Downloading Playlist of Full Library to Arc

Support
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Hi…as recommended, I created a playlist of my entire library which is approx. 25k tracks, which is now visible on Arc, but does not want to download to my device (which has plenty of capacity). The message I receive is “Download could not be initiated”. I should mention that perhaps 1000 of my tracks are added from Apple Music, so not technically mine. Can you assist? Thanks.

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Are the Apple Music tracks DRM? (I assume that since you have a roon playlist that the Apple Music tracks are physically on your hard drive.)

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Downloaded not streaming tracks I would think

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My guess is this is an issue. I’m pretty sure tracks from Apple Music’s streaming service can only be downloaded and played via the Apple Music app.

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Hi everyone,

Whether or not purchased/downloaded content from Apple Music can be played depends on whether the tracks are iTunes or iTunes-Plus: Intro to the iTunes Store in Music on Mac - Apple Support.

Here’s an easy way to distinguish:

If you purchased tracks in the iTunes store within the Apple Music app (as in, since the launch of Apple Music), then these tracks come without Apple’s digital-rights-protection (DRM). These are known as iTunes-Plus tracks. Older iTunes purchases (purchased directly in the iTunes app, before the launch of Apple Music) will have DRM and can only be downloaded/played on authorized devices registered with your iCloud account. You’ll have to re-download the non-DRM version from the current Apple Music or another source and then replace your track file.

For @michael_maharam, that means if these 1000 tracks are showing up as playable in Roon, then they should be free of DRM and thus downloadable within ARC without restriction from Apple’s rights management.

We’ve investigated general diagnostics, and the issue you experienced around the time of the download failures was actually very likely a network timeout on the part of the Core or the phone. Did the phone has service when you were attempting this download?

There are a number of timeouts in ARC, some of which might even be occurring while you’re on your own WiFi network.

Can you please provide a little more information about your network setup, so the team can help pin down what’s interrupting the connection to ARC?

  1. What is the make and model of your modem and router?
  2. Who is your internet service provider and what is your geographic region?
  3. Do you have any VPNs, proxy servers, or enterprise-grade security on this network? Is this a corporate network?
  4. Are you experiencing any issues with Roon Remotes, or other apps on your local network?
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Hi Connor…

All understood, and I can also suggest that adding the “iCloud Status” column to an iTunes library is a quick tell as to which is which. The real question, since I cannot easily isolate the non-DRM music in the Roon “All Music” playlist I create, is whether attempting to download my full playlist would automatically exclude/filter out the DRM music and leave me with the remaining 20-25k tracks which are non-DRM?

Thanks…

Michael

1 Like
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Hi @michael_maharam,

My apologies for the delay. I believe the answer to that precise question is no, but the situation should be an impossibility per Roon’s treatment of DRM as implemented by iTunes.

Roon won’t play DRM tracks at all. So, if there’s content in your Roon library matching DRM-protected content in your iTunes library, then Roon is accessing a location of a non-DRM version of that file and you’ve converted it at some point, removing DRM tags.

Provided you have space on your phone, you can download local library content from Roon to ARC. There’s no restriction on DRM content in ARC that doesn’t already exist in Roon; it won’t play in either place. DRM really only plays in registered Apple products.

So I don’t anticipate you’ll be in a situation where DRM content accidentally finds its way into Roon. If there content you’ve downloaded from a playlist isn’t playing back, then it’s likely evidence of corruption during the downloads. I suggest you update to the latest build, ARC 1.0.3, as we’ve been incrementally improving download stability.

Happy to answer any more questions!

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