, as my Software Developer Uncle probably would've
called it, "Playing outside the sandbox." I mean, sure, as the article notes,
the TOS gives Apple a lot of consent, but "Loss or Damage" via incidental use
vs. outright deletion via intentional coding feels...different. Maybe legally
they're not...

I do remember ranting at the top of my lungs after an online jam software
installed an update and crashed my Win7 PC laptop so hard it had to rebuild
via a command prompt screen. By then, I already had CD backups, a USB HD 500GB
full of projects, and it was a cold reminder. The laptop restored fine, but
whoa, not fun. Not what I signed up for in the agreement, risk-wise, I felt,
so I've essentially stopped using that software.

...and I'll close by reminding myself I'm perfectly reasonable with my Win
laptop setup, not running iTunes (Winamp), and backing up to a local cloud or
other media (another USB HD coming soon). Life happens, accidents happen...but
there's some funky software out there.

Heck of a story, and one I will point to gladly when discussing paths for
audio DAW hardware/software platforms.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
Corporations have spent decades conditioning their users to accept all ToSs
and EULAs, using a combination of forbidding the software outright (often with
no ability to get a refund) and applying scary language that they have limited
the abuse of only as much as they thought would escape the public's notice.
Now that their investment has been completed, they want their returns.

My solution to this (and to issues like this outside of software) is extreme
but it will fix the problem. When one side creates a contract of any sort
(ToS, EULA, phone contract, home buying contract) which primary purpose is to
be signed by numerous other individuals who have little to no ability to alter
the contract, the other parties are allowed to use lack of understanding to
break the entire contract unless the creator can show beyond reasonable doubt
(I would use clear and convincing, but that would be abused) that the signer
did understand the entirety of the contract.

It would break contract law as we know it, but it would force simple, easy to
understand contracts and it would penalize any robo signing practices.
(Personal story: last time I went to a phone company, they gave the contract
to read on a small device where I could only read 2 lines at a time and where
part of the display was broken. I wasn't allowed a print out of the contract
until after I signed. I walked away and have to this day not gotten a
smartphone because of the downright evil practices of cell phone companies).

~~~
6stringmerc
Oh I can totally agree with you on a lot of those points - the balance of
power has shifted to the point of even taking away legal recourse, a la
"BINDING ARBITRATION" which I'm skeptical of, re: conflict of interest.

I've honestly kicked around a legal-ese type write-up of 'Personal Terms of
Service' type disclaimers - subject to change at any time - essentially
stating that by taking payment for a service there is a negotiating platform
to reconcile conflicting claims. As in, I claim that I should never be subject
to an early termination fee if I'm personally unstatisfied with the service,
and the service provider says they alone are allowed to waive the fee. Well
then, that's a conflict of terms, and by taking my money for a service, they
implied they would allow my ToS to usurp theirs (e.g. it's written in my ToS
that accepting money creates a binding agreement for such a thing), etc, etc.

I thought it was an exercise in basically being selfish, but the more times
examples like this surface, the more it actually starts to sound reasonable.
That's...pretty wild to me. I mean, I have a lot of respect for contracts and
see them as the ties that hold a lot of commerce together, so they've got
real, practical use that should be encouraged. But when it comes to "wiggle
room" that sounds a bit like gamesmanship to tilt the power, then I also think
fighting back is a natural result, childish as it might seem at first.

------
Terretta
Apple iTunes Match (and Apple Music) subscriber, with 23,000 hand ripped
songs, only about 18,000 able to exact match by Apple, 5,000 are less common
versions.

Also have enabled iCloud Music Library. Note these are three different
services, and iCloud Music Library has been the most likely culprit for
monkeying with your music, not Apple Music.

The combo of all three has deleted or auto-replaced exactly zero of my custom
rips. I can use a series of steps (smart playlist to find matched songs, then
manually delete that set) to shift to using Apple's high quality unprotected
version, or not.

I wonder if the key to everything working as you imagine is the Match
subscriptions:

[http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-
match/](http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/)

If using Match, then after matching, manually deleting local, then re-
downloading, you end up with a very high quality file without DRM that will
continue to work fine and be portable, even after you cancel.

I'm not sure what happens if using only Apple Music without Match.

The linked article sounds a lot like the iCloud Music Library beta problems in
July 2015:

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/01/apple-music-
users-...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/01/apple-music-users-
complain-icloud-music-library-deletes-renames-itunes-content)

And similar support experiences:

[http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/24/i-got-my-music-back-
at...](http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/24/i-got-my-music-back-at-least-
most-of-it/)

~~~
osi
Fellow iTunes Match subscriber - been using it since the release with zero
problems.

~~~
acomjean
Me too. I really like iTunes match and it seems to work well. For those that
are unfamiliar, it makes all your music on your main machine available from
the cloud for a small yearly payment (25$?). It does this by matching your
music to its own library and uploading the stuff it doesn't have.

One of the strange things is I have 2 mp3 rips from CD with skips. When I play
over the internet with iTunes match the files still skip. These are common
songs, so whatever they are doing to determine if that song is in their
library is working (I guess).

My only complaint is sometimes it breaks up my albums if it decides that songs
are by different artists. (Bob Marley, vs Bob Marley and the Wailers)

------
onion2k
I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files from
the user's computer apart from an intent to lock the user in to the service by
making it tremendously hard to leave. That's the black hole of UI dark
patterns.

~~~
delinka
"I can't think of a single reason why Apple would want to delete the files
from the user's computer..."

Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being
helpful here.

But seriously, sounds like a "good idea" gone wrong - "I know! Let's save the
user some space by serving all their music from the cloud!" The moment that
file deletion came up in the design, the option to opt-in should have been
added. Unless someone at Apple did indeed intend lock-in ...

~~~
dingo_bat
> Well, to save precious local storage space of course. Apple's just being
> helpful here.

Yeah, storage that was made precious by apple by not supporting an SD card
slot. Very "helpful".

~~~
oarsinsync
This isn't about a lack of expandable storage (all Macs have at least one USB
port, some come with SD card slots), but rather that a lot of Macs come with
very small SSDs.

I can totally see how this might have seemed like a good idea. Shame it's
just... not.

~~~
dingo_bat
I was kinda assuming the iphone here. Didn't think the app on a desktop OS
would show that behavior. Is this true? Do people really run out of space on
laptops and desktops due to photos?

I just checked the apple website and it seems you're right. 3 out of the 5
available Macbook pro variants have <= 256GB storage.

