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Apple Music |OT| Apple Invents Music, Time To Party Like It's 1989!

I don't think they do, they're focusing on ios. Feels like a stop-gap until they can get a new Music app out next year.

Kinda like the gap between iOS 7 and Yosemite, yeah.

I'm sure Apple's painfully aware of the need to split iTunes up (and of the redundancies between iTunes/QTPlayer for movies, Preview/iBooks for PDF, the weird divisions of app stores in two separate places, et cetera).

OS X 10.12 killing iTunes/QTPlayer and opening up AVFoundation so people can make Perian-esque plugins again would basically be a perfect media-backend year for Apple.
 

RoKKeR

Member
Currently very annoyed. Don't know if this is a bug or something but when I try to add "Achtung Baby (Deluxe Edition) [Remastered]" to my library, it only gives me about half of the songs and they are all unorganized. I've tried removing everything related to "Achtung Baby" from my library and then adding it back in again from the clean slate, but no luck.

Anybody else run into issues like this?
 

holygeesus

Banned
Because the world doesn't revolve around the U.S, there are over 100 other countries with access, and the curators aren't specifically American? I know a lot of the pop curation was done in the UK for instance.

That is a fair point, but if US users can't make use of a playlist, and neither can UK dwellers, it does tend to narrow down the potential English speaking market that can. Wouldn't it be a better idea, to create playlists, that your biggest markets can make use of primarily, and then just annoy your other markets, rather than vice versa?

It would all be moot anyway, if the system was able to flag which country you are from, and then not recommend playlists with tracks you cannot play - that is not a difficult thing to do.
 

strikeselect

You like me, you really really like me!
Currently very annoyed. Don't know if this is a bug or something but when I try to add "Achtung Baby (Deluxe Edition) [Remastered]" to my library, it only gives me about half of the songs and they are all unorganized. I've tried removing everything related to "Achtung Baby" from my library and then adding it back in again from the clean slate, but no luck.

Anybody else run into issues like this?

Yup.

I added Brenda Lee - "I'm Sorry" after I heard it on Beats 1 and for some reason it won't appear in My Library. Probably just another glitch.
 

RoKKeR

Member
Yup.

I added Brenda Lee - "I'm Sorry" after I heard it on Beats 1 and for some reason it won't appear in My Library. Probably just another glitch.

Kind of what I thought. It also confused my U2 library for B.B. King's under the "All Music" tab, lol, but I managed to fix it.

I really like most of what I'm seeing in the app but the bugs are very annoying. Guess I'll wait it out.
 

the3ye

Member
So even with iCloud Music Library "ON" on all of my devices, I still can't transfer local files through iTunes like I want to? God... Hope Taylor Swift has over 10000 tracks with different formats and quality so she can unleash her wrath to make apple change that.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
OK, so I am beginning to sound like a stuck record (remember those?) but the missing song issue, continues to blow my mind.

Spot the major flaw in this image:

Screen%20Shot%202015-07-04%20at%2020.31.23_zpsbygm73wc.png


It's a bleeding Apple curator playlist with a track they don't carry! This has to be a glitch rather than a licensing issue surely?
A lot of the Apple playlists were pulled directly from the playlists that used to exist on the store (Introduction to Rolling Stones for example). Same with many of the 3rd party curated lists.

But I'll be honest. I would rather they include a definitive song not available on Music than exclude it because the rights aren't there at the moment. It would be like "Essential Zeppelin" but "well we don't have Stairway on there because you can't stream it. IMHO that would give me a much worse impression of their ability to suggest music than saying "This song is essential but it's unavailable to stream."

So even with iCloud Music Library "ON" on all of my devices, I still can't transfer local files through iTunes like I want to? God... Hope Taylor Swift has over 10000 tracks with different formats and quality so she can unleash her wrath to make apple change that.

This is how it always was with Match. But..... Why would you want to transfer locally if the song is already in Music?
 

Sami+

Member
Oof, lots of Korean music I really like on here that isn't available on Spotify. That's difficult. Spotify's cheaper fee and PS4 compatibility. Gonna switch to this for the trial and see how I feel.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Oof, lots of Korean music I really like on here that isn't available on Spotify. That's difficult. Spotify's cheaper fee and PS4 compatibility. Gonna switch to this for the trial and see how I feel.
Cheaper? Student I'm guessing?

