Part of the joy of Apple Music is the access you now have to a vast library of music. Discover new music, dig back through the archives and listen to music you haven’t heard in years. You can even listen to that new music without sucking on your data plan. One way to do that is to download songs from Apple Music’s library while you are on WiFi, then use those songs to assemble your dream offline playlist.
But before you do, take a few minutes and back up your existing music library. There are many reasons for this but, for the sake of this discussion, the issue at hand is DRM.
Without rehashing the shoulda, coulda, woulda here, just know that if you store your songs in the cloud, Apple may replace the cloud-stored copy with a link to Apple’s copy of the same song. Apple’s copy will be DRM protected. This is done, presumably, to save space. If 10,000 people upload a copy of Happy, Apple only needs to store a single copy of Happy and point everyone at that copy.
If you then download a copy of Happy, you’ll end up with a DRM protected copy, even if you started with a an unprotected copy, perhaps one you ripped from a CD.
Another reason to backup your music library is the newness of Apple Music and iCloud Music Library. This is new software that is being stressed by millions of users. No matter how well Apple tests this in house, there’s no way to simulate the massive impact of millions of extremely active users. Bugs will reveal themselves. And those bugs might impact your local copy of your music. Back up your music files, save that copy for the long haul, just in case something goes wrong.
You might also want to consider disabling iCloud Music Library on your Mac and enabling it on your iPhone (as suggested by Serenity Caldwell in this post):
> Don’t want your Mac’s files getting scanned? Turn off iCloud Music Library on your Mac. In iTunes, go to Preferences > General > Uncheck iCloud Music Library.
>
> You can still keep iCloud Music Library active on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and add tracks from there if you don’t mind not having your Mac’s library streaming to your other devices; you can also make a secondary user account on your Mac that has no music and iCloud Music Library enabled so that you can listen to your streaming catalog on OS X. But if you don’t want it to scan your files, you don’t have to let it.
Which brings up the ultimate goal of this post: offline listening.
If you want to listen to music offline, you’ll need to enable iCloud Music Library. Once you’ve backed up your music, you might want to read Apple’s iCloud Music Library support page before you click Merge or Replace. Once you’ve enabled iML, you’re ready to build your offline music playlist.
Though there are a number of ways to listen to music online, you might consider starting with a new, empty playlist you can use to accumulate your offline tracks.
Once your playlist is created, start searching for tracks to offline. You can click the magnifying glass icon in For You or New to search the Apple Music library or your own music. Once you find a track you want to save, tap the More icon (it looks like an ellipsis: …) to the right of the track listing. When the list of actions appears, tap Make Available Offline. That will download the song to your device, adding it to My Music. If you have iCloud Music Library enabled on your Mac, the song will be added to that library as well. That’s step one.
Next, tap Add to a Playlist… and select your offline playlist. That’s it. Rinse and repeat.
One last thing you need to know. To get rid of a song, tap its More icon (…) and select Remove Download. That will free up space on your device. Of course, that song will no longer be available for offline listening.
Sounds like a bit of a mess, which I’m happy to avoid.
I just upgraded from iTunes 11 to 12 out of curiosity, and, while it was something I couldn’t postpone indefinitely, I’m disappointed that the new UI merely replaces one fussy, semi-intuitive UI I had to learn with another, slightly more fussy, semi-intuitive UI I now have to learn.
Was Gruber being sarcastic or was that a dig at Apple for not explaining things better? The whole iTunes Match/iTunes Music Library is confusing. And it sure sounds like if you have your own music which you ripped via CD and uploaded you’ll want to keep iTunes Match to keep that music DRM free. And iTunes Music Library is for all the stuff you’re renting which would have DRM on it. But this isn’t something Apple has explained very well.
“And it sure sounds like if you have your own music which you ripped via CD and uploaded you’ll want to keep iTunes Match to keep that music DRM free.”
Why do you want to do that?