~~~
oarsinsync
> I had just explained to Amber that 122 GB of music files were missing from
> my laptop

This is very much about a laptop rather than a phone. And yep, I'm also
suffering from this. I've got a 2010 MacBook Air with 256GB storage. I'm down
to 10GB free space and struggling to decide how to cope with the now 160GB
Photos library.

------
buro9
It's worth noting that Google Photos actually does something similar... the
photos are "backed up" even in their "original" form... but I don't believe
it's possible to actually restore (download all) from Google Photos.

I thankfully have a local backup of the photos I took, but when a phrase like
"backup" is used, it is implicit and understood that there is a "restore"
mechanism.

Google Photos lacks a "restore" mechanism, and it sounds like the same is true
of Apple Music.

Google Play Music also does the matching/mismatching thing.

An uploaded Ladytron - Gravity the Seducer was replaced by a remix album but
remains tagged as if it's the original. This is probably due to them not
having the original, and this was a 90% match based on tags... but 90% is not
good enough. I worked in the music industry and have so many demo tapes,
master cuts that were not subject to post-production, etc. I want the version
I have, and not some approximate guess at something similar-ish.

This isn't just an Apple issue.

~~~
dingo_bat
This is exactly why I use OneDrive to backup my photos along with the google
photos thing. I've tried explaining my logic to several people but usual
replies are "but I can still see them on the website!". "But you won't have
the image files anymore." "But I can open the website and see the pics,
right?" At this point I just sigh and give up. Oh there's a download all
button too, but it does NOT return the original files. All the files are much
smaller than the original images.

~~~
fps
> Oh there's a download all button too, but it does NOT return the original
> files.

It _does_ return the original files.

Here are two files, one that got backed up off my phone by google photos,
which I then downloaded from google drive, and one that I copied directly off
my phone via USB:

    
    
       $ md5sum IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR*
        4bcb38a2e3869b4c769301c1664f5846  IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR (1).jpg
        4bcb38a2e3869b4c769301c1664f5846  IMG_20160504_160057648_HDR.jpg
    

The files are identical.

~~~
dingo_bat
How big are your files? How many megapixels? I just see that the pictures in
my phone are ~4-5 megabytes big and when I download them from
google.com/photos, they are just a bit under a megabyte mostly.

~~~
piyush_soni
There's an option to upload the pics at 'Original Size' or 'High Quality'
(reduced). If you use the Original quality (which counts against your
storage), you should see the same image.

~~~
dingo_bat
OK yeah that does make sense. I had that on earlier but my google Drive quota
ran out. So I switched to 'High Quality' (reduced). Maybe that's why I do not
get the original pics.

~~~
piyush_soni
Yeah, I have set that as high quality as well, as though reduced in size, the
pictures are are _almost_ the same in appearance.

------
hudo
Similar what happened to me years ago - i got new iphone, installed itunes, it
synced all local files. Few weeks later, i de-synced the phone or something
like that, and all my local files were gone! Still not sure how or why, there
were no warnings or anything. From that day, i stay as far as possible from
iTunes and similar "smart music sync" apps. Spotify doesn't see my local music
collection, and vice versa. All music streaming services and their apps are
total crap, they try to lock you in and manage everything like you're an
idiot.

~~~
speeder
I had an iPod that I won in a contest ( I don't think Apple hardware is ever
worth its price, wouldn't buy one ).

My sister borrows my iPod, plugs on her Windoes machine that had iTunes, and
it offers to sync, and she clicks "ok" on autopilot.

ITunes couldn't recognize the iPod, since it was mine, not hers, and decide
thr best course of action is wipe it clean...

~~~
mapt
My mother has an iPod she bought to listen to music. She interfaces through
Itunes, and doesn't know what a file is. She's bought maybe 250 tracks from
Itunes, out of a 2500 track library. She is not especially emotionally stable.

We finally bought her a new computer.

She plugged it in to charge it. The iPod wiped itself clean. She had not even
installed Itunes on the new PC yet. It took us a solid day and a half to get
through her traumatic reaction and get the music back on with the new Itunes
install through a thumb drive, using Windows Explorer and a new 'import
library' pass to bypass Itunes' asinine UX decisions.

------
Animats
It might be worth filing a criminal complaint with the FBI, under the "exceeds
authorized access" provision of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.[1] Apple's
EULA [2] does not give them unlimited access to your computer. It just keeps
you from suing them in civil court over it. You probably need a lawyer and a
press agent. Someone really needs to take this to court.

See the Justice Department's CFAA guide [2], under "Intentionally Damaging by
Knowing Transmission". Also read the section on "Exceeds authorized access",
starting at page 11.

This guy was told that the software was operating as intended. That shows
criminal intent. It eliminates the defense in the CFAA under "No action may be
brought under this subsection for the negligent design or manufacture of
computer hardware, computer software, or firmware." The CFAA has a civil suit
provision: "Any person who suffers damage or loss by reason of a violation of
this section may maintain a civil action against the violator to obtain
compensatory damages and injunctive relief or other equitable relief." That
may override the EULA, but this needs legal advice.

[1] [https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-
ccips/l...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-
ccips/legacy/2015/01/14/ccmanual.pdf) [2]
[http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
services/itunes/appstore...](http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-
services/itunes/appstore/dev/stdeula/)

------
drbawb
iTunes is the driving reason behind why I got rid of my iDevices.

First of all using iTunes for Windows has a way of making its users feel like
something of an afterthought.

Secondly I was always _scared_ to sync my devices. Is this the day it tries to
undo my jailbreak? Is this the day that deleting a playlist actually removes
all the songs from my device? Is this the day that it removes an app I depend
on because Apple decided to kick it out of the app store?

Somewhat relatedly I never felt comfortable plugging my iPhone into my
secondary computer. The whole process of authorization and syncing is just
horribly opaque.

It's some of the most opaque software I've ever had the displeasure of using.
How they managed to fuck up a file copy[1] so badly is beyond me.

Android isn't without it's own faults, but at least it feels like it's own
independent device, with its own _copy_ of my library. I don't want a
complicated sync mechanism: I want to put this new album onto my phone.

[1]:
[https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dop](https://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_dop)

------
musesum
> "Amber relayed to me that she’s had to suffer through many calls from people
> who cancelled their Apple Music subscription after the free, three-month
> trial, only to discover that all of their own music files had been deleted
> and there was no way to get them back."

The Apple Music three month trial had a positive affect on my listening
habits. I tried it, hoping to discover new music. But the UX was a slog. No
easy pivot points on artists and songs. A DJ workflow vs listener workflow,
which added complexity. No collaborative filtering.

