Apple Music purchasing f'd up

Lounge
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In the past, I have purchased the occasional item from the Apple Music iTunes Store, downloaded to my Mac and then put them on my NAS for streaming to my NDS. Lossy files, but sometimes that’s all you can get! Up to now, no problem.

Now Apple seem to have completely f**ked up the ability to use their downloads unless you use Apple Music to play them! I do not, and have no desire to subscribe to their streaming service. Never had any problem and I’m not pirating or redistributing the music. (sigh)

Anyway, I’ve requested a refund for a purchase made today. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be any way of getting the piece I wanted. I suppose I could hook up my Korg MR2 to my Mac and record the piece from YouTube, then edit it in Audacity, but that really seems like to much pfaff …

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I must admit I thought that was always the case with Apple iTunes because of their DRM. That is you can only play the file from the Apple ecosystem or a none Apple device that has its iTunes database synchronized with Apple so that the file media can be decrypted. You suggest it hasn’t always been like that?

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When I download music from Apple I use music converter pro to convert Flac. Save to a different location and then transfer to NAS.

Not purchased recently but it has always worked.

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That sounds quite odd. What have they done to the files?

Purchases used to be 256 kbps lossy AAC, and it was the lossless things downloaded with an Apple Music subscription or purchased movies/video that had DRM.

Original 128kbps music purchases had DRM but they stopped that a long time ago.

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Could it be they now allow downloading hi-res or lossless for purchases which are protected? Apple Music app is confusing to me so I rarely use it these days. Could it be an altered download quality setting (above 256kbps lossy AAC)?

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When iTunes store was originally launched that was the case but the drm was dropped a long time ago and you could redownload non-drm versions of previous purchases.
My last purchase, several months ago admittedly, was transferred to my roon nuc and plays without issues.
It would be useful to know more about the posters issues… has the file downloaded to their computer for example after they press the download icon because by default its just added to their cloud library.

2 Likes
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Well, on my NAS I have several Apple type files. In the days of iTunes it was easy - you just downloaded the file then extracted it from the iTunes music folder to wherever you wanted to keep it. When they first changed to Apple Music, it still worked after a fashion, but was much less easy. Now that functionality seems to have disappeared. It may be “just me”, but when I pay for an album etc, I do not want to have to be subscribed to a specific streaming service to use it.

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Yes, I am not a fan of DRM, necessarily it puts conditions on replay…

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Just checked iCloud on my Mac, and there is no music library there. I’m an old fogey, and I still prefer to buy “proper” things such as vinyl or CDs (I even have kept a quite a few of my Classical cassettes - purchased when CD first appeared as I was not happy with the sound of the early players and didn’t actually buy one until the Naim CDS came out). I’ll make up a new post to this thread and explain how use the files.

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There wont be a music library in your personal icloud drive, its all handled by Apple’s systems so purchased music does not count against your drive storage allocation and you then wont need to rent to storage space.
Within the Music apps preference there is an option to automatically download purchases but unless enabled you must manually download the file after purchase. Its an extra step admittedly but this way you dont have to use your own disk space if you dont need to.

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Just tried to download a purchased track in Music and it’s not AAC but an HLS file:

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In Music Preferences check what you’ve selected for downloads.

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I initially had Lossless or Hi-Res Lossless set as I was using this Music installation with Apple Music enabled not really for downloading older purchases.

I changed it to High Quality (AAC 256kbps), and tried another download.

Interestingly, when I opened the Music Media folder location in Music>Preferences>Files, it has 4 folders:

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With Lossless or Hi-Res Lossless download quality, the old purchase downloaded as an HLS file to the Apple Music folder,

After changing to ‘High Quality’ 256 kbps AAC the next download went to the Music folder and is in AAC format which could be used on a NAS or outside Apple Music.

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My assumption is that even if you do not subscribe to Apple Music they allow you to download old purchases as DRM protected lossless files but only for use within the Apple ecosystem. To get a non-DRM version change to High Quality for downloads.

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You might just have 3 folders not 4:

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The default media location as you probably know is in your username home folder:

Mac installation drive>Users>Username>Music>Music>Media

The library file is stored in the 2nd Music folder above the Media folder.

As much as iTunes was bloated I disliked the change to separate Apps for different things, just confused matters when we’d used iTunes for many years.

I suspect you could still download 256kbps AAC files in iTunes on an older Mac with iTunes or using iTunes for Windows if you have a separate PC (not done this for a while) .

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Let’s see if this makes things more clear.

I still buy and use LPs and CDs when what I want is available in that format. I have a large LP, CD and Cassette Collection (that dates from the early days of CD when they stopped issuing Classical LPs, and I found the Cassettes played on my Nakamichi preferable)

When I moved over to streaming, I ripped all my CDs to FLAC and most of them to the loft.
LPs I copied to digital using a Korg MR2 and Audacity. It’s just sometimes easier than climbing on a chair to reach an LP on the top shelf!
The cassettes were mostly replaced by CD copies when I got my (original) Naim CDS. I have kept a few for nostalgic reasons.

Often I heard a few songs on film/TV soundtracks which took my fancy, but couldn’t find a CD or LP copy. Why buy a whole CD for one song? Well, usually it was because I decided to see what else the Artist could do.

I decided that the Apple lossy files sounded marginally ‘better’ than the MP3 downloads I could get from Amazon.

In the days of iTunes, when I wanted something I couldn’t get in physical form, I would download a file - usually lossy, because lossless wasn’t usually available. Dead easy - they appeared in the iTunes Music library on my Windows Pc (although I now use a Mac), and I could copy them, modify the metadata to my liking etc). For my phone (holiday use) I would compile my own playlist and sync it from the PC to iphone, so that I could still listen when away. This went on for a few years …

Then along came the Apple Music App… by this time I had moved to an iMac, which fitted better with my study workspace than a tower PC. (I got fed up of banging my right knee against the tower!)

At first all was relatively well. You could go to the Music App, search for what you wanted, purchase it and then download from the iTunes Store (via the Music App, as iTunes no longer seems to be a separate app on the Mac, although I believe it still is for Windows PC).

Then, recently I watched “Geek Girl” on Netflix following a recommendation from my eldest granddaughter, and decided that it had a very good soundtrack, so when hunting for the songs that I really liked. (As an aside, I actually enjoyed the series!) Quite a few I already had when I checked my catalogue, and I managed to track down CD copies online of some others. For the rest I was looking at downloads.

By this time I was finding that the more recent amazon MP3 downloads were just as “good” as those from Apple, so for simple ease I purchased them from Amazon Digital Music. One track was only from BandCamp, but that is easy to use as well. Then there was a Liberati track, which AFAIC was only on Apple Music, and this is where the story really starts …

Went to Apple Music App on my Mac, found the tune was on an album called “Trip Pop”, purchased it using the iTunes Store on that app, but it did not appear on my Mac. (I checked everywhere I could think of). Contacted Apple, and got a refund.

Then a couple of days ago I thought “this is stupid, perhaps it’s just me”, so I had another go. Same result, and am awaiting a second refund (sigh). Did online search for this problem but couldn’t find any helpful posts. I think I might give it another try today, but just for a single track and write off the cost if it doesn’t work. The only reason for the try is to see if an iCloud Music directory magically appears.

P.S. I never download music directly to my phone, as I like to modify the metadata to my own preferences.

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I think I’ve just solved the problem. For some reason Apple Music is downloading the lossless version which IS DRM. I just purchased an old favourite of mine (I Will Follow Him - Little Peggy March), as a lossy file, and there it is, in the iTunes Music Directory. I’ll tackle Apple directly about the original problem.

Sorry to bother you all. :relieved:

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