Apple Stole My Music. No, Really (IMPORTANT READ)

Well vintage

No apple software / hardware will ever enter our household.

Problem solved.

 

Foobar2000 and a hard disk.

Edited May 6, 2016 by fletcher

  On 5/6/2016 at 10:21 AM, MIXL2 said:

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 3:37 AM, dr lopez said:

how about foobar, an ssd, and soulseek

winamp for me, and my 2tb drive

 

 

same. I've been using Winamp solid for the last 20 years.

my second hand macbook, reduced from 850 to 350 cos it was covered in scratches, absolutely beats the shit out of every windows laptop ive ever owned for speed, noise, reliability, and battery life. fuck paying for music subscription services though, i prefer buying actual files.

google music for cloud listening/streaming.

 

for pc listening i mainly use zune or foobar. yes i am the one person who owned a zune. it was my first mp3 player and it was an 80gb for $100 at a time when an 80gb ipod would've cost like $10,000. they eventually rebranded the zune player as xbox music or some shit but i never upgraded. it's a good looking player though and has always been waaaaaaay lower resources than fucking itunes which is an abomination

  On 5/5/2016 at 7:30 PM, ignatius said:

seems the problem is a confusing dialog box. you'd think a company so focused on design and user experience (riiiight..) would make it so people don't accidentally dump all their files.

 

 

My wife (*imagine said in Borat voice*) was sucked into the Apple ecosystem via her work computer & ipad (and then by her own volition, iphone) and fell victim to this very thing recently, clicked a wrong button and suddenly all her music went missing - and photos too iirc. Fortunately she gets the necessity of routine backups to an external drive and we were able to keep the damage minimal.

 

  On 5/5/2016 at 9:28 PM, chenGOD said:

I don't trust cloud shit though, so I got backup of my backups.

  On 5/6/2016 at 8:23 AM, xxx said:

I'll always resist cloud/media manager stuff. That's giving the Man permission to fuck with your stuff.

 

Same here I trust the cloud as much as I can touch it.

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 2:03 AM, usagi said:

it's things like this that ensure I'll never buy into this cult.

 

Yeah, I hate that their whole ethos of "it just works" has actually made the world more technologically illiterate; because so much of their software does things automagically gives a false impression to users as to what computing technology and logic can and cannot do. Stupid little shit too like mice with only one button and iTunes without a stop button (you know, the square) made me realize long ago that I'd have fuck all to do with apple.

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 6:23 AM, Anthro said:

I've been thinking about switching to an iTunes alternative. However, it would be ideal if I could just import my itunes library into the new music player. Does media-monkey support importing libraries?

 

Provided your files are tagged properly (not necessarily a sure bet with iTunes), pretty much any music software with library functionality should be able to bring in your files no problem.

 

I subscribe to the lopez/xxx/felch school of thought, been using foobar close to 10 years now for maintaining and curating a pretty massif collection of digital vinlys. It's got a wee learning curve to it (as it should) but defiantly one of the best designed pieces of software out there (music or otherwise) in terms of core functionality, customization, and extensiblity.

  On 5/6/2016 at 6:23 AM, Anthro said:

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 1:21 AM, StephenG said:

There is/was already a class action lawsuit against them for deleting music off computers. (http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lawsuit-apple-delete-songs-itunes-20141204)

 

It deleted tons of my shit that I didn't purchase from their store, and I sadly didn't have backups. I think I posted about it in the FWP thread in 2013 or 2014. I was pissed.

 

It's why I switched to media-monkey.

 

This seems to be kind of the same thing, again?

 

I've been thinking about switching to an iTunes alternative. However, it would be ideal if I could just import my itunes library into the new music player. Does media-monkey support importing libraries?

