I find that CDs are normally much cheaper than iTunes; often less than half the price. With iTunes Match, everything gets stored in the cloud and is accessible anywhere.
So CDs are usually the best way of buying music.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Jim Dalrymple: Apple Music is a nightmare and I'm done with it
- Thread starter Rogifan
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I find that CDs are normally much cheaper than iTunes; often less than half the price. With iTunes Match, everything gets stored in the cloud and is accessible anywhere.
So CDs are usually the best way of buying music.
Yea, that is pretty much what I (mostly, correctly) assumed last week on this very thread...
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-im-done-with-it.1902677/page-3#post-21627881
It is almost as if the purposeful destruction of users' personal music collections was part of the plan...one way to get more folks to stream music and make all the recording studio execs happy at the same time. If this is even remotely true, shame on Apple.
Also, yes S. Jobs would have done much different, like not purchase "attempted-coolness" for 3 billion dollars! Steve was already cool.
Last edited:
Not where I live, CDs cost about $30. And for most albums I only get a couple of songs per album, further shifting the balance towards online purchases.
The record industry is screwed on two fronts:
1. Digital audio files are great, there is no new technological breakthru a-la Cassette To MP3.
2. Radio is free and digital radio a-la Pandora is a better experience than anything before it.
Tiny market, not worth disrupting iTunes over.
Not to mention, there's a minefield here. iTunes Music Store is magic. Every artist, every album, it's comprehensive. The streaming model, it's about exclusives, one artist over on Spotify, another on Tidal, some on Apple, if that spreads into the iTunes Music Store it's all over for everyone, consumers included.
BJ
Last edited:
Better numbers than I was seeing, thanks. It's still fractional in the big picture, it's 1/3rd of 1/3rd basically.
Bottom line is, the record companies exposure model (radio) joined by newcomer free streaming (Pandora/iTunes Radio) and the run-amok uploaders (YouTube, Twitter) make the concept of paying cash for music almost completely obsolete. So to encourage a paid streaming model (Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal) that is fragmenting artists at a very high expense isn't going to fly. In the end, to the average customer, that $120 a year just removes the commercials and the commercials on iTunes Radio last 15 seconds an hour.
BJ
For individual songs, sure; iTunes all the way there.
But I have my eye on a Kylie Minogue album (from the 80s), man of impeccable taste that I am.
iTunes: £7.90
CD: £2.26
No contest.
Having a large part of the world's music at your fingertips anywhere, anytime is not a technological breakthrough? I beg to differ. It's probably the biggest technological advance in music distribution yet.
Digital sales are in decline, subscription services are going through a period of exponential growth. There is absolutely disruption, which is precisely what prompted Apple to develop Apple Music.
You missed his point. There is no "new format" that's next that sounds better and better was his point. We are "there" in terms of actual audio quality.
Quite right.
This is why I hate the focus on growth in the streaming sector. It's easy to have high growth when you're starting from nothing. If you sold one unit in your first quarter and two in the next then you have 100% growth.
Radio. Is. Not. Free!
Radio is a paid service where you pay for music that you don't own after paying for it and listening to it. And the prices can go up as well as down.
What does "free at the point of use" even mean? If I pay for Apple Music at the beginning of the month and listen to a song in the middle of the month, then it is also "free at the point of use". Radio is just as prepaid as streaming, except that with streaming you don't pay for music you don't listen to or you don't want to listen to.
And, well, with radio you don't realize that you are paying for it, which is probably the reason why so many people think it's "free". Or perhaps people don't want to think about how they are forced to pay for music that they hate and that they don't even listen to, as that would upset them.
Well, then it's great that nobody has done that.
The biggest issue is that streamed music is eating storage of the device ... How is this issue not a bigger public outcry!
It's only eating up free storage though?
Wouldn't you rather have
Music make sure to save precious mobile data instead of preserving unused storage space?
Of course, but Apple Music and iTunes Music Store are the same thing. No difference except the price. One is per-song. The other is per-month.
Don't forget: The iTunes Music Store (downloads) has every artist and every song available whereas Apple Music (offline) is missing several key artists like The Beatles, Prince, Neil Young, and on and on.
Digital sales are in decline because the record companies are enabling free streaming services who do a better job than anything in the past. Used to be, the only way to hear that brand new song from Bon Jovi was to put on FM radio and wait a few hours until they played it. That was really bad, so you'd go to the store and buy the single for $5 and play it as much as you wanted. Today, I can hear any brand new song I want to by simply going to YouTube and playing it. Or go to Pandora and creating a custom artist station to play it. Or go to iTunes Radio and creating a custom song station to play it.
The record companies didn't break new sonic or technical ground since the advent of the MP3 in 1999 yet the methods by which their consumers could listen to their songs for free grew exponentially. Until the record companies shut down FM radio, shut down Pandora and iTunes Radio, enforce copyright laws on YouTube, and shut down the iTunes Music Store, they are never going to generate the revenue they apparently feel they are entitled to. If adverts on FM and free streaming services aren't the answer, then shutting down the free spigot of music is.
BJ
Yeah until all your free storage runs out... It doesn't seem to self clean... Am I missing somethingIt's only eating up free storage though?
Wouldn't you rather have
Please.
"Radio" [free services defined as FM Radio, iTunes Radio, Pandora, iHeart Music] cost nothing to a consumer. We are fed commercials which are either invasive (15 minutes per hour on FM) or subtle (15 seconds per hour on iTunes Radio) but there is $0 paid by a listener to one of these stations. It's free. There's nothing out of pocket. It's the inconvenience of listening to a commercial, but it's not costing us a dime.
