Apple Music Is Not Adding DRM To Songs You Already Own

Like all streaming services, there is DRM involved. This makes sense because it prevents piracy and also ensures that artists are paid properly, like if you were to cancel your subscription, it makes sense that you would no longer be able to access the songs on the platform anymore.

However given that there has been some confusion about DRM regarding Apple Music, the folks at iMore have published a report that clarifies the issue. Apple Music is confusing given that there is iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library. Both are the same in terms of their functionality in which music is scanned and matched against Apple’s catalogue, and those that aren’t matched are uploaded onto Apple’s servers instead.

The issue that users are confused about is whether enabling iCloud Music Library adds DRMs to their existing songs. The simple answer is no. If you already have the song stored on your computer and it is DRM-free, then that’s how it will remain. However if you were to use iCloud Music Library and enable it on other devices, the songs shared with those devices will have DRM since they are essentially a different file.

The catch is this only applies to songs that are matched on Apple’s servers, so the songs that aren’t matched are automatically uploaded and those songs will remain in their current state – DRM-free (assuming they were to begin with). It is admittedly a bit confusing and Apple hasn’t really done a good job of explaining it, so if you’d like to learn more, you might want to check out iMore’s report for the details.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Audio
Tags: Apple Music, Legal, Music