Apple needs to make it dead simple for users to see what songs they own and what songs Apple says they own. Many people are not going to backup and if they discontinue their subscription they may find they no longer have all the songs they thought they had. It is not if, but when someone files a lawsuit over “stolen” music. Who stole it first could be debatable. On the other hand, I am sure anyone over a certain age has bought the same music many times, each time in a different form. iTunes Match makes it a real mess if people think all their matched music in the cloud will not go away if they cancel that service and they have not backed up their music.
My impression was of a dig at either Apple or incautious users. But until Gruber posts a long-form review of Apple Music, I’m not speculating about his intent. Up to know, he’s seemed generally positive about the new service, but I’ll wait for more context.
This is such the prototypical hot mess.
Or just keep your Spotify subscription and leave your iTunes library as it is…
If ever there was a need for a Take Control book, this is it. (Well, that and the one for TextExpander.)
“Apple may replace the cloud-stored copy with a link to Apple’s copy of
the same song. Apple’s copy will be DRM protected. This is done,
presumably, to save space. If 10,000 people upload a copy of Happy,
Apple only needs to store a single copy of Happy and point everyone at
that copy.”
That makes no sense.
I mean, yes, it makes sense that Apple won’t store “your copy” separately – see iTunes Match for how this already worked, for anything in their library.
But DRM has to be applied per-account, or it doesn’t work correctly, and would be far too trivial to crack; every time you download a song with DRM Apple has to process it to apply your account to it (presumably a public key linked to your AppleID; at least that’s how I’d do it, naively).
They’re doing DRM, I think, because Apple Music is not iTunes Match – Match did and continues to provide the “no DRM” solution – for a separate fee.
Apple is unlikely to provide a free “sync my 3rd-party music everywhere” service, because that’s really expensive.
(See this, which says that if you also keep a Match subscription, Match files will NOT be DRM’d,and that Apple should never replace files in your source library with DRM versions – just ones you fill by downloading from the Music cloud.)
With Rdio i can still stream music off wi-fi, why can’t I do the same with Apple Music? It only lets me listen to music i’ve “downloaded offline” which uses up all my phones space
It’s simple not possible to steal music with anything remotely related to these devices, services, programs, and apps.
However, copyright can be infringed or unauthorized copies can be made. But surely no stealing, just as there’s no arson or rape.
Apple Music songs are doing DRM. Personally, I hate DRM. I cannot play the downloaded music in devices that do not connected witn my Apple ID. I would like to convert the DRM songs to plain MP3 fromats with some Apple Music Converter. http://www.noteburner.com/mac-itunes-drm-audio-converter.html
When we buy Apple Music in the Online Apple store, all the music that is downloaded is protected by an … DRM which prevents us from sharing your files. Although we can make some settings for those Apple Music to achieve “offline playback”, these music still doesn’t belong to us.
I found many ways or converters could help us to remove DRM from Apple Music for personal usage. source is from: http://www.sidify.com/topic/top-3-free-download-apple-music-converter.html
For personal use, I think it’s probably better to offline Apple Music items even after the subscription. How about unlocking Apple Music songs and enjoy them on other multimedia devices, like Roku, Chromecast, Chromebook and so on. I knew that many softwares in the market have this function, like TuneFab Apple Music Converter, Noteburner, etc. They are good at converting M4P to plain MP3, AAC, AC3, FLAC, etc. so that you can stream them on Roku or anywhere you desired.
Apple Music is encrypted with DRM which prevents you to listen offline. But this issue can be well solved with TuneFab Apple Music Converter, an all-around tool to convert Apple Music to various plain formats.
http://www.tunefab.com/apple-music-converter/
There’s no selection that says “Make Available Offline.” I know I’m pressing on the ellipsis…
Apple music are combined with the DRM protection, this limits them from playing offline. In this case, you need to use a DRM removal tool to break the DRM protection, then nothing will hinder you from downloading them. I have been using the DRmare audio converter for many months and it works well as advertised. https://www.drmare.com/drm-audio-converter-for-mac/
It’s now 2018, and the “make available offline” option is no longer apparent. The word “download” with the cloud and arrow is now present when you click on the (…) button. How the crap am I supposed to know I own my music and if I can play it offline??