Btw lol at your two prime forms of music discovery being radio and preview clips. I am sure artists love you deciding whether or not you like their song on listening to a preview clip of it.
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Well, That Was Quick - Bored Already, Not Going To Keep Apple Music
- Thread starter boltjames
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This almost seems to be a somewhat broad mixture of complaints ranging from the concept of streaming subscription services, to the "For You" section, the radio stations, and the curated playlists. The "For You" section is admittedly weak, as are the current playlists. The rest is not exactly something I'd reserve for Apple Music specifically.
I think the strength of these services is in their ability to give you the right tools for manual discoverability. That's where Apple Music really needs some help. The interface is not intuitive which really detracts from iTunes' previous strong suits. The playlist selection is too small and requires Apple to basically be responsive to the whims of its user base, rather than allow the user base to make the service stronger. While the better playlists of other services helps, I think being able to tap into a community works best. What I loved about Spotify was its use of 3rd party mini-apps. I had the Guardian, I had Rolling Stone, and a bunch of other apps designed to help me scratch the itch, whether it was a newly released album or a "this fits your interest/mood profile" thing. Unfortunately, Spotify removed the ability for apps. God knows why, since I was getting plugged into new albums far better than without (especially considering I could listen to the album and read the review in the same page), but you know, service providers make stupid decisions once in a while.
I think the strength of these services is in their ability to give you the right tools for manual discoverability. That's where Apple Music really needs some help. The interface is not intuitive which really detracts from iTunes' previous strong suits. The playlist selection is too small and requires Apple to basically be responsive to the whims of its user base, rather than allow the user base to make the service stronger. While the better playlists of other services helps, I think being able to tap into a community works best. What I loved about Spotify was its use of 3rd party mini-apps. I had the Guardian, I had Rolling Stone, and a bunch of other apps designed to help me scratch the itch, whether it was a newly released album or a "this fits your interest/mood profile" thing. Unfortunately, Spotify removed the ability for apps. God knows why, since I was getting plugged into new albums far better than without (especially considering I could listen to the album and read the review in the same page), but you know, service providers make stupid decisions once in a while.
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I was watching a tv show today and over the ending credits was a song I had heard before but was not sure of the name or who sang it. I said "Siri, who sings this song". Siri identified it then let me play it right there and / or go into apple music and add it to my music.
I have identified probably a thousand songs w shazam over the years. I have not bought any of them. I would not have bought this one either. But no brainer to add it to my streaming library to have it to run into again in the future.
I think Topic Starter does not understand the benefit of the frictionless encounter any streaming service offers versus having to make a purchase decision every time you want to listen to a piece of music.
Being able to listen to that song as part of a $9.99 a month service has value to me. Paying $1.29 or $.99 for that one track much less valuable.
I think most people who have spent a lot of money over many years buying music will admit that a lot of the money was not terribly well spent. If it's paying full album price for two songs or buying a song you listened to three times and never again. The percentage of the average person's musical expenditures that still hold Vaud to them as a listener is probably fairly small. That makes a streaming service that much more worthwhile.
The thing you say about Guardian & Rolling Stone, that's what the 'Apple Curated Playlists' section is about, in the 'New' tab, you have playlists from Rolling Stone, where the can put the article under the connect section, even including music there. Admitted lot, it's needing more work there, but that's going to end up being good once they tweak it.
I've found the 'For You' section dramatically improving since launch. As I've liked stuff and all that, it's changed. That's another section that takes a bit of time to evolve. People just need to be patient. I see why Apple made it a 3 month trial.
Lets just admit it people who are complaining about Apple Music lack in taste in music, can not afford a simple $120 a year but can afford Netflix, Mommy said no so they are pissed and need to come here create pointless threads. But I do understand the complains about how Apple Music and iCloud Music is failing hard everyone's Music or a lot of music do not appear on Apple Music.
Mod note: Please quit the arguing back and forth and remain civil and on topic. Many posts have been removed.
When you talk about people having been fooled just because they disagree with you, and have a different opinion to you, is actually starting to be quite offensive.