And yeah, kind of hoping a PS4 app is in the future. I have Apple TV in one room and PS4 in the other.
 

the3ye

Member
This is how it always was with Match. But..... Why would you want to transfer locally if the song is already in Music?
But what if it's not? I've waited over 48 hours to have 20 from over 1200 albums to be "transfered to cloud" and still 3/4 of tracks are greyed out or wrongly tagged, while on iTunes they are perfectly fine.
I can live without iCloud library but disabling it kills Apple Music with adding playlists, music and offline downloads.
 
Yup, and how iPhoto languished until they got Photos for Mac out.

I wouldn't describe iTunes as 'languishing' in the same manner. It certainly keeps getting updates. It keeps getting bigger.

Obviously parts of it go untouched for a long while because nobody's excited about them anymore - something you also see in OS X and iOS.

iTunes *has* to keep getting bigger, but that's part of why it needs to be broken up, IMO.
 
Cheaper? Student I'm guessing?

And yeah, kind of hoping a PS4 app is in the future. I have Apple TV in one room and PS4 in the other.

I've never understood how Spotify was able to convince the music labels to do half-price streaming for students. I bought way more records as a student than I have post-school. Why would they devalue music with their most valuable audience? Really stupid idea. Great for students no doubt; I was saving every penny of my job in order to hit the record store.

And yeah...I wouldn't hold my breath on a PS4 app.
 

HUELEN10

Member
You know guys, I was thinking how Apple is going to get Apple music on android; would they even put it up in the play store?
 

PaulLFC

Member
You know guys, I was thinking how Apple is going to get Apple music on android; would they even put it up in the play store?
They will do if they are bothered about widespread adoption on Android devices.

They already have at least one app on the Play Store (Move to iOS or something like that) so they have the means to publish apps. Google is also a lot less strict about approving apps to appear on the store than Apple are (because they do very little, if any, pre-approval).

Having an Android phone and iPad I was going to sign up for the trial now and hope the Android version was out within 3 months to try, but given what I've read so far (streams limited to 128kbps on data which is where I do most of my mobile listening, vs 320kbps for GPM, issues with local music) I'm going to wait until the Android version is out so hopefully the issues are corrected and I can give the service a decent test.
 

Sean

Banned
Anyone who used Spotify daily for years.. How do you like Apple Music? Are there things it does better and worse?

I've been on Spotify since 2011 or so but not an active daily user, mostly on and off (never subscribed to premium). I've been using it more lately to compare between them before I make a final decision on which one to go with. I like Apple Music's approach more so far, the three main things for me:

- The recommendations on Apple Music have been a lot more interesting to me. On Spotify it feels like simple algorithms going "you like Nirvana so here's some Foo Fighters" or whatever. Apple Music does that too but it also goes one step further with human curation. On my "For You" tab it's recommended me a playlist of Kurt Cobain's favorite songs, a playlist of artists/songs that Nirvana was inspired by, and even a playlist of tribute songs that bands wrote for Cobain after his death. That's the kind of stuff you won't really get from an algorithim. I find the recommendations a lot better looking visually as well - Apple Music usually shows at least four album arts which catch your eye and more importantly give you a good idea of what you're going to get before having to click through/listen (the text descriptions are a lot better too).

- Beats 1 radio is killer for discovery and they've played some amazing sets. If you miss the live airing as I often do, they make daily playlists of the songs played which is helpful. I do wish they put the entire shows on-demand in addition to the playlists, hopefully that'll come at some point.

- Siri integration is amazing. I can be driving and hear a new song and just say "Hey Siri, add this song to my music" all hands-free. (Or "I love this song" and it'll get hearted). While testing different commands with Siri I asked it to "Play that one song from Top Gun" and to my surprise it correctly started playing Danger Zone. It's really smart and works great in my usage so far. And Music has OS integration, you can wake up (or go to sleep) with Apple Music playlists in the Clock app for example. The upcoming iOS 9 "Proactive" features sound neat too: for example if you're at the gym and plug in headphones it'll start up your workout mix. This deep OS integration is the type of stuff Spotify and other competitors won't be able to match.

Other than those things they're mostly the same. Mostly the same library of songs, mostly the same features. Spotify has lyrics (which Apple said they're working on), Apple has ad-free music videos (which I'm sure Spotify will match too). Spotify has the social aspect but it's only a matter of time before Apple adds that as well. They're all going to match each others bullet points, it's going to mostly come down to which UI you prefer (and even that's something that is constantly being refined). There's some things I like better about Spotify UI and some things I like better about Apple's UI. I prefer Apple Music's standard bottom toolbar interface to Spotify's hamburger menu/sidebar design, it's easier to get to your recommendations and the search field is always accessible at all times.