So, I switched to Spotify. The "Discover Weekly" section that uses Echonest (I
think) has surfaced new artists and songs to explore. Pivot points on songs,
artists, and playlists are straightforward.

Have spent 100s of hours hours ripping and curating high 100s of CDs over the
last 25 years. Barely touch em. At this point, if you'd ask me to choose
between my old catalog and Spotify, I would choose the later. Heh, thanks to
the Apple Music 3 month trial.

~~~
Coincoin
The problem with Spotify is 25% of their library has that horrible UMG
watermark on it. It makes any UMG music before 2013 unlistenable. Apparently,
UMG fixed the problem on their side but Spotify don't give enough of a damn
about quality to redownload the UMG library.

~~~
musesum
Wow! Just listened to an A/B test:
[http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-
watermark](http://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark)

Pretty awful. I wonder why Spotify doesn't correct? Have been listening mostly
to electronica on Premium account. So, this is the first I've heard.

UMG. Had suggested a mobile collaboration on iOS to UMG, a few years back.
But, they were focused on Blackberry, back then.

[EDIT] Just tried the example song from the above link. And, yes, the
watermark is still there. Wow!

~~~
musesum
Followup: found the following comment on a UMG watermark thread:

> This watermark is embedded in UMG tracks on Rdio, Spotify, iTunes, Tidal,
> and others.

I would subscribe to a service that allowed me block watermarked files.

[edit] removed patent tangent

------
andrey_utkin
Enjoy your cloud service.

"FUCK THE CLOUD" by Jason Scott:
[http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1717](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1717)

Proud user of Linux and SELinux (mandatory access control system, which
protects your data from your apps).

~~~
andrey_utkin
Oh, I should have rather said "enjoy your closed source applications". Who's
next? Skype? Acrobat Reader?

------
mwexler
As the post mentions, in most cases of mainstream media, we all agree to
licensing our purchased media, not owning it, and so publishers and resellers
assume that all media in our possession must be purchased, and so are under
their control.

Of course this ignores user created media, or freebies, or gifts... but even
for the purchased access, I always wonder about that forced (dare I say
clickwrap?) licensing aspect. Why should I pay again for different format of
same info (amazon format vs. epub)? Why should NYT force me to pay extra for
tablet AND phone access to same content? Why should I pay extra for a digital
copy of a movie that I already have on Bluray? And of course, why should I be
forced to allow the publisher to control media on my drive?

We see this with books (printed books say that you have a license to read
them, but not to redistribute in any way electronically without permission,
even snippets or out of press books (the long running Google books issues) or
Amazon revising kindle books on your device) and as the post mentions, we see
it with music and movies/shows as well.

It's not as easy to distribute content these days as we may think; many book
publishers tried direct to consumer ebook sales over the last few years and
are pulling out of that game (the fact that o'reilly and tor worked so far is
because they give flex and target techies). Libraries are shifting to emedia
services like BiblioBoard and Hoopla which don't even let you download the
content except in very restricted apps; instead, you read images online in a
browser or stream only. The goal again is to enforce the licensing and get
consumers out of the "own" mandate.

At the end of the day, content creators should have a say in how their content
is consumed and sold, publishers have demanded a say, and resellers want to
own the customer and their data. The current model is too adversarial; I hope
we can come up with a way to reward content creators while still allowing a
reasonable flexibility of consumption and appreciation.

PS: We seem ok when Netflix drops a movie because we understand we are renting
access to their basket. I guess publishers want that too, only they want a
higher per unit price with even more control. Sigh.

------
mjw_byrne
I've been telling people for a long time to avoid Apple because it's an
organisation which has demonstrated a pattern of contempt - to its customers,
to its competitors, to the developers who use its app store and to the courts.
The replies I get are so depressingly apathetic: "but the iPhone is nice"; "I
like how simple it is to use"; "the design is so pretty". How can people be so
easily charmed into bending over for out-of-control megalomaniacs? Maybe the
secret to Hitler's popularity was the uniforms, which were admittedly really
snazzy (Godwin's law, I know, I know...)

~~~
FilterSweep
Don't pretend for a second that Microsoft's "Telemetry Services" (and forced
telemetry updates to Windows 7 users who refused to upgrade) or even Ubuntu's
search tracking for Amazon coffers is ANY different.

Or even worse, the malicious firmware code shipped with some Windows-based
machines.

The _entire_ industry is fraudulent to consumers - turning consumers into
products themselves.

With this industry, you pick your poison.

Do you want your hand held every step of the way in owning a computer? Get
Apple.....or alternatively use the UNIX environment it comes with instead.

Do you want all of your data tracked, shipped off and sold to a company like
Commscore or Nielsen that builds a dossier on you that puts Lexis Nexis to
shame? Get Windows or Chromebook.....or alternatively install a Linux distro
like Debian or Mint. I wouldn't even touch Ubuntu.

~~~
mjw_byrne
I don't single Apple out (although this wasn't clear in my original comment) -
there are plenty of other organisations and systems out there which are just
as pernicious, and my stance is to simply not use them. Remember Sony and the
rootkit stuff?

There are plenty of good alternatives out there. The price you pay for getting
to use computer systems which don't betray you is the cost of learning to use
Linux or BSD (these days, nothing like as painful as it used to be) and going
without some "conveniences" like magical available-everywhere cloud-synced
everything. In my book that's a tiny cost for the ability to keep proper
control and ownership of my own shit.

------
pkorzeniewski
This is ridiculous, but that's what you get by trading ownership and privacy
for convenience. I keep all my music in .mp3, movies in .avi and books in
.pdf, which means I can access them on any computer, using any software and I
don't need to worry that one day I may loose access to them. The world is
going mad, I wonder when (or if) people will realise how much control over
their stuff is in 3rd party hands, and it's just the beggining - we're now
entering the era of IoT, autonomous cars and so on. Fuck all of that, I'll use
"dumb" stuff as long as possible, even if sometimes it's less convenient - at
least I don't feel like a sheep following trends while getting more and more
dependant on corporations, whose only interest is to squeeze you as much as
possible.

~~~
rtpg
I have my photos on Google and have easy access.

More importantly for me, no matter what happens to my devices I will have some
form of backup. This is miles better than the default for people even 5 years
ago. You have to try really hard to lose data now! Well, so long as you're not
picky about the file size....

Granted Google has the keys to my kingdom. I have things like Backblaze but...

------
kalleboo
What would cause iTunes to actually delete the music? AFAIK, it doesn't have
an "Optimize Storage" option like Photos does, and it's never deleted any
files for me even when my disk is down to 0 bytes free.