And unlike FM Radio which is inconvenient and limited to the discretion of a single program director, iTunes Radio and Pandora are incredibly convenient and offer limitless flexibility. I can create "Beach Boys Radio" in iTunes for FREE and have an awesome backyard pool party around upbeat summer songs. I can create "Sunday Morning Radio" in iTunes for FREE and have a great brunch around Maroon 5 type mellow artists. It's mind-blowing how awesome these FREE RADIO products are.
Apple Music Paid Subscription and Spotify Paid Subscription are just like XM Radio. "Pay us and you'll be commercial-free!". But Apple Music is marketing this fact differently. They're claiming you're getting a "whole new world of music with 30 million songs at your fingertips!" but in the end, whether they call it catchy names like "For You" or "New" or "Radio" or "Beats1" it's the same thing: It's iTunes Radio without the commercials. And they're trying to charge $120 a year for it. Not happening.
BJ
Last edited:
Wait so are you saying Apple Music creates this huge cache that you can't clear? When I go into settings on my iPhone it tells me exactly what songs are taking up space, and it allows me to delete right from there. Oh if only other apps that functionality. So much more useful than the stupid "documents and data" that you can't do anything with.
+1
The issue has nothing to do with hard drive space.
The issue has to do with all that high quality streaming and all those data overages. There are hidden charges involved with Apple Music, it's more than $120 a year. If I chose the Family Plan for $150 and added to it the data overages my 3 kids currently run at of $10 a month each...
Apple Music would cost $150 + $360 = $510 a year.
Right now, my entire family listens to Music on their iOS devices for $12 a year.
BJ
Last edited:
Big one (for me), If I buy Amazon I can play it on any device. Same with Google Play Music. Not so with iTunes.
Manually downloaded songs, and AM tracks set for offline, are listed in the usage area, where they can be deleted easily. The issue is supposedly with the cache, which AFAIK is not able to be manual deleted.
Right there is no way to clear the streaming cache. So eventually one will run out of storage, now there is a trick to delete if you hook up to I explorer, but that's not " it just works". This is why I can't believe more people are complaining about this yet. It makes Apple music non use able., eventually.
You make be correct on this, however most users (I know anyway) have at least 4-5 GB available. So I would think Apple must have addressed this somewhere in the streaming part of AM. Maybe a restart cleans the cache out, IDK.
I have to agree with Dalrymple that apple music is a HUGE disappointment. And I haven't even had any of the problems he had. But some of the design decisions Apple has made to iTunes just baffles me. To mention a few things that annoys be daily:
- why can't i test and listen to playlists without adding every single song in that playlist to my music?? If I listen to one of apples playlists it doesn't mean I like it and want to keep every song with a cover. (You should be able to listen to all kinds of music and playlists and only add those you really want to keep into your own library (like spotify)
-When I choose to get similar music to an album I have in my library it takes me directly to iTunes Store. I want the streaming service I don't want to suddenly buy albums.
- why does the search defaults to searching my library?!? 99% of the time I want to search the Apple music library for new music.
- downloading music for offline listening it's impossible to filter these so I have to manually look through my library and see which albums have the tiny phone icon. And if I made an album offline how do I undo that without removing it from my library?!?
- its unresponsive when you hit the play button and some times it seems like iTunes needs to buffer more than a YouTube video before it can start playing.
- iTunes seemed slick when Apple rewrote it. Now it feels more messy and confusing than ever. I struggle every day trying to remember were stuff is and end up messing around.
-iTunes Store on windows is ugly and the fonts are completely jaggy and has bad anti aliasing .
These are just a few of the things annoying me. Currently the only positive thing I can say about Apple music is the family pricing. If spotify would be able to match that I would go back instantly. I don't want to pay half the price for every family member. They rarely listen to music but I like to give them the ability to do so for a few extra bucks. I hope Apple will come to their senses soon, currently Apple music feels amateurish and definitely not something designed by Apple. It's Apple maps failure all over again....end of rant.
- why can't i test and listen to playlists without adding every single song in that playlist to my music?? If I listen to one of apples playlists it doesn't mean I like it and want to keep every song with a cover. (You should be able to listen to all kinds of music and playlists and only add those you really want to keep into your own library (like spotify)
-When I choose to get similar music to an album I have in my library it takes me directly to iTunes Store. I want the streaming service I don't want to suddenly buy albums.
- why does the search defaults to searching my library?!? 99% of the time I want to search the Apple music library for new music.
- downloading music for offline listening it's impossible to filter these so I have to manually look through my library and see which albums have the tiny phone icon. And if I made an album offline how do I undo that without removing it from my library?!?
- its unresponsive when you hit the play button and some times it seems like iTunes needs to buffer more than a YouTube video before it can start playing.
- iTunes seemed slick when Apple rewrote it. Now it feels more messy and confusing than ever. I struggle every day trying to remember were stuff is and end up messing around.
-iTunes Store on windows is ugly and the fonts are completely jaggy and has bad anti aliasing .
These are just a few of the things annoying me. Currently the only positive thing I can say about Apple music is the family pricing. If spotify would be able to match that I would go back instantly. I don't want to pay half the price for every family member. They rarely listen to music but I like to give them the ability to do so for a few extra bucks. I hope Apple will come to their senses soon, currently Apple music feels amateurish and definitely not something designed by Apple. It's Apple maps failure all over again....end of rant.
If that's the only metric, music formats stopped getting better 35 years ago when the CD was introduced (or even earlier if you subscribe to the notion that analog recordings can be superior). I think other metrics - such as convenience, mobility and ease of access - are just as important technical breakthroughs as audio quality. In my opinion, moving to digital delivery from the "cloud" over mobile networks has done more to change music consumption than, say, the move from LP to CD or from the Walkman to the iPod.
Last edited: