#applemusicconnect

UPDATE: Apple Music Support fixed it. They still haven’t mailed me after the mess-up, or the re-fix. But, whether they send me a notification of having fixed it or not, the Apple Music Connect Profile is re-instated, the right artists can be found, etc. 

Hi. This has been an interesting ride, and it's far from over, so I'll keep editing this post as I get new information.

The starting situation / details: I'm Esa Ruoho a.k.a. Lackluster - a relatively unknown Finnish electronic music composer with quite a few records under my belt (vinyl, cd, mostly digital). The name Lackluster - by the very definition of it being present and accounted for in the English language dictionary - is not something that some other band might not come up with. So, I've clocked about 3 or 4 different Lacklusters over the years.

Most of them have started, put out a demo, and quit, or maybe disbanded, or renamed themselves. That's to be expected.

But one band has actually gone digital, a U.S. - Ohio-based Lackluster, who mostly operate as LacklusterBand on the web. They've pushed two records up for sale on iTunes / etc (also Spotify) - one is called "Two Birds, One Stone", and their EP is called "EP4".

I kept encountering these for a while on Spotify and iTunes and wondered what to do.

So, I decided to go the SpotifyArtists route, and upload my own profile picture to Rovi. This is the image I've used everywhere on the web, since (I think) it fits the music very well. This was relatively harmless and not a great deal of trouble to go through.

When Apple Music Connect was announced, I immediately registered for Lackluster on Apple Music Connect - when I sent in the application, the profile picture for Lackluster was my newest release (Lexicon of Goods, released digitally in 2015). I thought, cool, things are going well.

I got the confirmation, I was accepted in, I started posting on Apple Music Connect as Lackluster.

Then I thought, well, hang on a minute, Apple Music Connect has a Support segment, I'll mail them and ask if there is any chance they could separate "me" (Finnish Electronic Music with 12 albums on iTunes) from "them" (Ohio US Rockband with 2 releases on iTunes).

So, I mailed them on the 2nd of July 2015. It was a fairly simple e-mail - requesting that they could separate these two Lacklusters from eachother. On the 6th of July 2015, I got a response from Apple Music Support - they asked me to provide Apple IDs or iTunes Store links for all the albums that I own - and instructions on how to deliver those links or IDs.

I replied by giving them links to all the albums that are mine, and, to help them, also sent them links to all the releases that are not mine (i.e. by the Ohio US Rockband).

Then, 2 days later, 8th of July 2015, I got a nice "Thank you for providing this info. We are currently working on the request".

I promptly forgot about the whole thing - I'll get a notification when it's done, right? Sure.

So, today, 10th July, I decided to go on iTunes to check out my Apple Music Connect profile for Lackluster.

Now, mind you, ever since the Apple Music Connect thing became a thing that gave me a link ( https://itun.es/fi/0tAC ) that I could give out to people, I've been doing my best to give that link to people. Cos that's what you're supposed to do, right? Right.

As an aside: Of course, I'm peeved that it gives a link to /fi/ - being the Finnish iTunes Store - of course, I'm wondering when Apple will iterate it further so that I can get a global, stable link that will boot up Apple Music on every device, and not take me to a regular "View on iTunes" type store-page on the WWW. But I know (or, mostly, hope) that Apple will get around to improving that segment of Apple Music Connect.

I look at Apple Music Connect, browse down a bit - there's been some new posts from various artists that I follow (which I'm doing mostly to find out how others are using it, and whether they have succeeded in actually uploading a track - I just saw, a few days ago, that Flying Lotus had succeeded in uploading a 1h59minute mix called Lovers Melt 4 - which was well worth a listen, btw). And then I see my post.

What is my Apple Music Connect Artist profile picture? It is no longer a greyscale image of my Lexicon of Goods album - it has been released by.. Can you guess? The US Rockband Lackluster's newest release (EP4, from 2014). Something has gone dreadfully wrong. I click on the profile picture, and, why..

Everything has gone completely and utterly wrong. The latest release is by them. All the Top Songs are by them. The Albums listed under my Apple Music Connect Lackluster Profile, are:

1- Lackluster: EP4 by US Ohio Rockband Lackluster (2014) 

2- Lackluster: Two Birds, One Stone by US Ohio Rockband Lackluster (2011) 

3- Lackluster: Slice by Finnish Electronic Music Composer Lackluster (2005)

Yet the Similar Artists (Proem, Loess, Adam Johnson, Funckarma, Ilkae, Mr. Projectile) are still of "my" artists, i.e. electronic music, we have been on the same compilations or released on the same labels over the past 16 years.

Things are going great, right? I'm in charge of the US Rockband Lackluster's Apple Music Connect - and all my Electronic Music -related Apple Music Connect posts are now on "their" profile.

I never asked Apple Music Support to switch my - registered - profile to be their profile, and if I had known that Friday 9am would turn out like this, I would have never contacted Apple Music Support. Never in a billion years.

I now have a disfunctional Apple Music Connect Lackluster profile, which isn't mine - but which still is buggy - a kind of mutated version of mine and theirs...

But here's the fun bit: There's a new Apple Music Lackluster profile. https://itun.es/fi/l-PQ8 which has 11 albums by me. It also has no links - or even a mention towards Apple Music Connect.

I used to be able to tell people to check out my music via http://itunes.apple.com/artist/Lackluster - guess which Lackluster it links to? well, the lucky US Ohio Rockband, of course!

I decided to check out iTunesConnect, and why yes - my profile image is now EP4 by Lackluster US Rockband. That's neat, right?

Yeah. This has been an endless barrel of laughs. If I was doing this for shits and giggles, I'd be well keen on this, but I'm not.

EDIT: Yes, I did email them. Of course! 

I've mailed them requesting that they either switch the two profiles around, or somehow fix the situation. I hope they'll respond a bit quicker than the usual 2-3 days. I can't afford to call their customer support since I'm broke. What they would need to do to fix things now would be to move the 3rd album (my album) out of the Lackluster Ohio US band - which I've asked them to do, to the actual electronic Lackluster profile.. And then reinstate the http://itunes.apple.com/artist/Lackluster as the electronic Lackluster profile - and reinstate the Apple Music Connect profile URL as the electronic Lackluster profile. I hope they can pull it off. So far, no response.

Previous article continues.

So, if you are in the unenviable position of having a doppelganger somewhere on iTunes Store - just a word of advice, don't go to http://support.applemusicconnect.com/hc/en-us , don't leave a support request to them, don't do anything.

It will only get worse.