Apple’s new music streaming service (Apple Music) *

I must say that I am a bit surprised to see so many that are so emamored with Spotify. Nothing wrong with that, just that I've tried nearly every one available here and Spotify was the least impressive to me. I much preferred Mog then Beats, Tidal started out slow, but has been steadily getting better, but for me (and most others I know who have tried it) Deezer Elite wins hands down. I'm pretty sure I'll be keeping it alongside Apple Music.

 

Apple started a streaming service? It'll be nice to hear some Jackie Lomax, Mary Hopkin and Black Dyke Mills Band tunes!

 

I was a die-hard MOG fan and bailed when they screwed it up with Beats. I went over to Spotify and like it as much as I ever liked MOG. What Apple did to MOG makes me highly suspicious of Apple's new streaming service.

 

MOG was great until Beats came along. Jumped ship and never really looked back. (and yes, I gave Beats a good fair try)

 

For the record, Mog was changed by Beats before Apple had anything to do with them. Curious what they screwed up? The only thing that went away wax the "Similar Artists" sections of any given page, but it made up for it with excellent playlists based on your choices. The web interface kinda sucked when they first changed but it was fixed in a few weeks and the mobile apps were fine. But everyone has their own preferences as to user interface and that's why we have choices!

Of course, most of my listening on any service is not using their standard GUI as I listen mostly with AppleTv, Sonos, or BlueSound, so mostly I'm worried mostly about sound quality and the music choices.

I do still think many were predisposition end to dislike Beats purely because of an association with a dislike of their other products. Further, I believe many here are biased against Beats because of the Dr. Dre connection. I still say that if it was Beats by (pick your rock legend) many would have less of a bias.

 

They killed Scrobbling for one.

 

Like a lot of things Apple touches, they "dumbed it down" so far that it drove me crazy

 

What's a Scrobbling? Ok, looked it up, but not sure the context, as I found Beats did a better job picking out other stuff I might like based on my usage than any other service I've used. Utmost uncanny in my case.

Not sure what that means either? I never really cared for the red and black interface, but otherwise, it seems like everything was still there if you looked. Again I don't use a lot of features so for me it's like reading so much hand wringing about Apple Maps not having good features when it comes to public transportation information, yet since I necpver use Public transportation I could care less.

 

Scrobbling doesn't really have to do with suggestions. It's mainly a service that keeps track of what you've listened to, both songs and albums. Spotify scrobbles to Last.FM and you can see the result here: www.last.fm/user/nbakid2000

It's very annoying that they took it away and never replaced it. It's a HUGE part of why I use Spotify and loved MOG.

 

Apple had nothing to do with the Beats interface. They bought Beats long after that design was already in place. I missed two features from MOG (radio slider & continue play) and found them both at Rdio. I tried Spotify for 6 months alongside Rdio and just preferred Rdio in every way...interface, suggested music, continue play, radio slider, they also had the remote feature for controlling a computer long before Spotify, etc. The reason they are behind everyone is that they got on the 320k bandwagon too late (*note: they were streaming 192k and did not have the "mastered for iTunes" advantage)

This is Apple's first try at on demand streaming. In my opinion, they took the best feature from Beats which was the "for you" page ( which was awful on MOG to be honest) and added integration with Siri and Match and came out the other side with a much improved product. It isn't perfect, but I think it is a great start.

Also, I wouldn't call the service dumbed down. Siri integration alone makes it smarter than the other services on iOS. It has a lot more depth than MOG ever dreamed of and I was a MOG fanboy (you can probably find my posts about it on this site).

 

I found MOG Radio and Spotify Radio to be pretty much equally awful. MOG was maybe a *tad* bit better, but generally worthless in almost all situations. Spotify is just as bad or worse.

Is there a similar function on the new Apple Music? How is it? Does it make intelligent choices?

 

count me as one who would love to see Apple implement the scrobble thing as part of their music apps...

Also want to see the manual override for uploading tracks that Google has implemented...

 

I liked the slider on MOG that would allow you to listen to that one artist with the slider to the left. As you moved it to the right it would add more artists and get more adventurous. A lot of choice within one artist's radio station. Rdio has something similar.

Apple gives you the ability to choose an artist and they attempt to play similar artists. They also allow you to play a station based on a song. I haven't really had time to evaluate their choices. However, since the For You section has so many playlists and suggestions, I have found myself using the radio features less often.

For me, the For You section was a winner on Beats and it only gets better with more use. If you haven't tried Apple Music, I would suggest giving it the three months.

Just a short story related to scrobbling. I forgot I even set it up, but somehow I ended up on the page to setup last.fm for my Appletv or something. I went to see my music and it had Katie Perry and Taylor Swift as two of my top played artists. I started to wonder if my Mog account was hacked. Then I looked at the days I listened and realized I was out of town and my niece was staying at the house. Apparently, she streamed music by those two artists on my Roku non-stop the entire week.

 

Weren't they already doing this with iTunes Radio?

 

I believe they simply folded the radio into the Apple Music service. I haven't seen much difference in it. In fact, it includes my pre-Apple music radio stations in the recently played list of radio stations. I am not sure if they will be applying "human curation" to those channels or not.

 

It's nice to hear from someone that actually owns one of their watches. I admittedly don't, and probably have no right to comment, but I listen to the tech shows on TWIT and the overwhelming consensus is it is a very unnecessary product and hard to use in some aspects. However, now that developer kits are out some very enterprising company may come up with that magic app that will compel me to buy one...as an Apple lover I would like one, just don't see the need. Would rather see them spending less time on non essential hardware and more on improving their core products. Their hands are so full right now...causes me some concern as I rely on their computers so much. And I love my iPad (admittedly a product that at first many saw no use for) and iPod. Apple's future will be interesting. And yes, in my post above I too mentioned Steve's quote of not wanting people asking what he would do. I really respect him for stating that...he clearly loved Apple. I only felt if they lose their way, maybe his way was pretty good!

