Yesterday, I discovered that one of my favorite game soundtracks, Jason Graves’ The Order: 1886, is no longer available on Apple Music, in the iTunes store, or anywhere else. No idea why. This just happens every so often with various albums. Usually something about licensing and distribution, and now it’s not available online. I had never bought it, despite streaming it many, many times over the past several years.

So now: it’s gone. Maybe I’ll be able to buy it at some point. Maybe I won’t. I should have bought it, but I didn’t, and I did not know that I had not until it went missing. Lots of similarly high-stream albums I have bought. But not this one, and I don’t know which ones I have or haven’t bought at this point.

Lesson (re)learned: streaming services are not reliable, because distributors are not reliable. There are all sorts of reasons a given album might get pulled, but regardless of why it gets pulled, if it does, that album is no longer available to stream.

I wrote about related dynamics in an issue of my music newsletter last year, and an old friend who subscribes replied that he actually still just buys all of his music on CDs! My own strategy these days is:

• Buy it directly from the composer/songwriter/band if possible.
• Otherwise, buy it via Bandcamp if possible.
• Otherwise, buy it via iTunes if possible.
• Otherwise, find some other way to buy it if possible.

The challenge for me now is a practical one: what do I do about all the other albums in my library I ought to own but don’t?

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I’ve been increasingly annoyed at the way that Apple has pushed Apple Music such that it is difficult even to identify what music in my library I own vs. what I have just added via Apple Music. This took me from “annoyed” to “solving the problem” mode. I get that that’s nice for Apple Music because it encourages people to use the service and makes them feel locked in. But it’s bad for users. (It’s not quite as hostile as Spotify is to both users and artists, but that doesn’t make it good.)

Here’s how I’m approaching this with a little background task I’ll knock out over the rest of the year:

1. Create a Smart Playlist that identifies all Apple Music tracks in my library.
   1. File > New > Smart Playlist (or ⌘⎇N).
   2. Leave Match for the following rule: selected.
   3. In the rule, choose Cloud Status, is, Apple Music.
   4. Save the playlist.
2. Go through this list and identify albums and tracks you want to buy. (Note that you can search within playlists, which helps if you want to check on a specific album or song!)
   1. Open them in the iTunes Store. Select a track and choose Song > Show in iTunes Store in the menu bar, or right click on it and choose Show in iTunes Store.
   2. Add it to your wishlist or buy it, as makes sense to you.

Repeat those steps until you have everything in your library you know you want to own.

Here’s a third bonus step: anything you stream regularly for more than a month, buy as soon as you cross that threshold.