Well, That Was Quick - Bored Already, Not Going To Keep Apple Music

[Pagemakers]

That's two different arguments. Boltjames is saying that the very concept of a streaming music service, where you do not own the music you listen to, is a bad service. That covers Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play All Access, Deezer, Rdio, etc. etc.

You're complaining about the specifics of the app interface. Those complaints are separate from Boltjames's argument. Even if Apple Music were the smoothest, most beautiful, useful, and intuitive app in the history of computing, Boltjames would still consider it a bad service because the idea of paying to stream music that you don't own is a bad value proposition to him.

Sorry. I got lost in the vastness of the discussion thread.

 

[boltjames]

No. Just no.

Radio stations must be made appealing to a mass-audience in order to remain viable. There are a few niche stations that are generally supported by funding by say, a university or a church where profit is not the main goal, but the vast majority of stations are commercial and are looking to be as mainstream as possible in order to maximize their advertising revenue. Streaming with a service like Spotify or Apple Music offers me (as only one option out of many, it should be said, again, unfortunately) content that is tailored to my taste and my taste alone. This is so fundamentally different from regular radio that for you to not see it can only have one reason behind it - that you are being purposely obtuse in order to continue an argument.

The mods should shut this thread down. It has run its course.

I'm glad that you're finding it useful, but many people, myself and several media reporters included, find it weak. And I'm not comparing an FM radio station to the For You feature; I'm comparing iTunes Radio (free) to For You (paid) and there is zero difference.

Apple Music isn't tailoring anything to our taste any better/worse than iTunes Radio did and iTunes recommendations did. Their idea of a custom playlist just For Me has failed me every time. Either they're picking artists that I've already dismissed or they're giving me songs from my favorite artists that aren't anything new to me, just the boilerplate hits. I chose Billy Joel as one of the circles while configuring Apple Music. iTunes knows I own every Billy Joel song already. So why then does it recommend "The Essential Billy Joel" playlist which has only 12 songs and all of them ones I own and the boring greatest hits only? Is there not "The Undiscovered Billy Joel" being created for me? And because I like Billy Joel it assumes I like Elton John. But I also own all of Elton John's LP's so why again is it making me something customized for what I already own?

BJ

 

[boltjames]

It is a faff because you have to hit the same area to play, pause, rewind, fast forward. I keep hitting the button below because the stupid icons are so dammed small and so close the what’s below it

+1

Especially in the car which is where I use Apple Music 100% of the time, the controls are terribly small.

To switch from Playlists to Radio and then to expose the track you're listening to is an accident waiting to happen.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

I'm going with the rest of the trial period but without some improvement in the bugs I'll be gone too. It's still not reliable creating and syncing playlists. Added a playlist yesterday on my iPhone, it never showed up. Gave it over night and still nothing. Just used iTunes to create and add the same playlist. Now that playlist in in iTunes and synced with my iPad, but still the band or playlist is not on my iPhone.

Just don't need to be constantly checking to see if what I did shows up and syncs. I love the concept but the execution is lacking for me. Hopefully they can clean up these issues in the next couple months. Would love to keep it but not heading in that direction.

I'm also finding great inconsistencies on the "up next" list. Sometimes it populates, sometimes it isn't there at all.

Beats1 is also a problem for me, sometimes it clocks and doesn't connect at all (no issues with other stations for some reason).

BJ

 

[zhenya]

I'm glad that you're finding it useful, but many people, myself and several media reporters included, find it weak. And I'm not comparing an FM radio station to the For You feature; I'm comparing iTunes Radio (free) to For You (paid) and there is zero difference.

