Apple iTunes Match (and Apple Music) subscriber, with 23,000 hand ripped songs, only about 18,000 able to exact match by Apple, 5,000 are less common versions.
Also have enabled iCloud Music Library. Note these are three different services, and iCloud Music Library has been the most likely culprit for monkeying with your music, not Apple Music.
The combo of all three has deleted or auto-replaced exactly zero of my custom rips. I can use a series of steps (smart playlist to find matched songs, then manually delete that set) to shift to using Apple's high quality unprotected version, or not.
I wonder if the key to everything working as you imagine is the Match subscriptions:
If using Match, then after matching, manually deleting local, then re-downloading, you end up with a very high quality file without DRM that will continue to work fine and be portable, even after you cancel.
I'm not sure what happens if using only Apple Music without Match.
The linked article sounds a lot like the iCloud Music Library beta problems in July 2015:
I believe the trick is declining when iTunes first asks whether you would like it to keep your music collection organized, or disabling the option in the preferences.
There are two default options that should be changed for safety when configuring iTunes:
- enable error correction when importing from CDs (importing options in Preferences)
- disable "keep music collection organized" (or something to that effect, located somewhere in the prefs)
Me too. I really like iTunes match and it seems to work well. For those that are unfamiliar, it makes all your music on your main machine available from the cloud for a small yearly payment (25$?). It does this by matching your music to its own library and uploading the stuff it doesn't have.
One of the strange things is I have 2 mp3 rips from CD with skips. When I play over the internet with iTunes match the files still skip. These are common songs, so whatever they are doing to determine if that song is in their library is working (I guess).
My only complaint is sometimes it breaks up my albums if it decides that songs are by different artists. (Bob Marley, vs Bob Marley and the Wailers)
I can say for 100% certain that the combination of iTunes Match and Apple Music completely botched about 600 songs in my library.
I restored a backup, turned off Match and Apple Music and obtained a refund. Suffice to say it was the first week of Apple Music but still, it was pretty appalling that my carefully tagged library and artwork were overwritten with zero warning.
Apple do tend to release things a little half baked sometimes - especially when it pertains to cloud services - sadly the customer's data is the casualty which is a shame since it reflects a very cavalier attitude to user data.
Also have enabled iCloud Music Library. Note these are three different services, and iCloud Music Library has been the most likely culprit for monkeying with your music, not Apple Music.
The combo of all three has deleted or auto-replaced exactly zero of my custom rips. I can use a series of steps (smart playlist to find matched songs, then manually delete that set) to shift to using Apple's high quality unprotected version, or not.
I wonder if the key to everything working as you imagine is the Match subscriptions:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/
If using Match, then after matching, manually deleting local, then re-downloading, you end up with a very high quality file without DRM that will continue to work fine and be portable, even after you cancel.
I'm not sure what happens if using only Apple Music without Match.
The linked article sounds a lot like the iCloud Music Library beta problems in July 2015:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/07/01/apple-music-users-...
And similar support experiences:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/07/24/i-got-my-music-back-at...