Anyone Check Out Apple Music Yet?

[Anderton]

Sooooooo...am I missing anything?

[Geoff Grace]

I've checked out Beats 1 because it's available in current versions of iTunes for anyone to listen to. I've heard stuff I liked and stuff I didn't. Overall, I'd say it's more like FM radio used to be before playlists tightened up like a vice, so it's worth a listen if for no other reason than to hear old fashioned curated methods applied to current music radio.

 

I have yet to go for the free three month Apple Music trial because I plan to sign up for Family Membership and need to first take the time to set up and enable Family Sharing. For what it's worth, Macworld magazine has already posted what they like and dislike about the new service, if you'd like to take that into account before jumping in head-first:

 

 

 

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Geoff Grace]

By the way, this may be a good point to look at Apple Music, as the timing of this thread coincides with Spotify alienating their customer base with their new privacy policy:

 

Spotify CEO: Sorry about our super creepy new privacy policy

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[blue2blue]

Actually, they've already rushed to make it clear that the new policies are opt-in (which was not at all clear from their initial press materials). As Wired points out, their policies, properly explained, aren't much different than others.

 

WIRED: Spotify Clears Up Its Controversial Privacy Policy

 

[T]hese will enable opt-in experiences, something that Spotify regrettably neglected to mention when it first announced the changes. The app won’t go scanning for your photos, but it’s reserving the right to access them if and when you want it to.

 

The privacy settings don’t seem quite so creepy in that light. Even more helpful? Putting what Spotify is asking for in the context of its contemporaries.

 

We read through the Android app privacy policies of Pandora, Rdio, Tidal, Google Play Music, and Beats Music (soon to be Apple Music) to see which of the Spotify permissions that have rankled people show up there as well. As it turns out, most streaming-music apps ask for similar things, and often for good reason.

 

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It sounds to me like the most interesting thing about Apple Music is the human-DJed 'radio' channel.

 

(Some interesting observations on Apple Music elsewhere: Apple Music vs "Think Different" and Apple Music from artist perspective.)

 

That said about AM's radio, I have to say I don't historically much care for others' music picks. I haven't listened to the radio for music in many years.

 

I know the kind of music I like, I know it when I hear it. I just need a decent way to be pointed to new/old music I'm not familiar with or have forgotten about that sounds like it, to keep expanding my horizons.

 

That said, my horizons seem to be pushing my Google Play Music favorites library to the point where it's pretty easy to get 'lost' -- or 'lose' some new favorite (whose name I've forgotten) in it. I have 2,230 albums in it (that's about 300 or so more than I have in LP & CD form) and it seems to grow by a few albums a day (I've been on GPM since Feb 2014, about a year and a half). To help myself keep track, I've started using GPM's very nicely developed playlist functionality, basically creating a new 'current interests/checkouts' playlist every few months.

 

[blue2blue]

Part of me is really thinking about installing iTunes on my currently working laptop (my good one needs a new mobo battery), which I'm afraid would just about crush the poor 1 MB thing, to try to take advantage of the Apple Music 3 month free trial thing.

 

Not because I'm thinking about switching (you should pardon the expression) from GPM -- which I have spent considerable time getting just the way I want (including creating a custom 'skin' for it) and would not unsubscribe to -- but simply because I've been on almost every other major subscription stream service* (besides Tidal**) and fascinated by the industry's fitful but seemingly inevitable move to the new model.

 

 

* In order: MusicMatch OnDemand¹, Yahoo Music Unlimited¹, Rhapsody, MOG¹, Beats, Google Play Music, Spotify [3 months-price-of-1 trial last summer]

 

** I was definitely interested in the lossless streaming -- in blind tests I (like pretty much everyone else) haven't been able to sort properly made 320 kbps from full lossless and money is tight (at least through the end of the century) so, even though it's kind of a bargain (2-1/2 to 3 times the bandwidth for twice the money... ok, not a bargain to write home about), given what I've heard so far about the user interface and the rest of it, I would be highly unlikely to move. Also, I keep thinking it's going to fold sooner rather than later. Sadly, perhaps, as with Neil Young and Pono, I'm afraid Jay-Z was woefully unprepared for running a high cost tech startup.

 

¹ - The first three were sent to the grave by former Beats Music CEO, Ian Rogers. He currently works for Apple. As recently as June he was officially Apple Music Senior Director. But his current LinkedIn page is very vague. I'm wondering if this is a result of the less-than-entirely smooth AM roll-out combined with the utterly dismal performance of Beats Music (it was his baby, top to bottom), which gained more than a half million subscribers when they bought MOG but was down to only about 300,000 after less than a year in operation. Beats, as you may recall, was going to be the Spotify Killer... While Beats was sinking, Spotify was enjoying enormous growth -- they went from 12 million paid subscribers to 15 million in just the first three months of this year alone.