Do I Have to Delete Song Files After Uploading to Itunes Match

A blog post has been making the rounds since Thursday, proverb that Apple tree Stole My Music. James Pinkstone, writing on his company's blog, tells a tale of losing 122GB of music files because of Apple tree Music. Plenty of websites are trumpeting this story, saying that Apple Music is the big bad wolf. Only I'm afraid that isn't the case.

The author of this blog post begins past citing a flake of a conversation he had with one Bister, an Apple tech support person:

"The software is operation as intended," said Bister.

"Wait," I asked, "and then it's supposed to delete my personal files from my internal hard drive without request my permission?"

"Yes," she replied.

Bister is wrong. Neither Apple Music nor iCloud Music Library deletes music files. This just doesn't happen.

I'yard not contesting what happened to Mr. Pinkstone. iTunes is aught if non problematic, as you tin can run across regularly in my Inquire the iTunes Guy cavalcade. Merely if Apple Music—or more than correctly, in this case, iCloud Music Library—were rapturing music files of every user around the globe, there would take already been a -gate controversy (musicgate? filegate?) and a class-action lawsuit. Heck, even Taylor Swift would accept been unhappy, and penned an open letter to Apple.

I don't know exactly what happened to this user. I contacted him by email trying to get more information, and he told me that he no longer uses Apple Music, so he actually can't help elucidate the issue. There are a few hypotheses circulating most what may take happened, and none of them make total sense. Something deleted his music files—including music he composed—and information technology'southward hard to figure out what was responsible. But it wasn't Apple Music, and Apple tree certainly did not "steal" his music.

Apple tree's music services: The differences

First, some terminology. Apple Music is the company'southward streaming service; it does naught to any of your files. iCloud Music Library, however, is the feature that lets y'all match your library, store files in the cloud, and save files you similar from Apple Music. The goal of this is to allow you lot to play any music from your iTunes library on any device yous ain. (This tin can exist confusing; I wrote nearly how Apple Music, iCloud Music Library, and iTunes Match piece of work together.)

Here'south what happens when you use iCloud Music Library or iTunes Match:

1. iTunes scans your music library and attempts to match your files with music available on Apple tree Music and in the iTunes Shop. If you take an iTunes Match subscription, iTunes uses digital fingerprinting to match your files; if not, information technology only compares metadata (tags such as a rails's name, artist, and album).
2. If iTunes matches a file, information technology stores a record of that file in the cloud. When files are encountered that don't match, iTunes uploads them to the cloud.
3. If your files are in a format other than AAC, iTunes converts them to 256 kbps AAC files before uploading. And so this user, who had a lot of WAV files, would have AAC files in the deject.

What happens next depends on how you use iTunes and your iOS devices.

If you retain all the original files on your computer, iCloud Music Library may change tags and artwork. I suffered that in the early days, only it neither changes nor deletes any files in your iTunes library.

If you delete music on an iOS device, you see this dialog. Information technology tin be confusing.

If you delete the local copies of those files, y'all can re-download them from the cloud, and they will be the 256 kbps AAC versions of your files (if the originals were not in that format), and, if you don't have an iTunes Match subscription, they will have DRM. Notwithstanding, if you delete your music on an iOS device, this may remove the files from your iCloud Music Library; the iOS dialog isn't very articulate.

If yous cancel your Apple Music subscription, any files from that service that you saved will disappear; but your original files will yet remain on your estimator.

There take been problems where, post-obit an iTunes upgrade, a library is empty, simply the files are all the same present, and the set is relatively unproblematic.

I don't know what happened to Mr. Pinkstone's music files. Somehow they got deleted; whether through user fault or past another application. Just I know that this is not how iCloud Music Library works.

Any the cause of this incident, it highlights the need for backups; fortunately, Mr. Pinkstone had a backup of his music files. I maintain three backups of my media library, because I have a very large library, and I've spent a lot of time tagging my files and adding album artwork. Merely I accept iii backups of all my files, then I'chiliad pretty rubber. When I do lose files because of some ham-fisted maneuver—and this happens—I can pull copies from one of my backups.

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Source: https://www.macworld.com/article/227951/apple-music-doesnt-delete-your-music-files.html

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