 

unfortunately with MM you can't import itunes libraries, but there is a workaround (http://www.mediamonkey.com/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/68/0/how-to-import-playlists-from-itunes-windows-media-player-and-other-apps)

  On 5/6/2016 at 10:21 AM, MIXL2 said:

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 3:37 AM, dr lopez said:

how about foobar, an ssd, and soulseek

winamp for me, and my 2tb drive

 

this, winamp 2.91 here, what a beauty. If it ain't broke don't fix it (or replace it with overpriced shiny opaque black-box Californian gobshite)

I had Creative Zen that eventually gave up the ghost after a few years of loyal service, and by that point the iPod Classic was the only player I could buy with sufficient space, so I grabbed it. It likes to pause of its own accord sometimes, but otherwise it's working well after nearly nine years, and having originally installed iTunes to use it, I sort of got used to it and I've stuck with it. But I don't often play stuff on my computer, and I only buy files direct from labels / artists - and only then when there's no physical version. If I want to stream something I'll use YouTube or Spotify web player, but that's only ever for one off songs, or checking an album I'm undecided on. Fuck relying on external services to play music, that's like locking my record collection away in a cabinet and hoping the guy with the key is around when I need him.

Don't get me wrong, I still use Apple Music, I just don't trust it. But it's great to have access to all like 2TB of music or what ever it is that I have.

Although I do find I'm also using the band camp streaming app a lot as well.

Yeah fuck Apple and fuck streaming music in general. Fuck Spotify too. One of the many reasons why I dont even have an updated organized digital library, - i have one, just havent really added to it in so long - nor am I ever motivated to try to even strategize a new way to digitally optimize my music collection. Because of shit like this. And because companies make you sync things, relocate things, update, upgrade, replace, merge, resync, etc etc etc... All this on top of having to learn the stupid new non-intuitive user interface workflows that iTunes implements every fucking month when you upgrade- just to be able to locate the song thats playing or find "edit playlist". After all those annoyances, I usually lose my desire to even play the damn music.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Lane Visitor

My current set up (for a few years now) is I have all my CDs ripped to FLAC and stored on Synology external drives that are mirrored. There is also an identical copy of everything stored on Amazon S3. The only way I could lose a thirty-five year music collection now is if my house burnt down, destroying all the physical records and CD's I've bought it in that time, all the external drives destroyed and Amazon losing my stuff in the cloud.

 

One of these things may happen, but all three at the same time would be nigh on impossible.

Edited May 6, 2016 by fumi

iCloud Music Library did mess up some of the album art in my iTunes Library. I keep most of my music out of iTunes now and listen to it with Swinsian, which is the closest thing to foobar2000 I've been able to find on Mac. I'm still subscribed to Apple Music though because it's so convenient, despite the confusing and frustrating interface.

  On 5/6/2016 at 6:57 PM, Lane Visitor said:

All this on top of having to learn the stupid new non-intuitive user interface workflows that iTunes implements every fucking month when you upgrade- just to be able to locate the song thats playing or find "edit playlist".

I don't know what you're on about. In iTunes, you choose what album or song you want to hear and press play.

To edit a playlist, you click on the playlist and then delete songs as desired. To add songs (or albums) to the playlist simply right click, choose "add to playlist" and select the playlist you want to add the song to.

This shit is not hard.

The whole problem with iTunes is that over the years, Apple's engineers have turned it into nothing more than a portal for buying all your media from Apple. The folks at Cupertino have one single goal moving forward - streaming from Apple Music. I imagine they will offer lossless streaming before the year is out even though a service like Tidal already does that.

 

Somebody mentioned Audirvana plus. There is a plugin for that application that integrates with iTunes. You would of course need to have your iTunes library storing something better than .m4a files otherwise it would defeat the point of Audirvana plus as this application is primarily aimed at playing something at a higher resolution - FLAC, WAV etc. Preferably in 24Bit - which it does very well. I have Audirvana plus but don't use that often. It's expensive too.