Apple Music isn't tailoring anything to our taste any better/worse than iTunes Radio did and iTunes recommendations did. Their idea of a custom playlist just For Me has failed me every time. Either they're picking artists that I've already dismissed or they're giving me songs from my favorite artists that aren't anything new to me, just the boilerplate hits. I chose Billy Joel as one of the circles while configuring Apple Music. iTunes knows I own every Billy Joel song already. So why then does it recommend "The Essential Billy Joel" playlist which has only 12 songs and all of them ones I own and the boring greatest hits only? Is there not "The Undiscovered Billy Joel" being created for me? And because I like Billy Joel it assumes I like Elton John. But I also own all of Elton John's LP's so why again is it making me something customized for what I already own?

BJ

As someone who actually uses Apple Music extensively, and used Beats extensively before its release, I can say categorically that the For You selection is nothing at all like iTunes Radio. Yes, to some degree in the initial rollout there will be some poor suggestions and recommendations, but for me it is already suggesting new playlists artists and albums every day that are based upon my tastes - both from my active feedback in Apple Music, and from feedback it has garnered from my extensive personal library. It's working exactly as I'd hoped it to. As I've said elsewhere here, it has been suggesting to me playlists of Deep Cuts and B-Sides for artists that I have a large selection of in my personal library (even those artists I've never listened to before via Streaming) and for other artists where I might only have 1 album and mostly listen to 1 song, it may offer me an 'introduction to' which is completely appropriate. Further, it constantly offers me a selection of other artists, albums and playlists that is an amalgam of new stuff that might be a stretch as well as the comfortably familiar.

It's a huge, monumental difference between For You and services like iTunes Radio or Pandora. It's why I subscribed to Beats in the first place, and so far it's only gotten better in Apple Music.

You've stated numerous times here that you aren't interested in trying new music, and own virtually everything you will ever want to listen to. Honestly, if that's the case, it sounds like For You is still working exactly as intended! It's serving you up the same selection you'd choose on your own! If you never reach outside of that narrow band, why would it keep pushing you?

 

[boltjames]

I'm 44 with a collection of over 1,000 albums. Small fry for a lot of people I'm sure, but is that old enough, or a large enough collection? It doesn't matter how old someone is, or how large their library is, if the person is interested in new music to even a modest degree.

My point is that people of our age a) who owned vast CD collections, b) were old enough for the Napster/Limewire era, and c) have been iTunes users since Day 1 already own 100% of the back catalog we want. We've already decided the Rolling Stones were must-have's and The Kinks weren't, already have every Lenny Kravitz cut and eschewed Pearl Jam, so there's not a lot of win in the 30 Million Songs! back catalog. For a 22 year old with parents not heavily into music, it can be a big benefit. Not so much for us. That was the reason for the age query.

Would you argue that Apple as a whole was flawed because it charges as much as it does for computers when the average spend on a new computer is $300? Or because it charges so much for phones when the average spend on mobile phone is $50?

MacBook's and iPhone's are premium products in their respective competitive marketplaces; Apple Music is not. Thus paying more for a piece of cutting-edge Apple hardware feels really smart wheras paying more for a me-too piece of Apple propaganda feels really stupid.

BJ

 

[zhenya]

My point is that people of our age a) who owned vast CD collections, b) were old enough for the Napster/Limewire era, and c) have been iTunes users since Day 1 already own 100% of the back catalog we want. We've already decided the Rolling Stones were must-have's and The Kinks weren't, already have every Lenny Kravitz cut and eschewed Pearl Jam, so there's not a lot of win in the 30 Million Songs! back catalog. For a 22 year old with parents not heavily into music, it can be a big benefit. Not so much for us. That was the reason for the age query.

That describes YOU!

I started collecting music on LP's, moved on to cassettes, then on to CD's. I was there when Napster started, and bought the 2nd iPod ever released, and have owned an iPod or iPhone continuously since then. In addition to my meticulously maintained iTunes library I also have an extensive LP collection and was an early subscriber to both Pandora and Spotify, among others. I guarantee you I don't own even a few percent of the music worth listening to, however. The challenge has always been to be introduced to it and to be open to something new when it comes into your life, or have the perspective to appreciate it.

 

[shandyman]

+1

Especially in the car which is where I use Apple Music 100% of the time, the controls are terribly small.