~~~
donatj
It most certainly doesn't and the post is a load of FUD. It leaves the
originals in place unless you chose to delete them.

------
andremendes
Wow. It's hard to believe they were capable of fooling us this long. I mean,
how can we rationalize after they saying they will keep our files and if we
end business with them, good bye? This should be unacceptable, things like
this makes me sympathize a bit more with Stallman's hardcore philosophy about
software.

------
boxfire
All I can think of is my Wife's photography collection. She has terabytes of
photos. Imagine the day "iPhoto" works like this (which is probably not too
far off).

We have her do a manual backup periodically, but now I am going to automate
that and make it robust. I am honestly afraid for the future of that data.
This is just another part of why I am glad all of my own important data is on
Linux machines that I have relatively strong control over, and backup
automatically.

What a time to be alive! I can't wait until they can edit your memories out of
your brain and store them on the cloud, you know for more capacity and safer
recall.

------
firegrind
I'm surprised that it's not the re-encoding of the victim's compositions that
grab this headline.

Could I copyright a piece of unpublished music, then use the converted copy to
show a case against Apple for copyright infringement ?

~~~
ghusbands
Under the terms and conditions for these services, you typically grant the
host the right to do whatever actions they need to in order to perform the
service you ask of them. So you'd be unlikely to have a case on these grounds.
I am not a lawyer.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>in order to perform the service you ask of them //

Do they need to modify your copyright works to provide their service - is that
in the user agreement explicitly?

------
dendory
A long time ago I started to use the iPhone music app. Then I quickly
discovered that songs sent to the iPhone could not be sent back the other way.
This was just the beginning of Apple's lock-in. I got out of it right then and
there. Now I store my music on my own server and use one of the many third
party music apps to play them.

If a service smells of lock-in, you can be sure things won't become better,
they will become worse like the issues people get with Apple Music and iCloud.
You care about your files? Then you manage them, don't trust some service you
have no control over.

------
logan5
I had a non-English song on my Mac and iPhone prior to Apple Music
subscription. Now, my iPhone has a very different non-English song altogether.

What seems to have happened is, Apple incorrectly matched the original song to
another non-English song. Later, it deleted the original song on my iPhone and
gave me the incorrectly-matched version.

------
abalone
So, let's be clear about one thing: This is officially NOT how the software is
intended to function. According to Apple, original files are never deleted:
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204962](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204962)

I realize the blog post says an Apple rep told them otherwise, but if true,
they were wrong.

Also, who says "the software is functioning as intended"? That's not the style
of casual speech that Apple support reps are trained to use with real
customers.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I have complaints about Apple Music, but it's never deleted any of my files,
and frankly I don't see any setting that would say, in effect, "please delete
songs from my original library when you feel like it in order to save space."
Yes, I have unique files that iTunes failed to match and just uploaded. No,
those files weren't deleted, either. I've encountered some fascinating
problems with their matching algorithms but "I am destroying your music
library because that's what my evil masters in Cupertino have instructed me to
do because something something DRM! Ha ha ha!" just ain't one of them.

 _That 's not the style of casual speech that Apple support reps are trained
to use with real customers._

That seemed kind of off to me, too. The whole "Oh, yeah, it just deletes your
stuff, stop bitching" attitude is...not my experience with Apple. But it sure
does fit the the "let me confirm your worst fears about how terrible Apple is"
narrative better.

And, yes, I'm sure I'll be accused of being an Apple apologist, but really
it's just a certain level of weariness at this point. I hate iTunes, too. I
have problems with iCloud. I think Apple Music may be built around an
irreparably flawed paradigm (trying to maintain one unified library between
music you've added to iTunes on your own, bought from the iTunes Store and
added with Apple Music, rather than just maintaining "Local Library" and
"Cloud Library" as separate entities). But I'm just not seeing the Grand Evil
that's being ascribed throughout a lot of the comments here. In practice, my
Apple products still actually work pretty well. I'm not interested in
proselytizing to others, but I'm also not interested in constantly being told,
in so many words, that Apple products only appeal to the stupid or the
incompetent.

------
V-2
Looks like RMS was onto something after all ;)

~~~
jordigh
I want to buy a shirt that says "Richard Stallman was right :-("

edit: I'll be content with the subreddit for now:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/stallmanwasright](https://www.reddit.com/r/stallmanwasright)

------
konart
Never understood why people use iTunes. If I'd ever had to name the worst Mac
app - this is it.

Store your music, listen via [http://swinsian.com](http://swinsian.com) (for
example), back it up, be happy.

~~~
passivepinetree
As someone who can't bear to let go of his 160gb iPod classic (but still hates
iTunes with a burning passion), is there an alternative like Swinsian that
will still sync my iPod?

I've been handcuffed to iTunes for years because of the iPod syncing mechanism
but I'd love to switch.

~~~
konart
Never owned one, so I'll have to look for a solution when I'm home (I remember
Foobar2k had a pluging for this, but F2k is win-only).

After I've switched to Apple and used Apple music for a couple of months I
just bougth Fiio X3 II. Great thing for a good price.

~~~
passivepinetree
I've actually toyed with the idea of getting one of these. Can you tell me a
little more about it? IIRC the main thing holding me back was cost (~$200 for
the player and ~$50 each for two 128gb MicroSD cards), but at some point in
the relatively near future I'm going to outgrow the 160gb limit on the iPod
classic and I may as well bite the bullet and shell out the ~$300.

~~~
konart
Well, the usability is okay, menus' navigation is done with the wheel, while
commands like Play\Pause, FF,RW etc are done with middle and rear buttons. The
device came in with a plastic protection case.

Two outputs - headphones and Line out\COAX. Can be used as an external DAC
with windows PC (maybe other devices too, never dug too into it).

The UI theme is customizable:
[http://fiio.me/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=40141&extra=page...](http://fiio.me/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=40141&extra=page%3D1)

Firmware is updated pretty often even for older models.

PS: Oh, and it has Apple in-line headphone control. (Android in-line control
works too, but only for Play\Pause\Next|Prev. No sound control.)

------
alwaysdownvoted
It is a known fact that Apple tries the same ideas more than once, sometimes
years apart. If at first they fail, they will try again.

I recall an idea from the past where they wanted users to disclose to them all
the user's non-itunes music in return for some perceived benefit. At the time
I thought of this as a way for someone at some company to assess out how much
CD-ripped, Napster-shared, or other indepedently-sourced music was still out
there. Needless to day it didn't fly.

I have never in my life used itunes. I can tolerate most of today's "walled-
gardens" but not one that seeks to place a surcharge on friends sharing music,
which has always been the essence of how my music collection was built (pre-
digital). I would give up music before I would sign on to letting Apple
control my music collection.

