iOS 8.4 disables Personal Sharing for music; Apple Music tracks are protected

Apparently the launch of Apple Music came with unexpected consequences. As noted by the MacRumors, with iOS 8.4 Apple has disabled the Personal Sharing (Home Sharing) for music.

Apple Home Sharing

Existing since iOS 4.3, the feature allowed users to stream music from their iTunes libraries to iGadgets. It continues to work only for Apple TVs, perhaps because Apple has not yet updated its software to Apple Music.

The English version of this support article on Personal Sharing has already been updated with the change. Apparently Apple wants to force the subscription of the Apple Music family plan, which costs US $ 8 monthly in Brazil (for up to six people).

Protected tracks

Do not think that “everything sucks” when downloading music for offline playback, through Apple Music. In fact, the resource serves exactly and only for that, even: offline playback on the device being used.

That's because the tracks downloaded by Apple Music come in the .m4p extension, that is, they are protected by DRM (digital rights management, or digital rights gesture).

Comparison of iTunes Store and Apple Music files

The image above compares a song purchased from the iTunes Store with a download from Apple Music. The purchased one has an .m4a extension and an “open”, unprotected AAC file. The reader Junior Santos, who warned us about this “detail”, notes that protected tracks cannot, for example, be used in video editing.

This difference alone justifies what Apple has been saying about iTunes Match being “complementary” to Apple Music. Now, anyone who wants / needs unprotected tracks still needs to pay $ 25 a year for Match and / or purchase tracks through the iTunes Store.

Until Macworld Expo 2009, the tracks sold through the iTunes Store were protected by DRM. Fortunately Apple and the record companies put an end to this, but the nature of a service like Apple Music requires protection even to cut the user's benefit if he cancels his subscription, for example.