Don't really think you can go wrong with either service, but so far I'm leaning towards Apple Music.
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
Spotify user since 2012 here.

I think Spotify's desktop client has become more and more horrible over the years - it is laggy, confused, and the total reliance on playlists is irritating for people like me who still see albums as 'albums'.

That said, Apple music's adding functionality through iTunes on the desktop is ghastly. It's better on the app, but it's going to need to be iterated a few times before it's ready for primetime. I was trying to explain it to my Mum last night, and she just seemed completely lost in the arcane systems of menus.

I think I lean towards Apple Music, though. The ability to add my own music is a huge deal - for a music nerd completist, the fact that I can essentially curate 'perfect' discographies of artists who have fallen out of print, or have refused to release their catalogue to streaming services is a godsend. I know Google Music also allows this - but I find Google Music's interface horribly clunky and unresponsive.

It's not without problems, but I can see Apple ultimately refining the service to the point that it is essential.
 

Sami+

Member
Cheaper? Student I'm guessing?

And yeah, kind of hoping a PS4 app is in the future. I have Apple TV in one room and PS4 in the other.

Yeah I'm a sophomore. Those two things combined make Spotify really hard to switch from but man this selection is tempting.
 

neshcom

Banned
You know guys, I was thinking how Apple is going to get Apple music on android; would they even put it up in the play store?
Compared to just a loose .apk? Dont you need to go through the Play Store to handle IAPs? Just seems like they would go for the user convenience over avoiding Google's cut.
.exe's on Windows were and are the standard way of installing on Windows, but .apk's aren't on Android.
 

Majora

Member
Oh god, this is so broken its actively removed a whole album from my iTunes purchased list. I wonder if their Customer Service will be able to see any record of my prior purchase if I contact them because I sure can't. Not on my phone anyway.

I made sure to download all of my purchased iTunes songs and albums when I first got Apple Music but when browsing my library just now I noticed that one album had some tracks missing. I opened the iTunes Store app and it did tell me that some purchased songs from that album were not on my phone. Weird, but I actively chose to download them from the iTunes Store app again at that point, so I know I'm not going crazy imagining I bought this album.

Well I went back to Apple Music and some tracks were still missing even though iTunes Store app tells me they're all on my phone. So I choose to delete the album from Apple Music, go back to iTunes Store and that album is not in my purchased list. Not a single song, even though I was downloading tracks from it just 2 minutes earlier.

God what a mess. This is clearly not finished. Interested to see what support say. If they don't add that album back to my account I'm done with iTunes and Apple Music
 
Same reason why iTunes isn't on the Windows Store.

Not really. iTunes used APIs and did things that weren't allowed by Windows Store apps. With AppX packages in Windows 10, Apple will be able to release iTunes through the Windows Store, and also make use of modern Windows 10 APIs.

If they wanted to.
 

Majora

Member
So this album that went missing from my iTunes purchased list. I opened iTunes on my Mac (which is still on old iTunes) and saw it right there in my library and then it disappeared.

I go to 'account info' in iTunes and notice an option I've never seen before:

Hidden Purchases - Unhide any hidden, re downloadable purchases.

the album is in there. So it seems like, if you choose to delete a purchased, downloaded album from Apple Music, it will hide it even from your purchased list in the iTunes app and you will have to log into your ITunes account on your Mac/PC and manually choose to unhide it? What the fuck logic is this? Just because I delete something from the app doesn't mean I want it disappearing from my purchase history.
 
So this album that went missing from my iTunes purchased list. I opened iTunes on my Mac (which is still on old iTunes) and saw it right there in my library and then it disappeared.

I go to 'account info' in iTunes and notice an option I've never seen before:

Hidden Purchases - Unhide any hidden, re downloadable purchases.

the album is in there. So it seems like, if you choose to delete a purchased, downloaded album from Apple Music, it will hide it even from your purchased list in the iTunes app and you will have to log into your ITunes account on your Mac/PC and manually choose to unhide it? What the fuck logic is this? Just because I delete something from the app doesn't mean I want it disappearing from my purchase history.

That seems like a glitch, deleting things from my app has to yet to hide any purchases from me
 
Spotify user since 2012 here.

I think Spotify's desktop client has become more and more horrible over the years - it is laggy, confused, and the total reliance on playlists is irritating for people like me who still see albums as 'albums'.

