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Bug Music Software Apple

Apple Begins Rolling Out iTunes Match With Audio Fingerprint to Apple Music Subscribers (loopinsight.com) 61

Posted by msmash from the squashing-bugs,-bringing-happiness dept.
In May, Vellum's James shared an ordeal that many people were able to relate to. Apple Music had deleted music files from his computer. It's an issue that many of us have faced over the years. At the time, Apple noted that it didn't actually know what was causing this. But it appears, it has finally figured out the issue and patched it. Jim Dalrymple, reporting for The Loop: One of the biggest complaints about Apple Music over the past year was that it wouldn't properly match songs subscribers had in their existing iTunes libraries. That problem is being fixed by Apple. Apple has been quietly rolling out iTunes Match audio fingerprint to all Apple Music subscribers. Previously Apple was using a less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match on Apple Music, which wouldn't always match the correct version of a particular song. We've all seen the stories of a live version of a song being replaced by a studio version, etc. Using iTunes Match with audio fingerprint, those problems should be a thing of the past. If you had songs that were matched incorrectly using the metadata version of iTunes Match, the new version will rematch to the correct song. However, it will not delete any downloaded copies of songs you have in your library. This is a very good thing -- we don't want songs auto-deleting from our libraries.
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Apple Begins Rolling Out iTunes Match With Audio Fingerprint to Apple Music Subscribers More

Apple Begins Rolling Out iTunes Match With Audio Fingerprint to Apple Music Subscribers

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  • I was one of the foolish who subscribed to the free trial. Then like many others, the jackwagons deleted all my music collection. Luckily I had most of it on backup, but it took many days to even figure out what the heck was going on, and another day or two to fix it all on my pc, then reload to my phone and whatnot. Another reason to get an Android device. Would never trust these fools again.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It does seem like they fixed the wrong problem. It's not the fact that the matching was bad, it's that the app could delete music without user confirmation in the first place.

  • This just in: expert software developers invent the idea of using a unique key to look things up in a database, instead of just the thing's name. Users cheer.

    "I can't believe it! They figured out I had bought song 0xDEADBEEF instead of the Beastie Boys' cover of a Foghat ripoff of a Muddy Waters song. I'm glad, because seriously: fuck Foghat and the Beastie Boys!"

    "OMG, when I got my 'I Am The Man' with the naughty words restored, I knew: these guys were database experts. I bet they're using Oracle instead

  • Metadata?! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 18, 2016 @04:07PM (#52536321)

    You mean I could have cloned the CDDB database and downloaded every song in Apple's library by simply creating dummy files with the right headers and structs?

    • I think we've just found the real reason they changed the software. It wasn't because it f'ed over a bunch of users. Its because a few people realized they could own everything for free.
  • Look, I am not one of those guys they say they pirate because they can't get the content as a DRM-free file. I would pirate music and movies anyway. But the ability to have my music and movies as plain mp3, m4a, avi, mp4 and mkv files and not having to tolerate problems like the above is definitely a plus. And if I want stuff on the clouds, there is always the Exodus plug-n for Kodi (not officially supported by Kodi obviously).

  • From the UI I had no idea.

  • "In May, Vellum's James shared an ordeal that many people were able to relate to. Apple Music had deleted music files from his computer. It's an issue that many of us have faced over the years. At the time, Apple noted that it didn't actually know what was causing this. But it appears, it has finally figured out the issue and patched it."

    So, to the fucking people that were on here saying it was bullshit because they'd never seen it AND loudly denying that it ever happened, SUCK IT, YOU ASSHOLES. Apple thems

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "In May, Vellum's James shared an ordeal that many people were able to relate to. Apple Music had deleted music files from his computer. It's an issue that many of us have faced over the years. At the time, Apple noted that it didn't actually know what was causing this. But it appears, it has finally figured out the issue and patched it."

      So, to the fucking people that were on here saying it was bullshit because they'd never seen it AND loudly denying that it ever happened, SUCK IT, YOU ASSHOLES. Apple themselves just admitted it was happening and now they've (supposedly) fixed it.

