Apple is being accused of deleting music, including some rare performances and original compositions, from the hard drive of a freelance musician. According to composer James Pinkstone, Apple Music cleaned his hard drive of 122 GB worth of music, a library he had built over a period of twenty years.
To add insult to injury, Apple Music reportedly replaced several of his stored tracks with mismatched alternatives, which he could only access through the cloud.
Pinkstone, who expressed frustration on his company's blog, said that when he signed up for Apple Music, iTunes scanned his entire hard drive for MP3 and WAV files and also Apple's own music database for matches and "REMOVED" the original files. He added that when iTunes would come across a file that Apple didn't have in its database, like Pinkstone's own compositions, the service would upload them and remove the local copies.
"What Apple considers a 'match' often isn't," Pinkstone wrote in his blog. Apparently, Apple Music replaced some of the rare songs that Pinkstone had painstakingly collected from various sources for more commonly available versions. He also claimed that a lot of his files, which were saved in high-resolution WAV format, were uploaded, compressed into MP3 files and streamed back to him, adding that downloading all his music from Apple's servers would take him over 30 hours and would still not get his high-resolution audio files back.
"If you're wondering why Apple hasn't been sued yet, it's because the iTunes Terms of Use vaguely warn of this issue, then later indemnify Apple and preclude any litigation from users who've been boned," Pinkstone wrote, drawing attention to the fine print.
He fortunately managed to get his music back thanks to a backup, adding that the Apple rep he got in touch with when the problem occurred herself advised that the only way to prevent this from happening again is to cancel one's Apple Music subscription.