 

If they are headed in the wrong direction, that is not going to be reflected in things like that forecast for a while. It will take people taking purchases elsewhere and sales decreasing before they will get hit with big stock drops. I think it has only been relatively recent that they are making some questionable decisions. I can tell you I am not thrilled with things they have been doing with recent updates to the Mac software, and that is what is most important to me and my business, not watches and music. As long as the iPhones continue to sell as well as they are, and kudos to them for that, other things may be overlooked for a time by financial markets. Most of their other ventures are such a small part of their revenue drivers. If the new iTunes does prove me wrong and ends up being a home run, and I hope it does, then good for them!

 

I'm a spotify subscriber. I'm familiar with the user interface. I can search an artist, view all their available albums, place them into a custom playlist, and play them on my iPhone or home computer with ease.

So I downloaded the latest iTunes update, and to be honest, I'm having a hard time figuring this platform out. I'm like in a maze trying to find the exit. I find an artist, but I'm not seeing, with ease, their catalog. I'm not even sure how to create a playlist. And if I do, how the hell do I play said playlist?

Is there a tutorial that I haven't found about the new Apple music that I've overlooked?

I think after this three month free period, I'll probably stick with Spotify just for ease and familiarity.

 

It isn't showing up in the recent Mac sales #s for 2014, either. In the 4th quarter of 2014 alone, they saw a 21 percent increase in Mac sales from the prior year. However, as you mentioned, the company makes most of its money on iPhones. The Apple Music release will probably have little impact on iPhone sales unless someone is a huge music fan and really wants Siri. I personally don't think they are going into this market for $$. I think they are doing it because music is an important part of their branding/DNA/culture and they want to keep it that way. If they stayed with just iTunes store downloads, that part of their brand would continue to sink.

Anyway, the main point of the chart is that people are turning every decision made by the company against what Steve Jobs would theoretically do if he were still alive. The numbers are there showing the performance since his death. Apple hasn't plummeted. Also, for all those saying that Steve Jobs would do this or that...we know one thing he did was put the management team together that he believed would make his company go on an upward path. If they fail, he was wrong, so those that are putting him in the opposite corner of the ring across from Tim are not realizing that if Tim fails, Jobs failed.

 

What made Apple a mega-success wasn't Steve Jobs and his product vision - they had that when he was still there back in the '80s, and Apple stumbled around from coup to calamity. What made Apple the monster it is today was Tim Cook and his operational excellence. Apple was finally able to execute on the vision Jobs brought to the table.

 

I was both a Beats and Spotify subscriber.
I really like the new Apple Music.
I like the interface. I like how the album covers look while I'm listening to them.
It looks a hech of a lot better than Beats, which I found ugly, covering up the album art like that. Awful.
I find it fairly easy to use.
I've been having a lot of fun with it the last few days.
Also, no you can't get everything from the iTunes Store, but you can get stuff that Beats and Spotify don't have like Peter Gabriel, the latest Dylan album, etc..
I'm sticking with Apple.

 

1. You can use the search button to type in the artist name (you have a choice of my music and Apple Music)
2. When you do that, you can click on the artist to pull up their catalog or click on the "albums>" tab below to pull up their albums
3. If you pull up the artist, albums are segregated by "Top Albums" or "Albums". Click on "Albums>" and it will pull up everything they have.


To create a playlist, you go to the "File > New>Playlist" in the top iTunes bar. I agree that they could make this easier, but I would create the playlist first and then go to the album(s) you will want to add. If you are on an album and click "file/new/playlist" you will be exported to the playlist screen.

If you are already playing an album, you can see the song and album cover up in the playback bar (not sure what the official name is, but it is where you see the song playing). It has the ability to add the song to a playlist without navigating back to the artist page. When you put your mouse curser over the song name, you get "..." . Click on it an you will see several options (go to artist, go to album, etc..). There is one option that says "Add to" and when you click on it, it will show your playlists and you can add the song from there.

If you want to add a different song on the album you are playing, there is a symbol that looks like three dots with three horizontal lines next to it. If you are playing an album you can add a song from the album to the playlist from there.

Finally, if you want to add an album to the playlist, I would go to the album page, click on the (...) symbol next to the album name and add it from there.

It really isn't that difficult once you get used to it. This was my first time using it and the only confusion was how to add a new playlist. You would think that would be possible right from the album name, but I didn't see it ( I could have missed it, though).

 

Here's what's drving me crazy with this thing

Let's say I do a search for Cheap Trick. I click on an album....and on that page there are reccomendations for other artists. I click on one of those albums....then follow another similar reccomendation....and I keep doing this for a while.
How do I then get back to the search page??? The only way I've seen is to repeatedly go back through all the other pages I've been on? Like 30 clicks! Am I missing something obvious?

 

I continue to look around and I am finding some strange things that I'm sure are growing pains. As an example If I search on John Denver I will find under albums both his stuff and any compilations, etc which is expected, but If I go to the artist page, many of his albums are not there. Just a little quirk in Apple's search, but seems certainly a little strange.

Otherwise still very impressed at the simplicity of it as well as the sound quality.

 

I'm looking for that answer as well. Earlier I had a search page loaded in the " For You" section and could net get back the step before that. I had to close iTunes to get back home. Maybe a glitch, maybe by design, but I'm still looking for a better way.

Edit: It looks like you can hit Shift-Option-H to go home. Also under the Controls menu on a Mac. Not sure how to get there in iOS. Sure need a better solution. This navigation quirk goes through several devices. The AppleTV is the same way.