PSA! This might not be new to some of you, but if you sign up for Apple music it will screw up your iTunes library and the ability to sync personally owned files to your iPads. The good news is it can be undone, but it’s a bit of work, and apple support has no idea what they’re talking about or how to fix it.
Regularly update and export your playlist M3Us.
I use iTunes on my PC and then sync my playlist to my iPads for playing on DJay. At first I noticed that some songs would not show playable in my region even wave files that were my personal edit mixes. Then all my playlists were empty in iTunes. They were in apple music but again some files we’re not playable because Apple music does not recognize the file.
I had to cancel my subscription to Apple musical, which was an intention of mine from the start, and go find the m3u files for each of my playlists. Some of them were out of date so there’s still some work to do. But once apple music was out of play and things were back to normal on my iTunes, the files that were unplayable are now playable on my iPad.
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@THE_DJ_Co this is very helpful information. Thanks for sharing.
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Is this still the issue. Do I need a separate id account for I tunes and Apple Music?
Thanks for info, but how to get around it with out all the hazle because I can’t use my purchased iTunes music and just happened recently. Any suggestions, gracias!
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Hi, just wanted to clarify that you can have an Apple Music subscription and still keep your “private” music collection separate.
In my case I manually added my DJ collection inside the Music app on my Mac (the old iTunes).
I have several specific edits and versions that I didn’t want Apple Music trying to mess with so I made sure that “library sync” is turned off inside the Music app, this means you will keep your personal collection separate from the rest of your Apple Music subscription.
This way I can look up and play songs from the online library of Appple Music in Djay and access my local library of offline music from the sources section in Djay.
Obviously this means your personal collection remains offline and won’t sync between devices via the cloud, but it does stop Apple Music thinking it knows better than you when it comes to duplicating/messing up your collection.
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You can sync your non Apple Music library to the cloud and stream it for listening in the app and for mixing in DJay pro. That’s what makes it the best streaming service imo, because it turns your entire local music library into a streaming service as well as having access to Apple Music stuff all in one place. Also makes it a good organization tool because you can organize playlists on the go and it will sync across your phone, iPad and computer. Within the Apple Music app you can also download iTunes purchases and non Apple Music files that have been synced to the cloud to use with stems if you want.
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Yes, you can sync your personal music collection with Apple Music and it will appear in the cloud, but there are major issues with this, inherent in the way Apple does things that make it a nightmare for DJs.
The way Apple do the syncing, is that it will look at the tracks you have in your collection and then attempt to match them with copies that Apple has on it’s music servers for use for streaming.
Problems arise when Apple thinks it knows better than you and it’s matching process picks the wrong songs, so you end up with a synced, streming version of a song that is different to the one you have in your personal collection.
You could have a clean version of a song for instance and the version Apple decides to match, ends up being an explicit version, not good for a party DJ.
DJs have also experienced live versions of songs, or remixes appearing instead of original versions and other incorrect matches.
The syncing thing is probably useful for mainstream users, but DJs that have very finely curated and specific songs that they want to make sure they are playing makes the library sync feature problematic, as seen in the original post here.
This is why I’ll prefer to turn off the library sync feature and have to live with manually keeping my librarys in sync, rather than having them in Apple Music cloud.
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I’m aware of what your talking about but there is a way to turn that off. I’ve had Apple Music since its inception (when they were automatically adding that U2 album to people’s libraries) and also ran into that issue. I couldn’t tell you what the setting is called off the top of my head since I’m not at my computer and turned it off and never looked back, but it can be done.
For example, before I turned this setting off I added the diplo remix of Lorde’s Tennis Courts and it was replaced by the original that’s on Apple Music. After adjusting the setting now i just have the diplo remix in my library. I also have songs that I purchased from other services (Amazon, Beatport etc) added to my library that are readily available in Apple Music but were not replaced by the Apple Music versions when I added them to my library.
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Can you please clarify how to turn off that setting? Thanks!
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Yes. I can’t view my iTunes playlists today, unless I purchase Apple Music.
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Think it’s under “Local Music”