      Next time just keep your stupid fucking mouths shut so you don't make such assholes of yourselves.

      The change is using a more complex audio siganture, and not just simple metadata to determine matches.

      There's nothing new about iTunes allegedly deleting local copies without prompting. Quick Google search shows people asking how to delete local copies after using match to reclaim space... it's not automatic, and it does prompt when you do it, with a checkbox to delete the iCloud version or just local copy.

      Where did you read Apple admitted anything, or that the recent changes even had anything to do with a

    • Do you kiss your Real Doll with that mouth?

    • I like, many others, didn't say it was BS. I said the user was overly dramatic especially with that sensational title. Apple didn't "steal" his music as that implies that took possession of something that wasn't theirs. The user has purchased iTunes Match and used it to update/upgrade his music collection to a higher bit rate. In that process it identified some files as commercial music tracks that were his personal music files and proceeded to replace them with the commercial tracks. Also Apple never cal

      • I like, many others, didn't say it was BS.

        Then perhaps I wasn't referring to you.

        • It's misplaced outrage just like the original poster. Yes it sucks when files get lost; however, it's another situation of overly dramatizing an incident. There wasn't a lot of people saying he lied. They said it wasn't as sensational as he implied and was misleading.

  • At the time, Apple noted that it didn't actually know what was causing this ... Previously Apple was using a less accurate metadata version of iTunes Match on Apple Music...

    This is astonishing. Anyone, and I mean anyone, trying to manage a music collection is terribly aware that "metadata" for music is extremely unreliable, often not even able to correctly assign a track to the correct artist or album, and is entirely unable to determine the actual version of any track. It is basically just a slightly mor

    • Apple itself DID know better. I mean, they had a whole service based around fingerprinting and metadata.

      So you can't snarkily make a comment about how they're incompetent "at every level". (And they really, obviously aren't. They're making a lot of money at it--if they were as incompetent as you'd like to believe, they would've gone out of business long ago. It's not like there aren't other options.)

      That said, it's not clear why they rolled out a meta-data match with Apple Music. That WAS obviously a bad de

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      Bottom line is that Apple doesn't give a shit.

      Their obvious long term plan is to gently ease users into full-on permanent subscription of music, for the same definition of "gently" Rocco Siffredi uses when making porn films.

      I categorized iTunes music management as tolerable (a highly personal and subjective judgement) up until a few versions ago, and now you can hardly tell what the fuck is even in your library. They've slowly eliminated most views that let you see or manage your content very well.

      The whol

    • The idea that Apple "didn't actually know" what the problem was, or how useless and dangerous there "match" approach was is not believable in the slightest, unless we assume extreme incompetence at every level of their music content business... (oh, wait...)

      That's like saying Honda doesn't know exactly why my car makes a funny sound sometimes: How incompetent for Honda not to know every single thing about my car. What kind of incompetent engineers do they hire at Honda?

  • I might see the figure as being appropriate for a yearly subscription, to be honest.. but I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would pay $10 every month for it unless they somehow actually like being separated from their money for some reason.

  • Will it replace 30-year-old recordings with newer, compressed (made louder) versions?

  • You can't "fix" a piece of turd by vomiting on top of it.
  • Frankly, I find Apple's business to be very disingenuous. Its built on the backs of so many consumers paying a premium for competent software, yet ends up with paid services that routinely attempts to delete their purchases and content or censor what the consumer has access to. Its not just the music, I don't think any of Apple's walled garden offerings are particularly fair. The App store routinely makes decisions on behalf of users as to what content should be available and what should be proactively remo
  • Back in the day when I just started digitizing my CD's, if you'd asked me if I wanted some third party to have read/write access to my digital music library, I would have called you nuts.

    I bought it, it's mine, and I don't need anyone to manage it for me, thank you very much. I still feel that way.

    Now people are keeping the only copies of their music on devices that they don't control, running software they don't control.

    And they want us to listen when they complain? Craziness.

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