iCloud Music Library Ate my Balls
If you want to try that free Apple Music trial, you should know that there are two components to it. One is safe (I think), and the other one has a solid chance of destroying data and garbling your music library. When it asks you to enable "iCloud Music Library," DON'T.
I did NOT know this, because it presents it to you like there's only one decision to make, so I got hosed.
Here's how it happened, I think. I use iTunes on a main computer (home) and a secondary one (work). I enabled iCloud Music Library on the second computer first, because I had to update my OS anyway and I was at work when the update came out. When I enabled it on my home computer, it:
- Deleted my ratings for every song that existed in both my home library and my work one.
- Duplicated a bunch of playlists, with some of the duplicates being zombie copies that kept coming back when I tried to unify them.
- Possibly some other stuff I didn't find out about yet.
iCloud Library has some other problems too: a bunch of the songs that my home library made available at work ended up being the wrong version of the song, and the way it tried to combine playlists was a complete opaque mystery. But none of that matters, because I disabled it, made note of music I'd added to my home library in July, then reset my entire library to June 28 with a Time Machine backup. I will probably never turn that shit back on, and will probably not pay for Apple Music once the trial is over. Don't delete my fuckin' work. >:|