Fellow Canuck Jim Dalrymple from The Loop is angry over his Apple Music experience, noting the service “is a nightmare and I’m done with it,” venting off on his situation this morning:
At some point, enough is enough. That time has come for me—Apple Music is just too much of a hassle to be bothered with. Nobody I’ve spoken at Apple or outside the company has any idea how to fix it, so the chances of a positive outcome seem slim to none.
As if all of that wasn’t enough, Apple Music gave me one more kick in the head. Over the weekend, I turned off Apple Music and it took large chunks of my purchased music with it. Sadly, many of the songs were added from CDs years ago that I no longer have access to. Looking at my old iTunes Match library, before Apple Music, I’m missing about 4,700 songs. At this point, I just don’t care anymore, I just want Apple Music off my devices.
I trusted my data to Apple and they failed. I also failed by not backing up my library before installing Apple Music. I will not make either of those mistakes again.
So far, I haven’t had issues with Apple Music, but Jim’s situation sounds downright frustrating. I don’t have a massive music library and the majority of my listening is through curated playlists based on my tastes and Beats 1 occasionally.
Have you experienced any issues with Apple Music and your music library?
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Absolutely none. I loving the service so much that I cancelled my Spotify subscription. All my music is still on the iPhone. I had no problems except yesterdays downtime. I wonder what JIM did wrong?!?
Same here, I cancelled my Rdio subscription. Note that I didn’t have any local music, have about 50 albums and odds songs purchased from iTunes and only had an iTunes match subscription for 2014.
He didn’t tweet Taylor Swift for support yet to fix this!
Interesting thought…. but big mistake by so many users was not to do a backup or even delete all the music from their hard drive after the match by ?music..and rely on the Cloud and Apple Music.
?Music is not for everyone for sure. If u are the type of just wanting a locker in the Cloud for your music, iTune Match is the perfect match… if you like to stream new music and get new stuff all the time, ?Music is great…
For me, my only concern… the service doesn’t seem to be at 100%. A lot of issues here and there. So many bugs on the computer. The create a radio station from a song doesn’t seem to be working with all songs… And i’m not talking about the plenty of issues when the services was down…. but it’s free for now…
But I’ll expect a lot of improvement when the 3 months is over and with iOS9.
If i can give some tips, especially when the service is down, streaming is nice but put some music for offline too.
And just enjoy Beats1, it’s been very interesting 🙂
I’m glad that my computer doesn’t have the Apple logo font that you’ve used. I initially read this on my iphone with all of the Apple logos all over the place and it looked absolutely ridiculous, never mention the time it took you to add apples instead of using the actual letters to spell “Apple”. I’m sure you’re a great guy, but no more posts full of little apple logos. It’s annoying to read and makes your opinions look way more biased and non-objective than they may be.
? = Option+Shift+K, really easy… Apple named it ?Music, “AppleMusic” is what people without Macs call it because they can’t type the icon. Not criticizing anyone for not typing a character, who really cares right? I will however respond to the silly person criticizing people who know how to type it on their computers.
Ouch. That really sucks. I think the app interface kind of sucks, especially getting music saved to the phone. There should be an easier/faster way. And I’d rather have some sort of genius playlist based on my song likes than the suggested collections of single artists… that’s boring.
I’ve been really enjoying Apple Music. Many new artists and songs discovered and added to my library and the integration is awesome with what I had prior.
The first thing I thought was, man just restore from your backup or something, then I read that he didn’t have one, and ouch! That’s gotta be the biggest kick to the gut. That’s the moral of the story for me. Gotta make sure you backup before turning Apple Music on and relying on it.
Yep, sounds like it.
I had many troubles with Apple Music so I can relate. Songs on my iCloud Library having problem syncing, songs that doesnt want to download, losing my songs,etc.. It honesly have been kind of an hassle to get everything to work and I havent feel like it was the Apple ”it just works” type of product. Otherwise, I like the service and think I am going to stick with it after the promo. I just wish they would have a SOngza-like experience with moods.
I’ve used Google play music as my primary for over a year, used spotify for a month and Apple Music since day 1. Apple music is hands down the best of them all for my personal style of use. I’ve never purchased music, I’ve always streamed, so removed music is no issue for me.
I think I love the deep integration the most. Being able to ask Siri what song is playing at my local clothing store, then having the option to instantly add it to my library is amazing. Not to mention requesting to play any song, top songs from a specific year, or even theme songs to my favourite tv shows. Apple Music is here to stay!
Sounds like Apple has really won you back from Android eh!
Heh yes. They paid for half my iPhone, bought me my Apple watch and got it 2 months early. It’s hard to say no.
I’ve really enjoyed my time with iPhone so far, I think i’ll be sticking with them for a while.
I’ve used Google Play Music as well, since it first became available in Canada. I was so excited for Apple Music, but having now used it for a few weeks, I cannot for the life of me see it as “hands down the best”; in fact, I think it pales miserably compared to Play Music. For me, it’s as cumbersome and awkward as Apple fans usually accuse Android of being.
I’m very thankful I didn’t give up my $7.99 charter price for Google Music on the assumption that Apple Music would be better.
Fair point. I too pay only 7.99 however I’ve suspended it for now.
Perhaps Apple with smooth out the rough edges after a little time. I feel they are doing very well considering they’ve only been live for less than a month.
Maybe they’ll win you back soon 😉
I’ll definitely be giving it a chance till September 30. 🙂 But unless there are some major changes and improvements, I won’t be paying for it.
