Once again I found that when I tried to access my iTunes library through Apple Music, Apple considers all music not purchased through their music store to be personal non grata. In other words, iTunes, which allowed burning of CDs to (usually) mp3s and then played them, was replaced when Apple switched from 32 bit apps to 64 bit ones. This switch was especially obnoxious because Apple Music was a bastard app, providing maybe 40% of the functionality of iTunes, the music playing part. This is besides the fact that Apple obliterated over 2,000 tracks from my library without permission.

This has started a journey to find a Unix program or platform to play my chosen music without fucking gatekeepers. So far I haven’t found a program in my sporadic search. I tried to get mpd, a seemingly complete music playing platform, on a Raspberry Pi. The Pi has little in the way of 1/0 ports, so I copied 250 plus gigabytes of music files (in excess of 20,000 tracks to a 512 GB SD card. Unfortunately, mpd doesn’t recognize the card, even though it’s definitely mounted on the Pi as VLC can play music from the card.

To be continued…