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

I still HATE how I can't manually sync AND use Apple Music. Is there any technical reason why they would make it so you can only do one OR the other?

 

Key point imo: "So what gets DRM? Any matched track you download to another device. It gets DRM because the file itself is coming directly from the Apple Music catalog, which, as we established above, has DRM on it."

It's what I had mentioned earlier in this thread. An iTunes Match user matches a bunch of albums, then deletes the albums from their computer. When they download from Apple iCloud, they'll either get the Match file or the uploaded file. But no DRM.

In Apple Music and the same scenario, the "Apple Music" matched music has DRM. Bottom line: If you use Apple Music, don't delete the files on your PC (I know it seems silly that people would do that, but I'm sure some do as they don't understand the DRM aspect and are treating Apple Music as a music locker service. Which it's not).

 

Apple bought Beats for the brand. It is as simple as that and there's nothing wrong with it. If there's one demographic Apple has had a hard time reaching (and I don't in anyway mean this as inflammatory) it is young black people. Beats has a huge presence in the demographic and buying Beats gives them access. Don't discount the fact that Beats headphones had become more cool than Apple headphones. The old iPod ads with the white earbuds are now Beats ads.

 

And companies frequent buy out their eventual competition

 

Apple didn't become Apple by buying brands. They also didn't do it by buying their competition. Those are standard business moves, but they are STANDARD business moves. And that's exactly what Apple has become: A standard business lead by non-visionary people. The reason Apple is APPLE is that they were lead by someone who had vision and could create markets.

This was Apple's motto under Jobs. Since Jobs has passed, they haven't released a single product, or made a single public move, that could really be construed as different. Maybe they need a new slogan: Think inside the box.

 

Yes, the 3 months starts from when you sign up.
I believe the offer is open until at least the end of the year.
That means you can delay signing up if, like me, you went for one of the free or cheap 2 or 3 month deals currently being offered by the competitors.
So I am currently trialling Deezer for 3 months (for a princely 99p), then I plan to cancel and try Apple for 3 months to see which one suits me best. In any case that will have taken me to nearly year end before I need to decide.

 

I'm sure the reasoning is that with Apple Music ALL your music is available on the iPhone, so why would you need to sync some subset of it. (Not saying I'm agreeing with that, just my theory on their thinking).

 

I suspect Tidal's whole business plan revolves around being acquired by Apple at some point...

But that's exactly what Apple needed - someone to help them out in the entertainment business. Jobs had cred there, thanks to his long history with Pixar. Nobody else in the executive suites at Apple had those kind of connections. With the purchase of Beats, they now have two very successful players in that space.

Buying Beats was about a lot more than snagging the largest manufacturer of headphones - although that's certainly a nice bonus for Apple. Apple needed those music industry connections to make Apple Music work.

 

I am also sticking to Rdio as well.

 

Not to derail this discussion further, but didn't Apple have a patent go through that showed a Dac via the lightning connector, which meant that beats could make a high end proprietary headphone dac, which would be a whole new thing, that could also go with the high res streaming if they ever flip that switch. Maybe the idea is to get the apple music thing rolling first...

 

"Don't ask yourself what I would have done, just do what's right"

Steve Jobs last words to Tim Cook.

Apple hasn't previously done a purchase in the same magnitude as Beats (putting NeXT aside). But I don't think that means it's wrong to do so now, doing the same thing you has always done isn't necessarily a recipe for success. We can see this in the industry, companies that doesn't change sooner or later get disrupted -as put forward in the The Innovator's Dilemma.

Will Beats prove to be a good purchase for Apple? Who knows, it's too early to say. Apple Music seems to have got a good reception from early adapters though. The headphone business that comes with Beats is actually bigger than most realize. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/t...ones-amplify-celebrities-over-sound.html?_r=0

I disagree Apple hasn't released a product that's different and outside the box since Cook took over. Apple Watch is in that category, that's potentially the product that's going to do to the iPhone what the iPhone did to the iPod.

I would also put Apple Music, and Beats 1 in that category. The new News app in iOS 9 is potentially a bigger deal than most realize. It could fundamentality change web publishing. Siri's new capabilities could be disruptive to Google in a few short years, that's huge.

I think in this case, we need to look deeper than just the products.

 

I could also see the watch supplanting the iPhone. Maybe the world of Dick Tracy has finally arrived...

In the future you might carry a watch - which contains the memory, processor, battery and phone/wifi functionality - and a tablet-factor screen that allows you to interact with it when needed. The screen would be very thin and light, and available in a range of sizes, colors, etc. At home for reading you might have a book-sized screen. Earphones would all be wireless.

 

The Apple Watch is exactly part of the problem. It is DEFINITELY a me-too device, about two years late to the party. More significantly, unlike something like the original iPod, which was assuredly a little late but won by integrating with iTunes AND by having much better ergonomics, the iWatch is...well, whatever.

I would bet my house that the iWatch will not be the next iPhone. In fact, I think it will ultimately be seen as a failure. It sold well out of the box to a built in set of Apple early adopters. I doubt you'll see substantive follow through. Neither Apple nor any competitor has made a particularly convincing argument for why you need something on your arm that has redundant apps to your smartphone and needs to be charged every night.

Why do you think Siri is going to be disruptive to Google? Google's voice recognition is at least as good. And both Siri and Google followed Vlingo, which was better than Siri when it was releaesd, as well (although now marginalized due to Google's own voice recognition).

You have to look at these things with a critical eye. The last big Apple success was the iPad. THAT created a new product segment.

My guess is that the next big "new" Apple product will be attachments that allow the iPad to be used as a productivity device, and pen input for the iPad. Which is to say, a copy of what Microsoft has now successfully introduced with the Surface 3. (Surface 1/2 didn't quite hit the sweet spot, and obviously RT was a failure). That will add a little fuel to the stagnating iPad segment, in the same way that making the screen on the iPhone as big as all the major competitors added fuel to that line. But that are tactics to extend the product life (which is fine). They aren't new or novel or out of the box in any fashion.

Steve Cook is a drone. There are a thousand Steve Cooks being printed in business schools this year. You can rudder the ship for a long time as a drone. But in the end, success will fade. The next Steve Jobs comes along somewhere else and changes the playing field and you become the "remember when?" company.

 

They will never give you that.

 

Isn't this thread about using Apple Music? Not the iPhone....or iWatch...or iPad...or armchair experts on Apple's impending demise.

 

+ 1

The siren call of Apple soothsaying and prophesizing Apple downfall and doom is powerfully seductive.

But can't we stick with "Apples's new streaming music service"?

 

Two? Are you saying the rapper who got paid to put his name on the product line is one of them? Ha ha ha ha ha. Iovine has connections. But Apple had VERY deep connections through iTunes, and those connections did not stop and start with Jobs. If Apple couldn't leverage their existing connections (and cash) for a new platform, then that a massive failure of the executive suite at Apple, and not one that is solved by hiring a guy best known for promoting himself and exaggerating his prowess.

 

It's working great on my iMac, and my phone....but it has issues on my iPad.
My wife is really liking it so far. Aceess to tons of her favorite music.

Has anyone set up a family plan with their kids yet? I really want to get this working on my daughter's gear...but I'm not having any luck.

 

We set up the family plan today. A couple of observations:

• Her playlist appears on her phone but mine doesn't. She is happy about this since our tastes differ.
• As the 'organizer', her playlist is also shown on my phone.
• The Purchased Items playlist is on both our phones.

The only problem with the latter two points is that they add to the onscreen clutter when doing an album search, but I believe that Siri is the workaround.

 

Ok...so my daughter is nine. I sent her an invite and then accepted on her iPad.

Here's where I think I did something to mess things up.

The first time I launched it, the first thing I see is a page with current popular searches...."Bitch, where's my money" was the first thing listed.next I hit the For You tab...and Sticky Fingers is right there in front. Ok, like I said...my kid is 9. I really don't want her seeing stuff that isn't age appropriate. So I did "something". And now every time I launch it on her iPad...it asks her to set up her own trial. I still have her listed on my family plan...but her device isn't buying it.

 

Apple has never been the first to any "party". E-V-E-R. However, the party usually gets started once they show up.

I don't think it's intended to be. At least, not yet.

Ayup. Dre is worth millions to Apple. He's one of the most important producers of the past 20 years and has connections all over the music business. Having him inside of Apple is an enormous coup for the company - he'll ultimately help bring in billions of dollars in revenue off the music and streaming video business that's going to grow up around Apple Music.

Jobs was the connection. He's the one that talked the labels into selling on iTunes in the first place, and he's the one that convinced them DRM wasn't working and wasn't going to work. With him gone Apple didn't have anybody left with music / entertainment industry cred. Now they have two established, highly-connected guys who ran their own operation Beats incredibly successfully. Nothing succeeds in Hollywood like success...

 

Hi there everyone, I am signed up for the 3 month trial and have a technical question, apologies if it has been covered but after reading the whole thread I can't seem to find a definitive answer: Is there a way to turn on "iTunes Music Cloud" and know for sure that it will "leave alone" the tags and cover art for your locally ripped music, or are we still at as "not sure" status? Here's my specific situation:

-I use iTunes on my mac, and have a library of about 2000 ripped CDs (ALAC format) , that I have carefully tweaked the tags and cover art for over a period of a good decade or so, like others many many hours of effort that I do not want to lose. I do have this entire folder of files automatically backed up to the cloud (backblaze) and any time I tweak a tag or cover art it does re-upload the file to my backup.

-Right now I have left the "iCloud Music Library" box Unchecked, because I do not want to have Apple change any of the tags or cover art, like I have read has happened to at least some users

-I do not own any idevices (my phone and tablet are both android) so there is no other device to have iCloud try and sync to.

-My problem is, by leaving iCloud music library unchecked, it is not letting me use the one feature I want to get from the service the most: search for a specific album, then click the "+" icon and have it add it to my music library, as a streaming cloud title, right alongside my locally stored and played ripped CD files. I want to use the service to "fill in the gaps" on missing albums in my collection and present them side by side by the ones I DO own. I don't want to see those albums in a playlist, or as a favorite, I want them in the "my music" section by alphabetical artist name and then by release date, just like the ripped CDs.

-For example, I own every James Taylor CD except the newest one that just came out. This title is available on Apple Music. I'd like to click the "+" sign and have that album appear in "my music" as the last album in a long string of James Taylor albums

Problem is, it won't let me do that unless I turn on iCloud music, and I am worried if I do so, that it will start messing with the tags and cover art of all of my locally ripped and stored music. That would not be acceptable.

Any definitive answers on this? If it's still a matter of "should be ok" or "happens for some users but not others" then I am happy to wait and see if Apple irons this out (but who knows if they ever will, since iTunes match has had this issue for years if I understand correctly).

Thanks in advance for any guidance anyone can give!

 

To be safe I think you need a real backup. Automatic backup is nice, but better to just make. A copy of your library so you can restore it if something goes haywire. Problem with many automatic backups is that if something corrupts a file, that corruption goes to the backup as well. Important that it has versioning so you can return to an earlier state.

I have about 13000 songs in my database and didn't see any corruption. From what I've read the issues seem to happen if one deletes something from their HD and expects the song downloaded from Apple to be tagged identically. This may not be the case as I haven't read all the articles discussing it.

 

Please advise me how to save my iTunes Music library form disaster
I have not downloaded 12.2 on my PC or updated my iPhone yet
Is there a safe procedure to do this without iTunes scrambling the music library
thanks

 

Lots of helpful advice and info here:

http://www.imore.com/apple-music