Category Archives: Music

Apple Music and Breaking Home Sharing

Apple appears to have killed some of the old with the roll out of all the new music related items yesterday:
Apple removed Home Sharing support for music in iOS 8.4
from all devices except the Apple TV.

    The reason for the removal of Home Sharing for music in iOS 8.4 most likely centers around the licensing agreements concerning Apple Music. It’s entirely possible that Apple doesn’t have the rights to allow content obtained via Apple Music to be streamed over WiFi like Home Sharing requires.

Given the current intellectual property environment this is fine.

But what about  music that was not obtained via Apple Music. For example, all the music I have bought over the years and uploaded into iTunes?  This is and will likely continue to be 100% of my music.

Eliminating all of our music from Home Sharing is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

    The obvious solution to the problem is to switch to Apple Music’s family plan, which allows families of up to 6 to access Apple’s catalog of content for $14.99 per month. Home Sharing originally launched in 2011 as part of iOS 4.3.

This may be solution for music sourced from Apple Music. It is not, though, a solution for music sourced from anywhere else.

The obvious solution is to allow Home Sharing for all tracks except for those with DRM sourced from Apple Music and that have not been purchased.

Is this step backward the beginning of the end of the nice ecosystem that Apple had been building?