Apple Music Explained

[LordQ]

I accidentally tried the 7 premium days offer by Spotify and loved it but came to my original thought; it's for streaming the disposable top charts, whilst having my loved music locally. I guess it will be the case with Apple Music but definitely trying it for three months.

 

[malnar]

It's the same price, but value is subjective. If I buy an album once every 12 months, at the end of those 12 months I have 12 albums. If I pay for a subscription and then stop after 12 months, at the end of those 12 months I have nothing. To those people who always have an internet connection, who rarely like to re-listen to their old songs, and who are OK with the entire scheme, this is sure to be a fantastic service. But I'm not sold on it.

Think of it this way: Netflix is a service that you pay for, and you get to watch all kinds of stuff, but you don't own it. You stop paying, you lose access to all those shows. You could even say the same thing for cable, generally - you stop paying, you lose access. But you don't stop paying, because continuing to do so gives you so many options that you wouldn't otherwise have. That's what's going to happen with music. It's just going to be a service and it's going to be so much easier to deal with as a service than it had been as a product. Already, after only a couple of years of heavily using various music services, I'm really annoyed when I have to rip a CD (because I listen to quite a bit of music that isn't available on any service.) But I'm really fine with this. At some point, EVERY song is going to be available this way. And I'd bet that music that never even made it to CD will pop up on music services because it's so much easier to do. I'm all for it, in other words. I'm just concerned about the implementation of it.

There are probably going to be a lot of changes happening in the next few years with regards to streaming. Apple Music may not be quite the cultural shift that the iPod/iTunes store was, because Spotify really signaled the beginning of mainstream acceptance of streaming, but I think Apple Music is going to solidify streaming as the way music is consumed. There are a lot of people out there who don't really understand the streaming paradigm but will trust that Apple Music is going to offer something significant to them, and they'll get locked in just like most of us did with iTunes a decade ago. I don't think Apple is too worried about current Spotify users. They want to motivate everyone else to subscribe, and get hooked on, Apple Music.

 

[Manny72]

Since I already have a Beats subscription would I already be subscribing to Apple Music or are they going to remain separate?

 

[Noble Actual]

Since I already have a Beats subscription would I already be subscribing to Apple Music or are they going to remain separate?

They really need to figure out which one they want to keep.

Surprised why they haven't shut down Beats Music and iTunes Radio yet and just let everyone try Apple Music.

 

[cocky jeremy]

"Just" $9.99 per month? I get that's a deal to some people, but is it really all that great?

I listen to a lot of music. I was using Pandora, then iTunes Radio (with a Match subscription), then back to Pandora when iTunes Radio became unstable for me. Looking over my financial records, I spent somewhere between $30-80 on music last year (wide range due to Apple bundling software and music purchases into a single receipt). I feel like I buy an album (or at least a few songs) every other month, but based on the records, it's less frequent.

Now Apple wants me to pay $120 per year - which is somewhere between 1.5-4x as much as I normally spend on music - and I completely lose access once I stop paying? There isn't even a perk like "download an album for free to keep once every three months"?

I don't care about human-curated lists, and I don't care about radio with a DJ. We got into the "algorithm-based music services" that Iovine trashed at the WWDC because they offered better music discovery than your average radio station, and customization. I like to dip into those streaming services, discover new songs and artists, and then make purchases based on that. I know the industry would just love to take us back to the days when they had better control over what we were going to listen to, but it seems like a step backward from the consumer's perspective.

$10 a month... those users coming from Spotify are used to this pricing, but Pandora is $5 per month, and iTunes Match was $25 per year (a little over $2 per month, if you want to break it down that way). I know Apple wanted to price it at $7.99 and the industry forced them higher, but even that would have seemed a bit steep to me.

Maybe it'll be the future, but I'm not convinced that it's better. I'm willing to give it a try, but I'm not sold - especially at that price.

But thank you @kmj2318 for this write-up. There were a surprising number of gaps in the features in the WWDC keynote (and they didn't mention any compelling reason to go with this over competing services), and this went a long way toward clearing those up.

Pandora is cheap because it's garbage. You listen to whatever they decide to play for you. I can't imagine paying $.25 per year for that, let alone $5/month for it. If it's cheap, it's cheap for a reason.

 

[TheColtr]

I personally can't wait for the service, I just want something built in, everything else is a plus. And I feel like a lot of people don't realize that three months is a quarter of a year.

 

[GlenK]

I'm using Amazon Music right now which is included in Prime Membership. I didn't even want music when I signed up but checked it out since it was included. Now I need to see if it's worth another $10 to go with AM.

So far Prime Music has been outstanding so it should be interesting to compare.

 

[Ledgem]

Pandora is cheap because it's garbage. You listen to whatever they decide to play for you. I can't imagine paying $.25 per year for that, let alone $5/month for it. If it's cheap, it's cheap for a reason.

Have you ever used it? It's not a music locker, it's "internet radio." The difference is that you can customize your listening preferences and skip songs. In that regard it's no different than iTunes Radio, Spotify, and a few other services.

Granted, some people are going to want full control over their music playlists. Maybe you're one of those people. But calling it "garbage" and ascribing it to the price is a bit much. Pandora, iTunes Radio, and other algorithm-based radio services are very nice for those of us who want to discover new music that's similar to music we already like, or who don't want to manually put together a playlist every time we want to listen to music of a certain type.