That said, Apple music's adding functionality through iTunes on the desktop is ghastly. It's better on the app, but it's going to need to be iterated a few times before it's ready for primetime. I was trying to explain it to my Mum last night, and she just seemed completely lost in the arcane systems of menus.

I think I lean towards Apple Music, though. The ability to add my own music is a huge deal - for a music nerd completist, the fact that I can essentially curate 'perfect' discographies of artists who have fallen out of print, or have refused to release their catalogue to streaming services is a godsend. I know Google Music also allows this - but I find Google Music's interface horribly clunky and unresponsive.

It's not without problems, but I can see Apple ultimately refining the service to the point that it is essential.

I'm hoping because Apple is so far behind in streaming market share to start that they will be very aggressive in fixes to win favor from people.
 
- Siri integration is amazing. I can be driving and hear a new song and just say "Hey Siri, add this song to my music" all hands-free. (Or "I love this song" and it'll get hearted). While testing different commands with Siri I asked it to "Play that one song from Top Gun" and to my surprise it correctly started playing Danger Zone. It's really smart and works great in my usage so far.

Last night I said, "Play music to fall asleep to" and it immediately started playing a downtempo playlist. Not as good as the playlists I've made by hand, but honestly I was shocked it even understood what I meant. Siri has really improved lately, especially with music.
 

RoKKeR

Member
Alright, adding "deluxe", "ultimate", or "remastered" versions of albums that you already own is positively broken. I have a, perhaps not surprisingly, very large U2 iTunes library, and I'd like to add the remastered digital versions of many albums. What happens though is it only adds a few songs out of the album and is incomplete.

The thing that really peeves me is that you can scroll down and hit "show complete album" and it fixes all of the above albums, but you aren't able to save it all to "My Music" !?

Very annoying. Can I assume this is just a bug?
 

Kammie

Member
So I'm finally home from vacations and tried syncing my real iTunes library from my PC. Let's just say as soon as the three months are up I'm done with this.

Album art that doesn't match. Duplicate albums. iTunes Cloud matching tracks 1 and 4-10 of a CD, but not 2-3 because they have an accent? My songs not actually uploading because who knows why, iTunes saying it's uploading a single song for 20 minutes before it desists. Personal concert recordings with album titles like "Live at X" that instead of getting uploaded, are matched with album versions!!!

I have a 20,000 song collection. I'm not going to bother with this. It's just easier to use Spotify and upload my personal collection to Google Music, where at least I can somewhat manage things.

The nicest thing was being able to integrate what I own and what I stream into a single list. But it's not worth any of this.

Edit: You've gotta be kidding me, if the bitrate is too low I also can't upload it!?
 

DOWN

Banned
My guess is that this definitely has the ideas of a system better than Spotify, but so far is overall executed worse that Spotify.
 
Alright, adding "deluxe", "ultimate", or "remastered" versions of albums that you already own is positively broken. I have a, perhaps not surprisingly, very large U2 iTunes library, and I'd like to add the remastered digital versions of many albums. What happens though is it only adds a few songs out of the album and is incomplete.

The thing that really peeves me is that you can scroll down and hit "show complete album" and it fixes all of the above albums, but you aren't able to save it all to "My Music" !?

Very annoying. Can I assume this is just a bug?

It's not necessarily a bug. It doesn't happen all the time, it's publisher-controlled I think, but iTunes can recognize that a song comes from multiple albums. For example, I own a Florence + The Machine song from the album Lungs. Just one song. I can "Complete My Album" on either the rest of the album Lungs, or the deluxe version of Lung. If I were to do this for the deluxe version, iTunes would give me every song from the deluxe version EXCEPT the one I already own, since I already have it even if it's from the normal version of Lungs.

Basically, iTunes knows "Okay, this song can be found on album A and album B" so when you try to save album B when it overlaps somewhat with album A, iTunes goes "Don't save these, the user already has them"
 

Majine

Banned
I hate all the "Download from iCloud" buttons on every goddamn song on iTunes (Mac). It makes it look incomplete. I am in the cloud here, don't make me download til my computer throws up.
 

Quasar

Member
I have a 20,000 song collection. I'm not going to bother with this. It's just easier to use Spotify and upload my personal collection to Google Music, where at least I can somewhat manage things.

The nicest thing was being able to integrate what I own and what I stream into a single list. But it's not worth any of this.

For me its easier to just use google music as it already integrates both kinds of music well. It just lacks apples good curation and spotifys nice sharing of playlists.

For that matter now that formerly known as xbox music streams from one drive that might even be enough.
 

