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The app will set up a library folder at ~/Music/Swinsian by default. The terminology is all the same between the two apps so there’s not much of a learning curve. Previous versions couldn’t import Smart Playlists, but the current release handles them perfectly. The second item on the File menu is “Import iTunes Library”, which works perfectly. The app has easy functionality to help you migrate from iTunes or run in parallel, so you can try it out for a few days without having to commit and make the leap.

#SWINSIAN FREE MAC SOFTWARE#

The software is $20, and offers a 30-day trial period free of charge. Swinsian looks and feels like what iTunes would be if it had stuck to being a music player and library manager. The clear standout is Swinsian, a word I have become far more used to typing and saying aloud in the last week. Search ‘iTunes alternatives Mac’ and you’ll find stacks of articles discussing the same 5–8 apps. Help me Swinsian-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope. But now, in a move reminiscent of the ultimate evil in the galaxy, Apple Music is bringing back DRM. I read some articles on library optimization, backed everything up a couple more times, and moved forward.įor any other piece of software, the bloat would be enough reason to punt and start looking for alternatives. After all, I have 2500+ playlists managing tens of thousands of songs. Now I have a maxxed-out MacBook Pro, and even when iTunes pinwheeled the second time I opened it I took a deep breath and persevered. I built a larger and larger music collection, started working as a DJ professionally, and saved the playlist from every gig in iTunes.

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I could carry every record I owned in a box that weighed less than seven pounds.Įven when one of the 10.0 releases of Mac OS X destroyed my hard drive and by extension my nascent music library, I stuck by Apple. The idea of having my music on my PowerMac G4, with a massive TEN GIGABYTE hard drive seemed like such a paradise I immediately started to wishfully spec out a PowerBook for DJ gigs. Thus far my digital music collection had mostly existed on Linux boxes running xmms. I took shit from the other indoor kids in high school for using a Mac and I was never tempted to change. I wrote Logo programs on my school’s Apple II’s.

I don’t trust Apple with my music anymore. Since I need to have my music on disk for work, I have no temptation to free up hard drive space and keep my library on iCloud, no matter how convenient it sounds.Īs long as I never delete my local copies, I should be safe from Apple Music DRM.

In the event a match cannot be found, Apple Music will upload my local track. The iCloud Music Service allows me to upload my library and have my tracks ‘matched’ with their Apple Music equivalents. After spending half the week reading every article I could find, I came to the first of two conclusions:

Whether the original source is the iTunes Music Store, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, or just a CD you purchased and ripped to your library, Apple would now control your ability to access your own songs, including locking you out of music on some devices purchased from Apple.Īnalysis and accusations are flying back and forth in headlines, comments, and support threads with no word from Apple. The most chilling development, however, came with the revelation that Apple Music could replace your local library with DRM versions of songs you’d already purchased.

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Added in the 12.2 release, the Apple Music story thus far has been a series of horror stories for the music collector: tracks mismatched or replaced, tags munged and deleted, and in one case a user reporting six million copies of a Lorde song had been copied to his library.

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