Apple is the master of making things simple and beautiful, but with Music, they seem to have done the opposite to, I guess, differentiate themselves from the many others on the market. When you can’t even get playlists to sync across multiple devices all belonging to the same account, you know you’re failing at the most basic level of a streaming service.
I’ve not had issues of losing songs yet, but yeah, Apple Music is a beast to deal with compared to the other streaming services I’ve used.
I created playlists on my phone, and despite being signed in to the same Apple ID on all my devices, the only songs in those playlists on all other devices, are those that I purchased and own; none of the songs added from Apple Music are there. Plus a host of other issues.
Add to that, the fact that for desk top use you MUST install iTunes, and Apple Music won’t be my choice past the free trial. I’m hoping that they make some major updates and simplifications, but right now, it’s a total mess. Even now, in the midst of the free trial when I’m trying my best to use Apple Music and only Apple Music so I can get used to it, I still find myself going back to my Google Play Music subscription because, well, it just works.
What would you expect them to use for desktop use?
A web browser of course. There’s no need for proprietary clients to stream music.
Oh, right. That makes sense. Don’t know how I missed that.
Personally I always listen to my music in iTunes, so Apple Music works for me but web browser access would be really nice for those who don’t want to use iTunes, or for someone who’s using a computer that’s not theirs.
Yeah, the biggest issue for me is I like to stream music at my office and our IT department won’t allow us to install any software on work computers. That means, I can’t access Apple Music at work. With any other service, it’s not an issue, just go to the web address. I’m hoping when they expand to Android, that they’ll come up with a solution other than iTunes.
Very desapointed by the service. Radio like generation x, has only a few title that plays over and over. Same for the francophe radio. I’m trying to get actual french song but living in canada i can only have french canadian song. So basically playlist are made based on the country and there is no way to acces playlist from other country. Very frustrating so far. Playlist proposition from apple are very off too despite me checking all the song i like.
I have itunes match too, so i guess i’ll not go after the 3rd month
Its annoying that my playlists never sync… i made a playlist off all the music from 2014, or 2015.. and they NEVER show up on my device 🙁 a pain!!!
I’m loving it, plus Beats 1 Radio is a lot of fun and has introduced me to music I didn’t even think I’d like.
It’s a nice place to have all access under one hood instead of switching between apps for music listening.
I was loving the service until I found out it renamed and mixed up almost all of my songs in iTunes like it did when I subscribed to iTunes Match, but it’s far worst now. The cd covers are fine but most song titles don’t fit with the songs.
I’m super angry. I’ll have to lose lots of hours do repair my library. DO A BACKUP. I was too excited about Apple Music so I didn’t do a backup. I really want to cry.
I am happy with Apple Music, coming from Spotify Premium I think the two are very comparable. I have a large library (10K+ songs) of music synced with iTunes Match and so far my only gripe is I have different versions of songs and sometimes it will play the wrong one. For instance, Led Zeppelin – Babe I Am Gonna Leave You – is playing the rough mix from the deluxe edition when I played the song from the album Mothership from Apple Music (an album I do not have in my library). I would imagine these things will get hashed out but for now I do not see anything really wrong with it. Yes it is clunky at times and have to dive through a couple menus but I find it really is no matter how far into the menus to jump back to the main screens. Another thing, the search bar is easily accessible from almost all screens in the music app which for me is a win, in Spotify if I was deep into the menus (related artist to another related artist, and then an album) if I wanted to get back to search something new I had to continuously hit back and this was so frustrating and bothered me almost daily. So do both have their issues I would say yes, however Apple Music is certainly the better of the two at this point for me.
I actually had a terrible situation a couple days ago (which persisted AFTER the service was supposed to have been restored post-VMA fiasco) where I couldn’t access anything I had in the cloud with iTunes Match, including iTunes purchases. This was across devices that were running Apple Music and those that weren’t. Very frustrating. The next day it was fine. Doesn’t sound like Jim’s problems though. I don’t think I lost any songs, though I do have them backed up offline!
Just my perspective –
I have match and a local library of about 25,000 songs and I have only had a few issues of 1 or two albums doubling up both in the library and in a playlist made for each of the two albums. It was easily fixed by removing the album in iTunes (and iCML) and re-adding it again. Generally it’s been great though it’s unfortunate that ones I have selected for online listening then cannot be played from a shared libraries.
I guess I have been lucky.
My advice for avoiding potential issues:
– Backup iTunes Library.
– Sort your music by “kind”.
– Copy all of the music that is not a pure and clean iTunes purchase to a folder.
– Now delete this music from iTunes.
– Turn on Apple Music.
– Sync all your devices.
– Now slowly add the none Itunes purchases to your library (from the folder you made).
That would kill all of my play counts, ratings and playlists based on those songs, so no thanks. 🙁
I was having major problems with my library files deleted having to rebuild my playlists. They released the new itunes and clearing out files in match seems to have fixed it. After reading this I am getting worried about it again.
1. Try turning off Apple music and watch what happens to the playlists you created before Apple Music.I logged out of my Canadian account and into my Spanish account on my phone. Then when I logged back into my Canadian account, all of my personal playlists based on music I own were gone. When I turned Apple music back on, my personal playlists came back. This is a bad bug and also bad news if you decide to leave Apple music.
2. Downloading music for offline use is still buggy. I downloaded a bunch of my music for my biking trip across France and I tested it before leaving going into airplane mode and everything worked. When I got to France, most of the offline music was no longer offline which I discovered after half of my French cellphone data had disappeared. I’m not sure if that was related to swapping sims in and out or what, but watch out for your data usage even if you download music for offline usage.