If there were a robust, tiny command-line version of "itunes" that would run
on any computer, I might reconsider. But that's not happening either. That's
the true reason I have never used itunes. Strong distaste for the proprietary
Apple-only graphical software.

~~~
pessimizer
> friends sharing music, which has always been the essence of how my music
> collection was built (pre-digital)

I remember how excited I used to be when friends and I would drive to an out-
of-town show and stay with other friends who had big record collections. You
always brought a box of fresh blank tapes; and that's the same thing they'd do
when they came over your house.

------
Olap84
Reasons to pirate number 567839234

~~~
yedpodtrzitko
Let me paraphrase it - if there's a dozen of streaming services, and one of
them does misbehaves, it gives you a reason to pirate? That's a really poor
excuse (or if that's a joke, then it's a poor one too).

~~~
coderdude
You're basically trying to reason with a troll comment about pirating. They
don't need 5 billion reasons. There's only one. It's free.

~~~
speeder
I am from Brazil, we have stores and street vendors that sell pirated stuff,
frequently more expensive than the original... people buy it due to better
service and ease of payment. (example: pirated freeware, that was fan
translated, while the original is only in a language noone knows here.)

------
jonconley
I've had this same thing happen.

Not only do I have countless files gone, if you let the subscription lapse...
You don't get your music back and it wasn't there when I renewed.

Also, the cellular providers have to love how much of my own music I'm
downloading over their costly data services.

------
gcatalfamo
tl;dr:

 _" through the Apple Music subscription [...] Apple now deletes files from
its users [...] 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."_

------
sleepless
The power of backups! Also the power of not using cloud services...

------
dwighttk
This is awful and I'm glad I stayed away from the 3 month trial because I
would hate for this to happen to me.

Also: I know of a few people who would love for this to happen because it
would open up a lot of space in their hard drive which is almost completely
full. "I subscribed to Apple Music and freed up 100 GB! Sweet!"

That being said there should definitely be a way to avoid this and I would
personally prefer it to be opt-in than opt-out.

------
nerdponx
> iCloud Music Library is turned on automatically when you set up your Apple
> Music Subscription…When your Apple Music Subscription term ends, you will
> lose access to any songs stored in your iCloud Music Library.

That wording does not suggest to me "all of the music in iTunes will become
part of your iCloud music library." You can't sue for damages, but you can sue
them for lying or concealing information in the EULA

------
emodendroket
When I used iTunes Match they wouldn't delete your files unless you
specifically asked for it... which seems to me like a more sensible default
behavior, but I guess Apple is getting pretty aggressive about trying to
change user expectations.

e: Although one very rich thing is when I wanted to cancel it was impossible
to do without installing iTunes on my new computer until I contacted support
to complain.

------
snowwrestler
I like a lot of what Apple does. I love their computers and phones. I've
posted here numerous times about that.

But I have not turned on Apple Music, or iCloud Photos, for this very reason.
Cloud syncing services are a DISASTER for Apple.

I recently bought my wife an iPhone SE, and upgraded some older computers to
El Cap--fresh install + migrate files so I could get a clean start. But
turning on the cloud services, and configuring them to do what I expect, was
so complicated and scary that I just gave up. I'm syncing Safari bookmarks and
Notes, and that's it.

And even the Notes are a mess. I'm stuck with separate local and iCloud
folders of notes, because I simply don't trust Apple to not screw up or delete
my local notes in the course of trying to sync them.

Rule #1, #2, #3 of cloud syncing should be "do no harm." DropBox has largely
figured this out. Apple _has not_.

It's funny to think back to when Steve Jobs said that DropBox is a feature,
not a business. Well, it's a feature I use and happily pay for, and it's a
feature that Apple has yet to figure out.

------
sosadkitty
Apple deleted my backups from icloud, my win7 laptop, and all copies made on
flash drives. I had successfully backed up music not purchased on itunes for
years but now Apple says, "Oops, sorry. Just use apple music" How can I
restore my music? I'm not paying for apple music and my cds were stolen last
year so I cannot reload.

------
gumby
I'm a long term Mac user (primary desktop/notebook since mid 90s), but I do
feel Apple is cavalier about the Hippocratic oath of data ("First: do not lose
or transform the user's source data").

Since my mac is basically a unix machine it's trivial for me to make sure this
rule is followed, but it's not trivial for most people.

------
tabulatouch
Nothing beats offline data.

~~~
contravariant
Unless I'm misunderstanding, this _was_ offline data, apple decided to make it
'online'.

------
k-mcgrady
I don't see how they can say this is a feature - because it didn't happen to
me. I have a huge amount of music that they wouldn't be able to match and they
didn't delete any of it. Maybe this is because I'm also using iTunes Match.
Your issue might be iCloud Music Library (not Apple Music).

------
makecheck
I don’t understand why deletion would even be necessary in a case like this.
Are people filling up their drives that quickly? If a “service” thinks that
some data has become redundant, just _move_ the original out of the way and
tell the user where it went and what’s in that stash.

------
oneeyedpigeon
This is _exactly_ why I've held onto all my CDs, and why I continue to buy the
majority of my music in a physical format. I once had Apple ... iTunes match?
iCloud? I can't even remember what it was called ... decide that an Eminem
album I had was too racy and serve me a censored, unlistenable version
instead. And the complexity involved in keeping any kind of sizeable music
library in check using iTunes is overwhelming. I have two apple ids, some
music on an external hard drive, some on an internal hard drive, some
subset/superset/overlapping set of which is 'somewhere' in the cloud; it's a
nightmare. Is there a sensible alternative to iTunes that will a) not do
anything with 'the cloud' b) sync to my iPod?

~~~
Kadin
MediaMonkey and Fidelia are the two products that seem to be tossed around
most frequently as iTunes alternatives, and which seem to be reasonably close
to feature-parity (at least, as music players; they obviously don't do all the
garbage that Apple has stuffed into iTunes related to the iPhone). If you want
to basically get back to what iTunes was originally ("rip, mix, burn" plus a
good music player and organizer), those are probably the best bets.

Personally, I've been slowly moving to having my main music collection on a
home server, and then distributing it out to clients via Plex. I'm not 100%
pleased with the web interface compared to iTunes' thick-client interface, but
as iTunes' UI has gotten worse over time and Plex's has gotten better, they're
starting to approach each other in terms of usability.

