Ever since its launch last year, Apple’s been fighting the issue of deleting music from Apple Music subscriber’s accounts. A blog post, titled “Apple Stole My Music. No, Seriously.” composed by designer James Pinkstone, has now taken the issue to new dimensions. 122GB of music, including original pieces, were removed from Pinkstone’s laptop after signing up for Apple Music. According to Pinkstone’s conversation with a rep for the company, Apple found cloud-based versions of his stored works, and deleted Pinkstone’s originals. Pinkstone then received a call from a different Apple rep days later who denied that file deletion was an intended function of the streaming service but rather a bug. The Silicon Valley giant issued a statement today acknowledging the issue, but admitting it has no idea what’s causing the problem, but ensures users its being investigated. Apple also promises an iTunes update next week.
In an extremely small number of cases users have reported that music files saved on their computer were removed without their permission. We’re taking these reports seriously as we know how important music is to our customers and our teams are focused on identifying the cause. We have not been able to reproduce this issue, however, we’re releasing an update to iTunes early next week which includes additional safeguards. If a user experiences this issue they should contact AppleCare.