To switch from Playlists to Radio and then to expose the track you're listening to is an accident waiting to happen.

BJ

Surely using your mobile device whilst driving is illegal anyway....?

 

[shandyman]

My point is that people of our age a) who owned vast CD collections, b) were old enough for the Napster/Limewire era, and c) have been iTunes users since Day 1 already own 100% of the back catalog we want. We've already decided the Rolling Stones were must-have's and The Kinks weren't, already have every Lenny Kravitz cut and eschewed Pearl Jam, so there's not a lot of win in the 30 Million Songs! back catalog. For a 22 year old with parents not heavily into music, it can be a big benefit. Not so much for us. That was the reason for the age query.

That's a flawed and inaccurate assumption. Again, you're projecting your own opinion as fact.

 

[Uofmtiger]

I’m glad it’s working for you and as liking something is subjective so I won’t respond further because we just go round and round in circles. One thing you could do for me is ask Siri “play queen, another one bites the dust”. Siri tells me it’s playing and it doesn’t. Happens on my iPhone, iPad and my colleagues too. It will work via the apple watch though. Happens with lots of songs. I think it’s a UK issue.

Your complaints make a lot more sense than some of the complaints about streaming. There are definitely bugs in the software right now. I would also like to see some features added. I am sure they are listening to feedback and treating it more like a beta since it is free for three months.

That being said, my Siri works great and my iTunes Matched files transferred without a problem (note: I am at the 25,000 max, so they would not allow me to turn cloud sharing on in iTunes...thankfully). I also like the For You section which I find superior to every other service I have tried (Rdio, Spotify, and Tidal). I follow different genre playlists, so Connect is working fine. The New section with different genres is nice, too. I could care less about Beats1. I do like their classic rock radio (which is the only one I have tried).

I am keeping it because I prefer it to other iOS music apps and I mainly listen to iOS (Airplay, Bluetooth, etc.). Really, the only major issue I have with it compared to Rdio (and Spotify for that matter) is that my iOS app doesn't control Apple Music via iTunes running on my computer and I like using it that way. Obviously, I can take over the computer with Splashtop or another app, but it isn't as good of an experience.

 

[Arndroid]

Well, its not that much of a faff. Or, if you think you will want to pause music a lot, just get in the habit of using the larger player. It really doesn't seem like that big a deal.

It wouldn't make any sense to show it in that view, because any given artist would likely have a mix of downloaded tracks, and tracks that are not downloaded. So its only going to work in a view that lists tracks, not artists.

So for example, if you had two Ed Sheeran albums, but had only downloaded one for offline listening. What would you expect to see there?

We might end up going round in circles, but we weren't after you posting some things you thought were issue, and people posting reasons they didn't think they were issues.

You can also just pull up the menu for the phone and use the music controls there.

I am not a fan of the mini controls even on my iPad Air because sometimes when I hit for me it pauses the music.

I see the little icons and tremble to use them on my phone but like I said you get the same functionality from the pull up menu including the heart. Which just makes it easier to control while in any app.

 

[boltjames]

You're complaining about the specifics of the app interface. Those complaints are separate from Boltjames's argument. Even if Apple Music were the smoothest, most beautiful, useful, and intuitive app in the history of computing, Boltjames would still consider it a bad service because the idea of paying to stream music that you don't own is a bad value proposition to him.

Correction.

Paying to stream music you don't own is just fine so long as a) the price is commensurate with what consumers should be spending and b) the quality of the experience is vastly superior to what is available currently in other forms.

