I have taken advantage of a couple of promos in the past and right now Apple Music is so close to being ideal for me where as previously I always gladly went back to Tidal, partly because of the sound quality but also for the other reasons mentioned below. Now that Apple Music has lossless + hi-res it's much more appealing to me but still surprisingly lacking on these other bits:
- I have a lot of music on my iPhone + iPad, manually managed using drag + drop in Finder, it's been painstakingly curated over the years and includes lots of DJ mixes and recorded radio shows, as well as albums and ripped vinyl and all is tagged exactly as I want. This makes the syncing / music match a non starter for me, I want to maintain that control and don't want things to get messed up as Apple tries to cleverly upload and re-download all of that. As a result, I can't save any Apple Music items to my library, I can't create playlists and I can't download any items to listen offline - practically limits me to search and play - great!
- Most of my working day is spent on Windows machines where I refuse to add the mess that is iTunes in its Windows form (with all the other extras installed, eg bonjour service + quicktime - does it still do that?). Tidal & Qobuz on the other hand offer decent desktop apps with the ability for me to output the music in hi-res direct to my USB DAC. And of course, iTunes on Windows also has no lossless or hi-res, with no resolution looking likely in the near future.
It should be easy for Apple to offer a standalone version of Apple Music that works in a similar way as Spotify or Tidal on iOS devces that's separate to the main music app managed via Finder but allows me to login with any account I pay for and use it without interfering with my personal music files. In that regard, Android users are advantaged. Or even better, work like the iTunes with profiles by offering a way to have separate profiles logged in to the iOS app so that I can save and download items or one profile but switch to my main one to listen to my own personal music collection. As for their neglect for some time Windows users, well it's not so surprising but pretty sad at the same time.
Such a shame for me as I'd love to actually stick around after this current trial at the current price point which I didn't feel like previously but the above are big enough factors that I can't justify doing it.
- I have a lot of music on my iPhone + iPad, manually managed using drag + drop in Finder, it's been painstakingly curated over the years and includes lots of DJ mixes and recorded radio shows, as well as albums and ripped vinyl and all is tagged exactly as I want. This makes the syncing / music match a non starter for me, I want to maintain that control and don't want things to get messed up as Apple tries to cleverly upload and re-download all of that. As a result, I can't save any Apple Music items to my library, I can't create playlists and I can't download any items to listen offline - practically limits me to search and play - great!
- Most of my working day is spent on Windows machines where I refuse to add the mess that is iTunes in its Windows form (with all the other extras installed, eg bonjour service + quicktime - does it still do that?). Tidal & Qobuz on the other hand offer decent desktop apps with the ability for me to output the music in hi-res direct to my USB DAC. And of course, iTunes on Windows also has no lossless or hi-res, with no resolution looking likely in the near future.
It should be easy for Apple to offer a standalone version of Apple Music that works in a similar way as Spotify or Tidal on iOS devces that's separate to the main music app managed via Finder but allows me to login with any account I pay for and use it without interfering with my personal music files. In that regard, Android users are advantaged. Or even better, work like the iTunes with profiles by offering a way to have separate profiles logged in to the iOS app so that I can save and download items or one profile but switch to my main one to listen to my own personal music collection. As for their neglect for some time Windows users, well it's not so surprising but pretty sad at the same time.
Such a shame for me as I'd love to actually stick around after this current trial at the current price point which I didn't feel like previously but the above are big enough factors that I can't justify doing it.