[al_borland]

You can turn off the cloud service in Apple Music and still use it with your local tracks and music downloaded from the iTunes Music Store (which still exists).

I did this for most of last year. I had all local music in Apple Music, disabled the cloud stuff, and synced it all to my iPhone by plugging it in with a cable, as if it was an old iPod. It all still worked.

[laleck]

Yes, but I have a big pet peeve about the offline experience.

In iOS Music, tapping the artist name on a song launches the artist’s cloud Apple Music page —- even if you’ve hidden paid Apple Music.

Disabling cellular data for the Music app fixes this by showing an album view of the downloaded music from the artist. However, the cloud version is unavoidable on WiFi. It’s a small but annoying example of how Apple made the classic experience worse to push their subscription product.

[dylan604]

Turning off the cloud service just does the syncing thing right? What about turning off the Apple Music service so that the only thing visible is your local content? That's what pisses me off the most.

[al_borland]

That's what I meant by cloud services. It hides the Apple Music part so it defaults to your local stuff.

Thought if I remember correctly, search was still showing it, which was a little annoying. But it depends on how much you search.

I'm currently using the service right now, so I can't really check if anything has changed since last year when I was doing it.

[thesuitonym]

I've only ever used Apple Music with local content. On iOS the only indication to me that non-local content is even possible is the radio tab at the bottom of the screen.

On MacOS I think it opens to the online home page, but I use it so infrequently I'm not sure. I pretty much only use it to buy music from iTunes.

[tap-snap-or-nap]

VLC on iPhone has served me more reliably than Apple Music.

[dylan604]

I've recently tried syncing local content to my phone, but to find that content on the phone is difficult. The phone really wants to show me Apple Music stuff. I have to Library->Downloaded->Songs. Going to Artists or Albums just shows me "Download Music to Listen Offline". I really just don't want to spend the time I previously spent on my iTunes library all over again. I was really just trying to quick&dirty add content. They've made this unnecessarily difficult and I despise them for it.

[MoonWalk]

Just go to the Library tab in the phone app. That's where your own stuff is located.

I have over 8000 songs synced to my phone, 100% from local files on my computer.

I never activate the "library sync" BS that Apple tries to force on you, because historically it has replaced your copies with incorrect or "remastered" (AKA dynamically compressed to hell) versions from Apple servers.

I've even caught it switching "library sync" on without permission during an update.

[dylan604]

Please re-read what I wrote. I know where the local stuff is. It doesn't fix the glitch that app is

[MoonWalk]

That's not reflected by your comment, which I read and directly replied to:

"to find that content on the phone is difficult"

How? You tap Library, then Songs. There's all your music.

[thesuitonym]

I don't know what you're doing differently then. When I open the Music App, it goes straight to my Library. The only items in there are songs I've synced to my phone. I've never seen anything else or known it to behave differently.

[DavidPiper]

Sadly it doesn't quite go away even when you've turned everything off: https://davids.town/dear-apple-please-fix-ios-music

[auxiliarymoose]

Yep, I've been importing CDs to Apple Music (which I buy from my local music store) and adding them to my Android phone for personal listening. It's a great way to spend money on music in a way that supports local businesses!

[dijit]

You can, but basically every menu assumes Apple Music as a service, and its worse with each version.

You can technically still buy albums, but you can really tell its only there because it was forgotten about.

[butlike]

Buy albums from Bandcamp. You can download them in multiple different formats and the artist gets one of the best cuts

[titzer]

Fool me once.