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Evaluate zhaarey/apple-music-downloader as the Apple engine #3
Description
Question
Is zhaarey/apple-music-downloader the right Apple Music engine for Waves to wrap? Go through the repo, including open and closed issues and PRs. Report the same dimensions as the gamdl evaluation:
- Auth + decryption requirements (one-time vs per-session setup, materials needed, platform support — macOS Apple silicon first, then Windows/Linux).
- Audio quality tiers (AAC 256, ALAC 24/192) and independent Dolby Atmos (EAC-3) fetching.
- Lyrics formats supported (LRC, TTML variants) and gaps.
- Cover art max resolution.
- Search capability (catalog search vs URL/id-only).
- Maintenance health (commit/release cadence, open bug load).
- License (AGPL-3.0 compatibility required).
- Notable issues/PRs about corrupted ALAC, Atmos, lyrics, artwork.
Conclude with a fit-for-Waves verdict and the top three risks.
Activity
ranokay commentedon Sep 1, 2026
Verdict (research): zhaarey/apple-music-downloader is functionally the best Apple Music engine candidate for Waves — ALAC 24/192, independent Dolby Atmos (EAC-3), LRC + TTML lyrics (translations/transliterations), 5000×5000/original covers, catalog search — and is actively maintained (latest commit 2026-08-21; wrapper 2026-09-01). But it has no license at all (
license: null), so it cannot be vendored/forked under Waves' AGPL-3.0; it must be invoked as an external, user-installed CLI (permitted by our settled constraints). Top risks: (1) unlicensed repo — no bundling without a relicense from the maintainer; (2) decryption wrapper is Linux-x86_64-first, Apple silicon support is fragile (open QEMU crash on M2, wrapper#61); (3) upstream churn with no releases/tags — token scraping and decryption break when Apple changes things; pin a commit and plan update handling.Details: every claim cited in
docs/research/zhaarey-eval.mdon branchresearch/zhaarey-eval: https://github.com/ranokay/waves/tree/research/zhaarey-eval/docs/research/zhaarey-eval.md