The main complaint I have with Plex right now is that there's not an option to
specify the quality of the streamed music. It will do realtime transcoding (so
you can store lossless CD rips on the server), but the destination format is
hardcoded based on the client (I think web clients get 256 kb/s MP3, Android
gets something else, etc.). There's an open feature request to let the user
select it as a preference, and allow different codec/bitrate combinations
based on whether the client is on the LAN, on WAN, or on mobile.

Plex is, IMO, the best game in town for approximating the functionality of a
proprietary ecosystem (play all your stuff on all your devices anywhere) but
without the lock-in. You do need to be a reasonably intelligent person to set
it up, though.

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that MediaMonkey no longer works on
recent versions of Mac OS X, but that Swinsian
([http://swinsian.com/](http://swinsian.com/)) is the new hotness anyway.
Can't vouch for it, but it looks good.

------
darreld
I went all-in on Mac in 2001. Pretty unix and awesome hardware. I used iTunes
as soon as it was available. As a matter of fact I'm actually looking at a 1st
generation iPod on my desk right now (preparing it for eBay).

I have steered clear of this service from the beginning, partly because I'm
old and want my own old library and partly because I am very aware that Apple
can NOT do services of any kind, at all. They have botched everything they
have ever tried to do online. .me, .mac, accounts (I have 3 and they cannot
merge them).

I feel for this guy but, given their history, it's pretty much a slam-dunk
that Apple would drop the ball if it's a service.

------
cha5m
Stuff like this often makes me question using any DRM or platform-locked
services, particularly steam. If valve decided to make a shady decision there
is very little that its users could do about it.

------
bitJericho
I'd sue em regardless of the EULA. But I don't use apple anything, and I run
my own "cloud" and run my own backups. So nothing for me to worry about.

~~~
vacri
That EULA probably wouldn't fly here in Australia. The argument would be "you
can't say solely at the user's risk, as you position yourself as a premium
quality brand - you're misleading consumers". IANAL, though.

This was the reason Apple had to extend warranties on their hardware here - it
was pretty funny watching Apple try to argue to the government that they made
non-premium stuff just like everyone else, and therefore didn't have to have
the extended warranty. To which the government said, paraphrased, "cool story,
bro".

------
jmh42
While this is entirely unethical, it is an amazing business decision if they
get away with it without any harm to their reputation. I wonder if they
reputation risks were considered when they rolled out this "feature". It's a
good example for Bruce Schneier to add to the next edition of "Liars &
Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive".

------
demarq
Might this also be a problem with dealing with big a provider?

If this were a much smaller smaller company you might actually get to talk to
someone who can do something i.e "let me see what files we uploaded from
you... oh we'll send you a link...". With larger companies you usually talk to
"explainers", or people whose job is to explain to you that you are screwed
rather than explore solutions to your problem.

------
joesmo
Once again we have criminal action covered by the CFAA completely ignored by
the government because a large corporation is doing it. Serving malware
knowingly? No problem. Overstepping your access and deleting files that aren't
yours? No problem. But good fucking forbid an individual even types a wrong
url and they're in jail. Double standard much?

------
imgabe
I've had exactly one iDevice, an iPhone 3G, and the experience with iTunes
turned me off to them forever.

What should be a relatively simple task, plugging in a drive-like device to my
computer and moving files from one place to another is made needlessly
complicated and restrictive by forcing it to slog through the tar pit that is
iTunes. Never again.

------
jasonthevillain
Oh yeah. Never allow iTunes to manage your music (there's a checkbox.) In 2010
it wiped out the metadata from about 3000 songs and decided they were all
united by unknown. I tried a few autotagging libraries but had to do at least
half of it manually.

Sadly I haven't found a decent replacement for it.

------
joshuaheard
Not an Apple user, but I never sync streaming services to my personal
collections for fear of cross-contamination. I always set up a dedicated
folder for the streaming service, and if necessary, copy my collection to
that. Plus nightly full backups to a separate internal drive and Carbonite.

------
naryad
Really sad about what happened to blog author. This reminds me of the South
Park episode
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HumancentiPad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HumancentiPad)
manifesting in reality.

------
zyxley
There's obviously some kind of bug here, and one that Apple should rightfully
be lambasted over, but given that plenty of people, including me, have used
Apple Music without anything local getting deleted, it's pretty obviously not
intended behavior.

------
colin_jack
I unsubscribed from apple music when I found out about this and discovered
iTunes would not allow me to sync music I bought from bandcamp onto my
iDevices whilst using the iCloud support.

Does seem to be working times for apple, product wise they are making of
decisions.

------
feld
iTunes has readonly access to my music stored on my NAS. This is precisely
why.

------
davidhariri
I believe there's a setting when you initialize your library that allows
iTunes to manage your library. If this is turned on, when you drag a file into
iTunes, Apple copies the file into its own local storage so you have two
copies of it. If you delete a file in iTunes it will delete it's local copy.
Usually digital collectors will have this turned off if they're using iTunes
since they like to organize and name their files elsewhere and they don't want
to have two copies of the file. If you manage the library yourself i'm 99%
sure you would avoid any funny business, even with an Apple Music
subscription. The interplay of Beats, Apple Music, iTunes Match, audiobooks
and iTunes was definitely a blunder. In my opinion they should all be separate
apps.

~~~
emodendroket
What if I want iTunes to manage the structure/location of my music, but
without modifying the files themselves? That's what I thought "Manage my
library" was supposed to do.

------
dibujante
Isn't this a felony under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? It's intentionally
exceeding authorized access to a computer and intentionally (not even
recklessly) causing damage.

------
donatj
Is this a setting or something? I use iTunes Match and most certainly still
have all my existing local copies. I know because I regularly back them up and
they are certainly still there.

------
loup-vaillant
Proprietary software working against the interests of the user is not really
surprising. What _does_ surprises is how visible and immediate the effects
are.

Seriously, just use free software.

~~~
preetbhinder
While free software is good, the real problem is not being in control of your
data and trusting the cloud blindly.

~~~
loup-vaillant
And how do you think you lost control of your data in the first place?

Free software would never have deleted your files without asking you. Or maybe
once before it would be fixed as a critical defect in a matter of hours.

~~~
preetbhinder
I'm agreeing with you. However, when you move your data into the cloud, even
if the software is supposedly free, you have no ability to verify that. You
also don't control when or how that critical defect is fixed.

~~~
loup-vaillant
One little detail: I've read the official page for the Apple Music
Subscription, and nowhere do they tell you they _move_ your content to the
cloud.

This app is not supposed to move anything. Just copy it. The deletion part of
"moving" is a fraud, and possibly illegal.