Red

Member
After using this a few days I have to admit the recommendations and curated playlists are excellent, and the app itself is snappier than Spotify has ever been. It's probably my favorite streaming app right now. Anyone know if last.fm scrobbling is possible?
 

RoKKeR

Member
It's not necessarily a bug. It doesn't happen all the time, it's publisher-controlled I think, but iTunes can recognize that a song comes from multiple albums. For example, I own a Florence + The Machine song from the album Lungs. Just one song. I can "Complete My Album" on either the rest of the album Lungs, or the deluxe version of Lung. If I were to do this for the deluxe version, iTunes would give me every song from the deluxe version EXCEPT the one I already own, since I already have it even if it's from the normal version of Lungs.

Basically, iTunes knows "Okay, this song can be found on album A and album B" so when you try to save album B when it overlaps somewhat with album A, iTunes goes "Don't save these, the user already has them"

Ah ok. Makes sense, but still very frustrating. I have multiple versions/remixes/live tracks of a lot of songs. So if I try to add an album that doesn't add in songs I might already have, is there a way to make "complete my album" show up permanently/download in order? I don't want to have to click "show complete album" each time for albums.
 
Ah ok. Makes sense, but still very frustrating. I have multiple versions/remixes/live tracks of a lot of songs. So if I try to add an album that doesn't add in songs I might already have, is there a way to make "complete my album" show up permanently/download in order? I don't want to have to click "show complete album" each time for albums.

It frustrates me to no end as well, both when buying albums and just saving music. As far as I know, there's no way to fix it. Hoping it's something they end up fixing

In the meantime, you can create playlists of the complete albums. I know it's a shitty solution, but it's all we got
 

RoKKeR

Member
It frustrates me to no end as well, both when buying albums and just saving music. As far as I know, there's no way to fix it. Hoping it's something they end up fixing

In the meantime, you can create playlists of the complete albums. I know it's a shitty solution, but it's all we got
Hm alright, thankfully I only screwed up one album messing around with all of this ha so a playlist option works for now. Thanks

I'd imagine many people have picked up on this and is hopefully something that will be fixed in future releases.
 
Hm alright, thankfully I only screwed up one album messing around with all of this ha so a playlist option works for now. Thanks

I'd imagine many people have picked up on this and is hopefully something that will be fixed in future releases.

I appreciate as a consumer that iTunes will try and save me time and money by only letting me buy/add new songs, but I wish it was an optional thing. I'm okay owning/saving the same song multiple times if they come on different albums
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
So this album that went missing from my iTunes purchased list. I opened iTunes on my Mac (which is still on old iTunes) and saw it right there in my library and then it disappeared.

I go to 'account info' in iTunes and notice an option I've never seen before:

Hidden Purchases - Unhide any hidden, re downloadable purchases.

the album is in there. So it seems like, if you choose to delete a purchased, downloaded album from Apple Music, it will hide it even from your purchased list in the iTunes app and you will have to log into your ITunes account on your Mac/PC and manually choose to unhide it? What the fuck logic is this? Just because I delete something from the app doesn't mean I want it disappearing from my purchase history.

It's actually a great feature, I have many embarrassing tracks I have bought for whatever 90s party we had, and I don't want to see them on my purchased list among my 'real' music, so it's nice to have an option to purge them and still to be able to resurrect them.
 

scarlet

Member
Unless you're rich or a rampant pirate, streaming is the easiest, quickest, cheapest and most convenient way to listen to a lot of new music.
What aren't you getting?

No spotify access here.

I don't get how to use apple music, the UI is horrible. I get the the streaming, it's cheap. And I use iPod nano, I prefer to own my music, so I buy singles, and luckily in my country the iTunes price is way cheaper.

Satisfied?
 

Quasar

Member
I prefer to own my music

With that preference streaming is a harder sell. For the majority though just like video content majority is moving away from ownership.

Certainly I'm with you to a degree. Streaming I find useful for sampling and material I don't feel the urge to own. Just like netflix. I don't feel the need to own EVERYTHING.
 

Chittagong

Gold Member
Why the fuck does Apple Music keep on recommending Michael Buble to me? Even once I dislike the recommendation. Maybe I have one Xmas some ten years ago mistakenly listened to his Xmas album.
 

Ninja Dom

Member
If Apple Music changes your album art, and you go back and change it then will Apple Music change the art back again?

Also, iOS users, when listening to your music on your iOS device have you had the music just randomly stop playing? And you just have to press play again to start it?
 
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