I would still be interested in your response to post 334.
Apple Music is in 100 countries. USA is just one of them and is not bigger than all of them combined. There are countries that aren't screwed over with data plans. The US is not the centre of the universe....
Back on this topic, because again, for me, it seems to be working much more as I would expect. This morning the For You section has an Introduction To playlist featured for a band where I have 1 album in my iTunes collection that I have listened to a fair bit, but mostly to one song. The Intro list is perfect, because it turns out there is a lot of other songs they have that I like. As far as I know, I've never listened to this artist on Apple Music or on Beats before that.
At the same time, for a couple of bands where I have extensive collections in iTunes, it is now offering me playlists of Deep Cuts and B-Sides. Again, I have not listened to these bands in Apple Music or Beats.
Interspersed with those playlists are a bunch of other suggestions of albums and playlists from comfortably familiar to those that would be a stretch for me.
This is exactly why I subscribe and why I generally start my listening in the For You section.
Exactly. As I was saying the other day, the For You section appears to evolve as time goes on, as I like tracks, artists, playlist or mark things as 'I don't like this', the For You section has changed. I no longer see 'Intro to' for artists I have a lot of, instead it's Deep Cuts and B-Sides and some other stuff. I get 'intro to' for artists I've rarely listened to, or not heard of.
I can totally relate to this post and for me, Apple Music at it's current price does not appeal to me. I'm also the same age as boltjames, and have plenty of other avenues to discover new music. The $15 a month(Family plan) right now is just too high a price.
For iTunes Match I can have all the songs that I own, available on all my devices. I can still listen to the Apple Radio channels, and I also subscribe to Slacker Radio for $3 a month which, IMO, has better curated stations with unlimited skipping and SQ to match.
I have discovered new bands and purchased many new albums, but that still is probably less than 12 a year. Apple Music is close, but of they got the family plan down to $9 I'd be all in.
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$9, as in less than the individual plan?
At what point did people start expecting to get the moon on a stick for a buck?
At what point did people start expecting to get the moon on a stick for a buck?
See, this is how you post a fair and reasonable post if streaming is not for you. It's a fair enough opinion, streaming isn't for everyone.
I only question the family plan point, I don't think any service is lower than $15? Spotify is $5 per person after the first person, so a family of 4 is $25. Think Apple might have the best deal for that, as $15 for up to 6 people.
Artists? LOL.
Artists loved the days when recordings were sold in stores and the only thing a buyer had to go by was a single song they heard on the radio before they plunked down $12.99 and listened to the other 11 tracks at home. "Hey guys, the new Styx album is out and I just heard the single and it sounds good!" before going home, listening to Side 1 Cut 1 'Mr. Roboto' and going "WTF did I just buy"?
And what's sad is, Apple Music is just like that and you embrace it so easily. "Hey gang, I have a great idea! Let's pay Apple $120 a year so the record companies have no financial incentive to worry about quality! Pay for everything before hearing anything! Just like the old days of physical media and shrink wrap!" Genius.
BJ
Its nothing like that at all, because you're not paying $12.99 for each album your listening to.
Either way, I thought you had previously argued that back in the day things were better in terms of how much god music there was?
If you are now saying that people were buying albums back then after listening to just one track, what about the whole theory of record companies not having a financial incentive to worry about quality?
I was happy to discover some Tegan and Sarah earlier - I remember seeing them at Glastonbury a few years ago and really liking them, but forgetting to check them out when I got back.
So they popped up on a Regina Spektor playlist.
Only about 30 songs worth discovering in a year and I found one already! What were the odd?s!!
But then I was sad, because I realised I hadn't really, truly, property discovered them, but had been spoon fed it by Apple who were taking me for a mug.
Either way, I thought you had previously argued that back in the day things were better in terms of how much god music there was?
If you are now saying that people were buying albums back then after listening to just one track, what about the whole theory of record companies not having a financial incentive to worry about quality?
I was happy to discover some Tegan and Sarah earlier - I remember seeing them at Glastonbury a few years ago and really liking them, but forgetting to check them out when I got back.