------
gp7
wavs having "more samples" is a new one to me. Neat.

~~~
dTal
It's... a misleading statement. Usually technically incorrect. Possibly
technically correct in this instance. But philosophically true for the
purposes of the article.

WAVs support sampling rates up to 192khz, whereas mp3 only supports up to
48khz. However, you're unlikely to come across anything higher than 48khz
anyway unless you specifically look for it, or record it yourself (as the
author did).

Sampling rate has (basically) no effect on audio quality beyond the highest
frequency the file can contain - you can drop the sampling rate right the way
down to 8khz and it'll just sound a bit muffled but otherwise fine. The
primary reason to prefer WAV files over MP3 is that encoding something to MP3
irreversibly mangles it, and the author would be justified in being _extremely
pissed off_ that Apple decided to unilaterally do this and delete the
originals. It would be like deleting someone's RAW photos and providing
Facebook-sized jpegs as replacement, or deleting their home movies and
offering back gifs of them. Apple have committed a cardinal sin here, the
seriousness of which can't really be overstated.

------
Dorian-Gray
I am a published music producer, and I would suggest pursuing legal action
against apple if their policy has resulted in a person's self-created music
files being copied and manipulated. This is copyright infringement, and would
be damaging to any artist - especially if the served self-created tracks are
compressed significantly prior to their storage in apple's servers. I know
that my self-created music files represent years of my life, and for those
files to be permanently damaged would be a huge blow.

------
jvagner
I was going to come here to say that this was noted behavior when Apple Music
Match debuted, but apparently very few people are aware of it.

------
mring33621
All I can say is that I'm sooo glad to find out that I'm not the only one who
struggles with and is afraid of iTunes.

------
investinwaffles
This behavior also occurs in the traditional iTunes store if a record label
alters the track list of or re-releases an album.

------
macawfish
Apple was overstepping the boundaries a decade ago. I guess this is turning
out to be a multigenerational struggle.

------
Chromozon
Any lawyers around? I feel like this case would be simple to win in court.
Intentional property damage.

------
Globz
What is a good alternative to iTunes to manage music (not cloud related) on
Windows?

~~~
wstrange
What's wrong with cloud related?

Google Music is the cat's meow - and will locally sync all of your music down
to your local folders. Seems like the best of both worlds - you get a secure
backup, and the ability to have local copies

------
thevibesman
I rebuttal to the idea that Apple is "stealing" music was posted: "No, Apple
Music is not deleting your music – unless you tell it to"

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11638308](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11638308)

~~~
thevibesman
s/I rebuttal/A rebuttal/

Didn't notice the typo within the edit window; didn't mean to imply I wrote
that other article.

------
minusSeven
At this point I am really glad I could never afford an apple product.

------
croon
Cue the Apple rationalists in 3... 2... 1...

That really sucks, but I do hope you have a local backup and/or offsite backup
and not mentioning that for effect?

It's still amazingly evil by Apple, but I hope you still have your files.

~~~
d--b
He did, as per the article.

~~~
croon
Heh, sorry, I actually did stop reading just at the middle finger, which was
right before.

------
dandare
Am I the only one who recalled the 1984 ad an cringed?

------
ommunist
VOX is the answer. And ... geeks backup.

------
intrasight
This is not directed at anyone in particular, but:

"syncing" with a cloud service - stupid

not backing up - stupid

~~~
sotirisk
syncing is supposed to leave at least two copies which is clearly not the case
here. have you read the article?

~~~
intrasight
I did. And I know the article isn't about syncing - it's about Apple deciding
they know best how to manage your digital media files. I'm just making a
general comment.

The problem with "syncing" is if I delete a file on one device, what does sync
semantics say should happen? It is ambiguous, which is why syncing is a stupid
semantic. Copying files and deleting files is unambiguous.

------
msimpson
I smell a lawsuit.

------
MrPatan
It just works ;)

------
PaulHoule
iTunes is malware. It's the #1 reason why the first thing I do when I get a
Mac is install Windows on it.

~~~
ortusdux
I have a VM just for iTunes.

------
cscawley
Buy a NAS

------
pietrasagh
use computers not apples

------
mbrutsch
Lie with dogs, you get fleas. I have zero sympathy for those who fall prey to
closed ecosystem BS like this, including my own wife. People just don't
listen.

~~~
logfromblammo
I expressly disavowed family support for all Apple devices about 4 years ago.
If my spouse has a problem with the iPhone, it goes straight to the Apple
store without landing in my lap first. I'd rather be in the doghouse than use
iTunes.

Tough love, people. Time to stop enabling.

------
g4z
exactly! every time i read about someone having a problem with something, i
always check to see if my friends have had the same problem. if not, then
clearly the problem doesn't exist. pri.ck

~~~
dang
Personal attacks and name-calling are not allowed on HN, regardless of how bad
another comment is. We ban accounts that do this. Please read the site
guidelines and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11635410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11635410)
and marked it off-topic.

------
Hydraulix989
"Apple stole my stolen music" ftfy

~~~
DanBC
> I also mean original music that I recorded and saved to my computer.

> As a freelance composer, I save WAV files of my own compositions rather than
> Mp3s.

------
noonespecial
Sounds harsh but all I read was that someone had 122 gig worth of files they
considered precious to them and _no backup_.

Computer systems fail for all kinds of stupid reasons. What will you do _when_
that disk fails?

I admit this is a particularly stupid and infuriating reason for data loss,
but how little would it cost to have a backup of 122gb?

~~~
Freaky
" _I recovered my original music files only by using a backup I made_ "

~~~
noonespecial
Ah. I saw they part about needing 30 hours to redownload his collection and
thought this was his recovery strategy.

So it all factors down to "this software didn't do what I thought it would;
had to restore from backup. Careful everyone" but was then radically over
dramatized with "Apple _stole_ all my music!!!"

------
tacos
Writing histrionic nonsense like this does not advance your cause. Apple did
not "steal" your music any more than "rm -rf" or 300 million poorly
manufactured Seagate drives did.

"Matches found, press OK to delete [list of files] from your computer and
phone FOREVER" is what 99% of customers want.

Debate the quality of the match algorithm (it sucks), argue the proper UX for
a pretty basic function (it also sucks), but knock off the Orwellian sky is
falling stuff. Because that's obvious bullshit.

Apple has its own view of the culture, and has a pretty obvious way of mining
it for profit. You ain't changing them. You can perhaps however nudge them if
you're not a total asshole about it.

------
jjuel
My real question is if you truly are a composer and making your own music why
are you just storing it on your Mac? Wouldn't you want to have a NAS for that
or some sort of other storage option? I would not rely on my Mac for storage
of music I thought was very important. Including rare copies of songs or songs
I created myself. I would have a different more reliable storage option.

However, that is really shady on Apple's part to make that mandatory, and
should be looked into.

~~~
SilkRoadie
He said he had a back up and restored his music. As a user I would not expect
Apple Music to wipe my existing music collection.

------
buserror
To be fair, they probably came up with that in a way to reduce the /other/
army of people coming to see in the 'genius' to restore the laptop they've
never backuped EVER and have accidentally wiped, containing 10+ years of their
digital life...

~~~
nrinaudo
If it's the case, somebody at Apple is seriously incompetent.

\- Copy files that don't belong to them without the owner's explicit
permission: some people call that piracy. I believe individuals caught doing
that with movies have been faced with some hefty fines.

I understand the purpose, but it needs to come with a big, massive, _Allow
Apple to pirate your data, trust us, it 's for your own protection_ checkbox.
Who knows, it might even initially be true.

\- do you know of any good backup solution that forcefully deletes the files
it's backing up? Do you think there might be a reason why not?

I find this entirely unacceptable behaviour from Apple, and I say this as
someone who has been using OS X almost exclusively for 10+ years now.

~~~
coldtea
> _I believe individuals caught doing that with movies have been faced with
> some hefty fines._

I doubt it. The only hefty fines were for redistribution, not mere
copying/download.

~~~
DanBC
Apple are re-distributing. And they're doing as part of business, which
usually tips it from civil[1] to criminal[2].

[1] I think the US term is "a tort"?

[2] Fines and prison time, not damages.

~~~
coldtea
> _Apple are re-distributing._

Only to the user they got the audio themselves. Any proof they're
redistributing random X users not tagged in their collection files to others?

In any case, the whole "piracy" angle is BS (not to mention it lacks intent
and profit from explicit piracy).

What's at stake is plain bad program behavior -- deleting users files without
explicit confirmation, making bad matches to different versions of songs, etc.

~~~
mioelnir
> Only to the user they got the audio themselves.

How do you know that?

And it is irrelevant either way. That you are the sole owner of the rights of
a piece of music does not grant Apple an automatic license to distribute it
"just to you".

~~~
coldtea
> _How do you know that?_

I'm smart like that. Or rather I have read in detail about how Apple Music
works. Besides, the burden of proof is on those making that claim.

> _That you are the sole owner of the rights of a piece of music does not
> grant Apple an automatic license to distribute it "just to you"._

I call BS. That's exactly the same as Dropbox/Google Drive whatever making a
copy of your files and distributing them just to you, and tons of other Cloud
services handling your files besides.

At the moment you use Apple Music (which is a services for moving your music
collection to the Cloud among other things) you are implicitly allowing Apple
to upload and serve you your music files. Plus, you explicitly approved the
whole process and granted that right when you clicked on the iTunes/Apple
Music license agreement. Nothing different than what happens with thousands of
other services.

~~~
mapt
The work was not merely backed up, but repackaged into a format that Apple is
more comfortable selling in; .wav files were converted to AACs, and rare
remixes were converted to the popular hit versions. The old stuff was then
deleted from local storage without permission, which is intent to make these
privately owned tracks an excludable good, not to mention theft.

A further problem arises when a user has a non-transferrable IP that Apple
doesn't sell in his left pocket and some generic track that Apple sells in his
right pocket, and Apple picks both pockets with the intention of becoming a
redistributor. The user does not have permission to transfer, nor has he
indicated to Apple that he's given permission, for Apple to acquire the
proprietary IP and redistribute it. It is entirely plausible that this
proprietary IP was never intended for sale, was a trade secret, was a nude
tape, or was a classified recording.

There's all sorts of issues with Borg-style cloud IP assimilation under the
"Fair Use Doctrine", and commercial usage of the IP for "backup" while
simultaneously being a vendor of the IP (and competing products) make it
unlikely that you could apply fair use credibly for something this expansive.

~~~
coldtea
This clears things out:

> _On your original Mac, Apple Music will never delete songs without your
> knowledge. Your original library is scanned into iCloud, but your songs are
> yours, and Apple will not automatically delete them, or replace them with
> its own proprietary copies._

[http://www.imore.com/no-apple-music-not-deleting-tracks-
your...](http://www.imore.com/no-apple-music-not-deleting-tracks-your-hard-
drive-unless-you-tell-it)

------
nurmara
I sympathize with OP and I generally _really_ hate Apple's direction when it
comes to software and user experience ever since OS X Lion.

However, OP shouldn't claim that Apple 'stole' his music files. He signed up
for a paid service and he should have checked how the service will affect his
computer. We as users are responsible to know what software we're running on
our machines and what it does to our data. I understand that a standard TOS
agreement is ridiculously long and impractical to read, and I guess that's how
we are _trained_ to be lazy about protecting the integrity of our systems and
our data, but that does not give OP the right to blame Apple for delivering
exactly what they promised. I hate Apple but I don't think that it is
intellectually honest to claim Apple stole OP's music.

~~~
emodendroket
Nobody on Earth reads the entire manual before starting up some software; it's
the vendor's responsibility to not have insensible defaults like "delete my
local versions of files without asking me"

~~~
nurmara
True. We have reached this level because of our complacency, and not due to
Apple inherently trying to be malicious towards people like OP. The vendors
are responsible to have sensible defaults, but we can't buy their products,
use their software, sign up for their services, and then complain about malice
when the vendors are delivering exactly what we signed up for and agreed upon.
I'm just trying to say that OP should focus his energy on being more self
conscious about what he signs up for rather than claiming that Apple is
stealing his data. He gave up ownership of the data the moment he agreed to
the TOS. What Apple is doing is counterproductive and just illogical from a UX
point of view (in my opinion) but they did not _steal_ OP's data. The title is
a bit clickbait-y in that sense.

~~~
emodendroket
Well, they took a copy of it, compressed and maybe in a different version
(which is more or less what they advertise) but then also irretrievably
deleted the original, which is what he's upset about. Maybe "steal" is the
wrong word; it still seems outrageous.

------
givinguflac
I read the whole thing and all I hear is waaaahhh I don't keep proper backups
of data I care about, nor do I learn about the service functions before
signing up... This is ABSOLUTELY NOT the way it works, it's not a shady
practice, I use it daily and have lost nothing. Sorry you ran into a bug but
the is just Stupid. I would be shocked if the phone agent he spoke to is a
real person.

~~~
gerbilly
The author explicitly said that:

"I recovered my original music files only by using a backup I made weeks
earlier."