Edited May 6, 2016 by fumi

  On 5/6/2016 at 7:31 PM, fumi said:

My current set up (for a few years now) is I have all my CDs ripped to FLAC and stored on Synology external drives that are mirrored. There is also an identical copy of everything stored on Amazon S3. The only way I could lose a thirty-five year music collection now is if my house burnt down, destroying all the physical records and CD's I've bought it in that time, all the external drives destroyed and Amazon losing my stuff in the cloud.

 

One of these things may happen, but all three at the same time would be nigh on impossible.

synology? better than qnap? i want to get a NAS

  On 5/6/2016 at 5:42 AM, Trilobot said:

Just knowing that all of my music could have been deleted if I signed up makes me angry. What were you thinking Apple?

  On 5/6/2016 at 7:31 PM, fumi said:

My current set up (for a few years now) is I have all my CDs ripped to FLAC and stored on Synology external drives that are mirrored. There is also an identical copy of everything stored on Amazon S3. The only way I could lose a thirty-five year music collection now is if my house burnt down, destroying all the physical records and CD's I've bought it in that time, all the external drives destroyed and Amazon losing my stuff in the cloud.

 

One of these things may happen, but all three at the same time would be nigh on impossible.

 

this post gave me wood - i have severe autism when it comes to digital library data collection

I don't get why you go for Apple. So many limitations. U no geek?

  On 5/7/2016 at 3:27 AM, dr lopez said:

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 7:31 PM, fumi said:

My current set up (for a few years now) is I have all my CDs ripped to FLAC and stored on Synology external drives that are mirrored. There is also an identical copy of everything stored on Amazon S3. The only way I could lose a thirty-five year music collection now is if my house burnt down, destroying all the physical records and CD's I've bought it in that time, all the external drives destroyed and Amazon losing my stuff in the cloud.

 

One of these things may happen, but all three at the same time would be nigh on impossible.

synology? better than qnap? i want to get a NAS

 

 

 

I don't which is better. Sinology has always been great for me. Once you buy a NAS you'll wonder how you ever did without it.

  On 5/6/2016 at 9:17 PM, chenGOD said:

 

  On 5/6/2016 at 6:57 PM, Lane Visitor said:

All this on top of having to learn the stupid new non-intuitive user interface workflows that iTunes implements every fucking month when you upgrade- just to be able to locate the song thats playing or find "edit playlist".

I don't know what you're on about. In iTunes, you choose what album or song you want to hear and press play.

To edit a playlist, you click on the playlist and then delete songs as desired. To add songs (or albums) to the playlist simply right click, choose "add to playlist" and select the playlist you want to add the song to.

This shit is not hard.

Lol I know the functionality and workflow. Im not an ape! It's just that it seems like Apple keeps changing where those buttons are located in the window, as well as the order of "my music, my playlists" etc and there are like 4 steps to locate the song thats playing if youre not in the library view. They also change the terms for things and replace words with symbols, etc.. There's just not much consistency of things between upgrades, which makes it annoying to me. I realize these are first world problems, but then again so are most of the issues we all at watmm bitch about anyway :D Edited May 9, 2016 by Lane Visitor

winamp + the wincue plugin + sensibly named file / folder structure (this still needs some organisational work on my end admittedly) - not a fan of tag based systems. I also have a subsonic server so I can stream to my phone/tablet/laptop as needed when out and about. I have too much to keep backed up on the cloud, so have a bunch of old redundant HDs for the time being (I actually have the space on OneDrive, but it would take forever to upload the whole lot). streaming is a total ripoff when it comes to reimbursing the people you listen to, it's basically pretty fucking immoral imho. if you can buy direct or as few steps away as possible, then do that, don't give money to people who'll just give it mostly to whoever's currently in the top 40 and u2 or whatever, leave that shit for the plebs.

Edited May 9, 2016 by caze

This is a really big deal and there needs to be a website that warns musicians and producers of this evil

I find iTunes intensely difficult to use and don't get me started on iCloud.

 

Whoever designed these two things is an asshole.

It looks like iTunes 12.4 will finally put things back into a useful configuration, like returning the default sidebar