Ran across this about Apple music subscriptions not good if true

[me]

This is interesting. Do any of you use this or have you heard about the problem? I haven't and don't intend to use the service.

https://blog.vellumatlanta.com/2016/05/04/apple-stole-my-music-no-seriously/

[Locutus]

This is the most interesting paragraph in that whole article.  What do you think of this?  In some ways, we're already there.

For about ten years, I've been warning people, "hang onto your media. One day, you won't buy a movie. You'll buy the right to watch a movie, and that movie will be served to you. If the companies serving the movie don't want you to see it, or they want to change something, they will have the power to do so. They can alter history, and they can make you keep paying for things that you formerly could have bought. Information will be a utility rather than a possession. Even information that you yourself have created will require unending, recurring payments just to access."

[me]

Well, talked to an offline friend who this happened to so it's evidently true. He clicked on his phone to try it and now has lost all his music on various devices he has. He is not happy.

[Palehorse]

I use iTunes and have for years.  95 % of what I have on there is music I own in CD format and that I downloaded myself. The other 5 % is stuff I bought directly through iTunes and so own only the electronic version.

I have always, and continue to, purchased my music in hard copy- now CD but vinyl as well. I've taken some heat from friends and family over it at times, but I've always said to them that if my iPod crashes, or I decide to drop my association with with Apple/iTunes, I will still have my music.

I also download all of my electronic music stored on iTunes to an external hard drive periodically. (This practice has saved me once when my Mac had a hardware issue and Apple replaced my hard drive).

I do the same thing with movies. I own an awfully large movie collection in DVD / Blue Ray formats. I see a movie I like, I buy it when it comes out on Blue Ray. I've always done that and only within the last 5 years have I finally got rid of the old VHS tapes I had and replaced them with DVD/Blue Ray versions.

I still take the heat for it from family and friends from time to time, but should this scenario come to be a wide-spread reality I'll be a lot better off than some others I know. . .

[Locutus]

Yes, having your music on an external hard drive is very important.  Storage - even in the terabytes - is cheap these days and there's really no reason not to do it. 

[Locutus]

You can read about the Apple Music program on this link:

http://www.apple.com/music/membership/

[me]

I do have a question though. If you plug your external harddrive in and apple detects it what would keep them from wiping it too?

[Locutus]

I do have a question though. If you plug your external harddrive in and apple detects it what would keep them from wiping it too?

I think they would wipe that too. 

The best thing to do, if you really want to go down the Apple Music route, is to have two copies of your music library.  One that you use for the import/sync, and one that you don't. 

[me]

I don't intend to use it myself nor do I intend to store anything on the "cloud" which never sounded safe to me from the beginning.

[Locutus]

Cloud based services are where IT is heading and has been heading for awhile now.  You're most likely using cloud based services that you don't even know about. 

[me]

A friend of mine who had this happen to him got his back and here is the explaination of what is probably happened with him as well as the person whose article I posted. I guess it did take him quite a while to get them all downloaded but he messaged me this link and said he did get all of his songs back onto his harddrive.

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

[Locutus]

So basically your friend fucked up. 

[me]

So basically your friend fucked up. 

Seems like they're trying to make it look like people did 'cause he didn't click to delete them. Could be they're trying to right a wrong on their part so they wouldn't end up getting their asses sued since they were not only getting what people put on their service but were grabbing things off peoples computer when they detected them and deleting them from the persons harddrive.

[Exterminator]

I would not be surprised to learn that there is a setting on this app that prevents this from happening.  RTFM!

[Locutus]

RTFM!

Things generally work best when you approach it that way.