So they popped up on a Regina Spektor playlist.
Only about 30 songs worth discovering in a year and I found one already! What were the odd?s!!
But then I was sad, because I realised I hadn't really, truly, property discovered them, but had been spoon fed it by Apple who were taking me for a mug.
When you talk about people having been fooled just because they disagree with you, and have a different opinion to you, is actually starting to be quite offensive.
I would still be interested in your response to post 334.
Okay then...
I answered this post already. If there are specifics I missed, let me know and I'll answer them promptly.
BJ
All you really want to say is that last sentence so please start a thread about a war between friendly continents in the forum it belongs in.
BJ
I didn't see a reply, and can't now when I look back.
The specifics I'm interested in are:
When I listen to the radio, can I select any song or album I want to listen to?
When I listen to the radio, can I download the song or album its from to my computer / portable device to listen to again whenever I choose?
What do you even mean when you say "you're not discovering new music on your own".
If I don't know a band today but I hear them on the radio tomorrow, why doesn't that count as "discovering new music on my own" anyway?
....I think at the moment Apple decided to participate in the streaming scam and go all anti-consumer for the first time in their history.
The sad thing is that Apple Music could be a terrific product if they a) had, say, a $50 annual plan and b) allowed, say, 50 offline tracks to become permanent downloads per year. The flaw in Apple Music is that the expense doesn't justify the benefit. You pay 10x more money but you don't get 10x more music. You get a lot more fluff to wade through just to get to those 12 songs a year you traditionally bought but you don't get to own them.
Access to a deep library of millions of songs, good. Key artists missing, bad. Pay more money, bad. Rent instead of own, bad. It doesn't add up.
BJ
But it already costs $50 for 50 tracks, so you would be getting an ton of extra stuff (i.e. all the streaming functionality) for free.
If it doesn't justify the expense for you, that is subjectively a shame for you.
But it does not make Apple Music objectively flawed.
Stop saying you when you mean I.
Very few people are going to subscribe to Apple Music or Spotify and only listen to 12 songs a year. And when I say "very few" I mean virtually no-one.
Describing Apple Music as a complete scam because people will pay $120 for 12 tracks is an utterly, utterly, ludicrous way to look at it.
Yeah, the site is strange and hides some posts, you have to look for this little link that says "show more posts" occasionally. I don't know why it does this, it's quite different than any other forum platform I've experienced.
Yes. Your iOS device has the capacity to house an entire 50,000 song music collection and it can be accessed through your home/car audio system easily.
If you're talking strictly about XM or FM radio, the answer is also yes. Hear a song on XM, pick up your iPhone, search the iTunes store, buy it for less than a buck. This is less convenient, definitely. But the ability is still there.
Yes. iTunes Radio which is a few years old and is free has a 'buy' button on it's primary screen. Same experience for Apple TV, same on a home computer.
What I mean is that if you have 30,000,000 songs at your disposal you're not going to randomly use the Search box and type in a keyword and click all day on various songs and make wondrous discoveries. Instead you're going to click on a Radio Station or a Playlist or a For You suggestion and all of that is curated, all of that is selected either by humans or algorithms or by playcount. It's 50 songs on a daily station's tracklist or its 10 songs on a custom playlist. You're not "discovering music on your own". You are having a very small subset of songs spoon-fed to you by others. Same as regular radio, same as Pandora, same as reading Rolling Stone album reviews.
It does. But in the context of what we're talking about, it doesn't. Here, in simplest terms:
The Offer: 30 Million Songs at your fingertips.
The Cost: 10x more than what a typical user spends.
The Promise: Fantastic new music discovery.
The Reality: Exposure is through "stations" and "playlists" that are just as narrow-minded and pre-selected as AM radio in 1965.
BJ
That's not how it works from a business sense. Apple and the record companies simply want to generate more money from the investment and infrastructure they already have in place. They just want to turn that $12 a year into $120 a year. They want you to think that you're getting $120 worth of value when they're offering you less. Think about it:
If you spent $120 a year right now in iTunes you'd get 120 song files to own permanently along with free iTunes Radio with custom stations for discovery.
