Anyone Tried Out Apple Music Yet? Thumbs Up or Down?

[Anderton]

This is kind of similar to the do we need any more new music thread...I have Tunein, iHeart, and DI.fm on my mobile devices, and really don't feel the need for anything more. It would take me years just to find everything that's on Tunein and DI.fm has every mutant strain of electronic music on this planet, and possible others. And they're free as long, as you don't mind the occasional ad...I guess I'll give the Apple Music free trial a spin, but if everyone says "yeah, it's incredible," I'll make it more of a priority.

[blue2blue]

tl;dr: nothing new from me, below, really...

 

Since I've been on most of the other services (except Tidal, which I've also been curious about), I've been sorely tempted to install the dreaded iTunes on the old laptop one of my clients gave me (it was half broken and now it's half-fixed) -- although the last time I had it on the 1 GB RAM machine it could barely run.

 

I've yet to hear more than a couple of first-hand accounts, none of them particularly impressive. I've read a number more and I was surprised that they weren't generally more favorable. Lots of complaints about the UI and various bugs in some of the associated software for syncing, etc.

 

 

A lot of folks have said they prefer Spotify. Me, I really don't care for Spotify much.

 

I'm a Google Play guy -- though the first time I tried it, back around 2012, it struck me as awful -- but it's now the best I've used -- although they could all go a long, long way forward...

 

This is a field that should only get better -- unfortunately, with the labels increasingly involved, that sometimes seems a fading hope... the more I see from the labels the more I realize they really just don't care about the music in their archives. The labels overwhelmingly seem to be cultural 'philistines' of the worst sort. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me by now -- it's something I started becoming aware of in the late 60s -- but the depth of that uncaring, unknowing, soul-dead exploitation of the music, the fans, and, of course, the artists, just keeps revealing itself anew.

 

 

Anyhow, I'm thinking about trying Apple Music, if only for 'research' purposes.

 

If nothing else, this would give me a chance to directly compare Apple's 256 kbps streams with the 320 kbps streams most of the others use for their prime tier. My old ears can't be used as a standard of audibility for anyone else, of course, but I've had pretty good luck sussing different compression levels of mp3s in blind-testing (I've been able to reliably tell mp3 256 from 320 but not 320 from full CD) so I'm thinking my ear for timbre helps there. I suspect I would have a tougher time sussing a 256 advanced codec (like Apple's mp4/AAC or Ogg Vorbis) from a 320.

 

I did, of course, try Apple Music's benighted and unlovable predecessor, Beats Music, parts of which apparently still exist within Apple Music. Perhaps it was because I'd liked MOG, which Beats bought to cannibalize for their own service, so much, but, damn, I really hated Beats Music. I definitely believe it was the worst of the 7 subscription services I've been on over the last decade.

 

So I was as shocked by Apple's early and lavish praise for Beats Music when they were shelling out their 3 BILLION for Beats as I was unsurprised by their very quick decision to shut down Beats and redo it from an Apple angle. I guess, really, that that is what I really want to see: just how much of the dreadful Beats Music remains as part of Apple Music.

 

 

Whatever its merits, Apple's subscriber base seems to have grown rapidly, they're already up to 11 million subscribers in just a half year.

[Anderton]

Not exactly a...Tidal wave of people who've tried Apple Music.