Jim Dalrymple Has Had It Up to Here With Apple Music ⇥ loopinsight.com

Jim Dalrymple sounds pissed:

From what I can tell in my tests, Apple Music is deciding itself, based on your library, that it will not add duplicate songs. For instance, I purchased a lot of Black Sabbath albums over the years, but not all of the compilations. I went into Apple Music and added a compilation album, but it didn’t all get added to my library. When I looked at all of the songs that didn’t get added, they were ones that I already had in my library.

[…]

However, if I decide I really want those songs, when I click the “Add” button, nothing happens, which seemed odd to me. If adding the songs is an option, why won’t they add to the library. I went to my iPhone and tapped “Show Complete Album”—when I tapped on the song to add it, the option was to “Remove from My Music.” This means that my iPhone thinks it’s already added, but the song isn’t showing up. What I had to do is go through all of the songs, remove them from the library, and then click add to get them back in the library.

[…]

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.

For what it’s worth, this sounds like an iCloud Music Library problem, not an Apple Music issue. It’s splitting hairs, but it’s an important distinction to make. Because I have Apple Music turned on, but not iCloud Music Library, I get all of the streaming features, but none of the saving or syncing ones. That means my local files remain untouched, which gives me a vastly greater sense of security.

But that’s neither here nor there, when considering what’s written here. Based on everything Dalrymple has said on this, it sounds like the absolute worst possible situation. Missing and skipped songs, matching that doesn’t work very well, and deleting local files. It sounds like my worst nightmare.

You can bet very good money that there’s going to be a tough meeting in Cupertino this week.

(Also, who said that writers like Dalrymple and John Gruber were afraid of damaging their relationship with Apple, so they temper their criticism with platitudes?)