{"id":34747,"date":"2016-05-09T02:00:19","date_gmt":"2016-05-09T06:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34747"},"modified":"2016-05-06T11:16:33","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T15:16:33","slug":"coming-all-too-soon-your-own-data-as-a-paid-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/05\/09\/coming-all-too-soon-your-own-data-as-a-paid-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming all-too-soon: your own data as a (paid) service"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Pinkstone<\/a> talks about the time he discovered that Apple Music had helpfully deleted over 100 Gb of his music files on his local hard drive:<\/p>\n

What Amber explained was exactly what I\u2019d feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users\u2019 computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple\u2019s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn\u2019t recognize \u2014 which came up often, since I\u2019m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself \u2014 it would then download it to Apple\u2019s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted.<\/p>\n

This led to four immediate problems:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> If Apple serves me my music, that means that when I don\u2019t have wifi access, I can\u2019t listen to it. When I say \u201cmy music,\u201d I don\u2019t just mean the music that, over twenty years (since before iTunes existed), I painstakingly imported from thousands of CDs and saved to my computer\u2019s internal hard drive. I also mean original music that I recorded and saved to my computer. Apple and wifi access now decide if I can hear it, and where, and when.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> What Apple considers a \u201cmatch\u201d often isn\u2019t. That rare, early version of Fountains of Wayne\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll Do The Driving,\u201d labeled as such? Still had its same label, but was instead replaced by the later-released, more widely available version of the song. The piano demo of \u201cSister Jack\u201d that I downloaded directly from Spoon\u2019s website ten years ago? Replaced with the alternate, more common demo version of the song. What this means, then, is that Apple is engineering a future in which rare, or varying, mixes and versions of songs won\u2019t exist unless Apple decides they do. Said alternate versions will be replaced by the most mainstream version, despite their original, at-one-time correct, titles, labels, and file contents.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Although I could click the little cloud icon next to each song title and \u201cget it back\u201d from Apple, their servers aren\u2019t fast enough to make it an easy task. It would take around thirty hours to get my music back. And even then\u2026<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Should I choose to reclaim my songs via download, the files I would get back would not necessarily be the same as my original files. As a freelance composer, I save WAV files of my own compositions rather than Mp3s. WAV files have about ten times the number of samples, so they just sound better. Since Apple Music does not support WAV files, as they stole my compositions and stored them in their servers, they also converted them to Mp3s or AACs. So not only do I need to keep paying Apple Music just to access my own files, but I have to hear an inferior version of each recording instead of the one I created.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I didn’t sign up for the free Apple Music trial when it was introduced because I have a data cap on my internet connection: just a few hours of listening to my own music<\/em> might well make a big dent in my internet usage for the month. That would be ridiculously wasteful. Even so, every now and again, iTunes cheerfully lets me know that this or that song from my collection can no longer be played (and has deleted it) with no chance to fix it on my part. When it’s a song I recorded from the original CD (and I still have the CD), it’s merely an inconvenience. When it’s a song I paid<\/em> Apple to download, it’s much more than that. It implies that everything<\/em> I’ve downloaded from Apple is actually just a rental with an indeterminate-length rental period.<\/p>\n

It is, however, a sign of the future:<\/p>\n

For about ten years, I\u2019ve been warning people, \u201chang onto your media. One day, you won\u2019t buy a movie. You\u2019ll buy the right to watch a movie<\/em>, and that movie will be served to you. If the companies serving the movie don\u2019t want you to see it, or they want to change something, they will have the power to do so. They can alter history, and they can make you keep paying for things that you formerly could have bought. Information will be a utility rather than a possession. Even information that you yourself have created will require unending, recurring payments just to access.\u201d<\/p>\n

When giving the above warning, however, even in my most Orwellian paranoia I never could have dreamed that the content holders, like Apple, would also reach into your computer and take away what you already owned. If Taxi Driver<\/em> is on Netflix, Netflix doesn\u2019t come to your house and steal your Taxi Driver<\/em> DVD. But that\u2019s where we\u2019re headed. When it comes to music, Apple is already there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Pinkstone talks about the time he discovered that Apple Music had helpfully deleted over 100 Gb of his music files on his local hard drive: What Amber explained was exactly what I\u2019d feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users\u2019 computers. When I signed up for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,28,15],"tags":[160,200],"class_list":["post-34747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-media","category-technology","tag-apple","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-92r","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34748,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34747\/revisions\/34748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}