Things used to work, things had been quite nice for a while even. I usually felt being the owner and in charge of my electronic devices for the better part of my life. There’s been a lot of stuff that used to just worked.
One such feature was the fact that my first iPod classic I ever owned, a 3rd generation one, black&white backlight illuminated display, with red illuminated buttons, did keep track of when I did play which track, updated its play count and synched it back to my Apple iTunes library. I do have basically the same library still. Like, literally. It just grew and was migrated with each new Mac, Mac OS X and iTunes.
Sure, in the last years, Apple tried to push me into their Music subscription in all possible ways and places, but the stubborn old fuck I am, I still buy either physical CDs and rip them, hit the iTunes Store or Bandcamp.
Back to the play counts: Yes, I still have them. I still value them. I have smart playlist based on the number of plays, the last time I listened to stuff and so on. I put them into a database, I did talks about the domain model, turning it into a graph and I have a chart page up and running since 2021. Yes, this is of value to me. Not live altering, but a nice thing. I don’t need more AI and shit on it, just those numbers.
Now, why the long intro? I am also the father of two kids and a husband. My family does like music a lot, heck, the big kid even has good taste, but their listening habits are quite different than mine. Which is absolutely fine of course. The kids especially want to have streaming, they are just not “generation album”. Sure, I do share my local library inside our home, that works. But again, taste. And convenience (and don’t tell me, I should setup yet another server somewhere, hosting yet another software to replicate “the could”, that just does not fly in my life anymore).
So, after a long thought we finally agreed on subscribing to Apple Music for family. I was very reluctant about how that could possibly affect my local library, but a test showed that Apple is indeed able to leave my collection alone. Why Apple and not Spotify? Easy: I’d rather buy every single track my kids wanna listen to than sent any money over there. Why not YouTube? Convenience and quality, also price.
Now, the kids are super happy, and my wife too. Which is essentially all that counts.
And me? I did have a look at Apple Music itself of course. It feels alien to me, I want to have a more structured view on content and artists, but I did listen to some stuff. Lossless quality is excellent, selection too. I made the mistake and listened to “Stumblin’ In” (to learn about the original of that German cover that did get some traction the last weeks again and wow, that’s the worst catchy tune of all time and I really want my prior life back, but alas). Anyhow, the service is ok.
Fast forward two weeks: I want to sync local macOS content to my iPhone, and get the play count and info from my phone onto my computer. They way things did work for more than 20 years.
The next two hours I find myself searching “iOS music app doesn’t sync plays and play counts and more to macOS with an active Apple Music subscription” and there are threads on discussions.apple.com several years old and it basically boils down to the fact that the moment you have an Apple Music subscription your previously working bidirectional macOS <> iOS sync turns into a one way street unless you bite the bullet and turn on full library sync which I absolutely don’t want. Sync doesn’t even work when I use CS music for playing stuff… Its that deep into the hole system.
The solution: I signed out on iOS from “media and purchases” (not from the Apple id itself). Apple Music will instantly disappear from the music app, next sync will work again as expected. I still see tracks I bought on the iTunes music store, I am still able to play over family share and via remote. My remaining few other app subscriptions still work. I still can buy new stuff, but are prompted now again for credentials.
I. Hate. This. Shit. Side. Of. “The cloud”.
If it wouldn’t be for the happiness of my loved ones, I would have unsubscribed in an instant from the service again This is my device. I paid money for it and the functionality it came with. I even pay money now for the subscription and all of sudden, it’s less than before. OKRs and KPI driven products go f*ck your self with a stick, for crying out loud, and start to listen to your users again for a change.
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