If you spend $120 a year right now in Apple Music you get 0 song files to own permanently along with Radio and Deep Catalog for discovery.
In the end, Apple is getting $120 and you're getting nothing but a Deep Catalog which, for most people, is going to be a lot more limited than 120 song files a year would have been, and you'd get to own them indefinitely instead of paying $120 a year for the next 30 years. There isn't enough old stuff to sustain the expense for more than a few years and there isn't enough new music to sustain the expense in each coming year. The goal is to trick iTunes users to ditch the physical library for the streamed library and keep those $120 payments coming each year.
You can't make that argument because free iTunes Radio exists and, sit down when you read this: That ironically allows me to listen to and discover MORE songs than you. The Beatles are available on iTunes Radio. The Beatles are not available on Apple Music Radio/Playlists. Same for Prince, Jay-Z, etc.
True, I won't deny that. Apple Music has some cool features. But they are all about convenience, not quality, and convenience wears off very quickly.
BJ
So when you say "yes" you actually mean "no". I can only listen to it when I buy it.
Again, "yes" really means "no" because I have to buy it.
If I can listen to literally dozens of albums through a streaming subscription for $120 can you explain to me the advantage of paying up to $500 to buy everything I might want to listen to?
Nope, still don't get it. Why does that not count as "discovering new music (to me)"? And why do you think I care where or how I first hear some music? All I care about is that I've heard some new (to me) music that I really like, and can now listen to it.
How does someone discover music?
You are making several assumptions there.
Just because someone only buys one album a year doesn't mean they wouldn't choose to spend $120 for a streaming subscription, on the grounds that a streaming subscription will give them access to far more music than the 10-12 albums they could have bought for the same money.
Just because the average spend is one album a year doesn't mean there aren't people only buying one album a year because they are already listening to a lot of additional music on Spotify.
Just because it might be more than the average user spends, doesn't mean there is no market for it. Is that an average on a standard deviation bell shaped curve, or is the top end of that considerably more than $24?
Your reality simply isn't true - a few linear radio stations in 1965 could not possibly provide anywhere near as much potential discovery as a streaming service can. Listen to a song in your library, and you can tap a button and start listening to similar music, and skip through any you don't like. Or browse pre selected playlist and listen to them if they look interesting.
Nothing remotely like radio in 1965.
This one made me laugh, because that description fits much better for radio - the service that according to you is a great music discovery option. On Apple Music, I pick the songs I like, and artists get paid only for songs that I played (apparently you didn't know that, as it kills your whole argument). And if I cancel Apple Music, they don't get any money at all from me.
On radio you pay for everything before hearing it (yes, I know, you naively think that radio is free and you don't pay for it), and no matter if you like the song or not, the money goes to the artist. It's exactly what you described before. Haha, the joke's on you! And you know what: Even now, an artist you really really really hate gets money out of your pocket for being played on a radio station that you would never listen to. Yes, you actually pay for music you don't even listen to. You buy a product advertised on a radio channel, and hey, you just paid Kanye West, Taylor Swift, etc. Reading your posts so far, that fact should give you sleepless nights.
On Apple Music, artists I hate don't get money from me for music I hate. I don't pay into some "advertising cloud" from which the most popular artists get the largest portion of money, but I pay to the artists I like for the songs I enjoy. Kanye West will not get a single Cent from my 15 bucks a month. So I prefer that model and embrace it easily, as I would like it to replace radio - the service that you prefer and embrace easily.
But anyway, it has become quite obvious that you simply hate streaming, for some fuzzy emotional reason, and you will keep coming up with random arguments to support your preconceived notion.
You're missing the point and confusing two different aspects of what's wrong with Apple Music.
"Streaming for Discovery" can be had right now, for free, via iTunes Radio.
"Steaming for Deep Catalog" is akin to the Columbia Record Club circa 1980 which made it look like you were getting a great value and then ripped you off badly.
BJ
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