Apple Music loses on both counts. It's 10x more expensive than the existing Paid iTunes Downloads + Free iTunes Radio model and it's not vastly superior to that offering. If anything, it's inferior. You don't own the media you're paying for, you don't get a full catalog, Tidal and Spotify are locking up exclusives, artists are delaying new releases, etc.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

I started collecting music on LP's, moved on to cassettes, then on to CD's. I was there when Napster started, and bought the 2nd iPod ever released, and have owned an iPod or iPhone continuously since then. In addition to my meticulously maintained iTunes library I also have an extensive LP collection and was an early subscriber to both Pandora and Spotify, among others. I guarantee you I don't own even a few percent of the music worth listening to, however. The challenge has always been to be introduced to it and to be open to something new when it comes into your life, or have the perspective to appreciate it.

Clearly the iTunes Download model is working for you, so no need to switch to Apple Music.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

Surely using your mobile device whilst driving is illegal anyway....?

Well then, you've just shot a giant hole in Apple Music then, haven't you? I mean, what, 75% of the usage of the grown ups who can afford the $120 a year commitment are using the service in the car, right? Siri is good for specific use cases (ex "play Bruce Springsteen") but she can't help you find something new in For You or play what you're seeing on the screen you can't touch.

BJ

 

[Dub1ous]

This is exceptionally true and *not* what I want.

So much of the excitement is "all the music in the world - add it to your library - play it anywhere and anytime (with data usage that is...or download it, more data)...

....but if you EVER stop paying the monthly fee?

It's all gone.

Not for me at all.

You say that as if it "going away" means you never listened to it to begin with.

I'm not totally sold on keeping Apple Music, but I figure it's worth it if I would otherwise buy an album per month that I would end up not listening to much. I'll still buy stuff I really like.

Oh and it sounds like a lot of the OP's problem is that he needs to lecture his family on streaming stuff when not on wifi :S

 

[boltjames]

That describes YOU!

No. That describes the millions of other casual iTunes users who aren't YOU.

Savvy?

BJ

 

[boltjames]

That's a flawed and inaccurate assumption. Again, you're projecting your own opinion as fact.

What should I project my own opinion as? Fallacy?

You realize that this is a discussion forum and posting style matters, yes? If you view my opinions as projected fact, I'm doing my job. Do a better job yourself and you won't feel this way. Make a decent argument.

BJ

 

[boltjames]

Oh and it sounds like a lot of the OP's problem is that he needs to lecture his family on streaming stuff when not on wifi :S

That's part of it, definitely. Those damn kids and their portable telephones, I tell ya.

Bigger picture is this: I'd hate my kids to spend their parent-paid college years building a custom Library full of artists and playlists they adore and then be faced with their student loans and first apartments and the burden of a $120 annual fee to keep the music they otherwise could have bought.

I know my kids. No way they are going to purchase 120 songs a year. My iTunes collection is all the back catalog they need and a few dozen tracks each year are all they'll purchase from the dearth of new material. So to pay that kind of money merely to rent them is ludicrous.

BJ

 

[Dub1ous]

That's part of it, definitely. Those damn kids and their portable telephones, I tell ya.

Bigger picture is this: I'd hate my kids to spend their parent-paid college years building a custom Library full of artists and playlists they adore and then be faced with their student loans and first apartments and the burden of a $120 annual fee to keep the music they otherwise could have bought.

I know my kids. No way they are going to purchase 120 songs a year. My iTunes collection is all the back catalog they need and a few dozen tracks each year are all they'll purchase from the dearth of new material. So to pay that kind of money merely to rent them is ludicrous.

BJ

Sure. Sounds like it's not for you. I don't get the big deal, if so. It sure would be nice to have threads that don't immediately devolve into accusations of people being Apple haters or apologists, or personal attacks because someone likes a product.

I've never been much on streaming services, personally, but am giving this a try. I haven't used it a ton yet, because I've had a lot going on recently, but so far I've listened to a bunch of albums that I probably would not have taken the plunge and bought otherwise. Therefore, I'd see it as I'm paying effectively to be able to go out and discover music more conveniently, not really necessarily to add to my music library.

Oh and for the record, I also have an Apple Watch, and like it. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but it does what I want it to, and I like it.

 

[shandyman]

Well then, you've just shot a giant hole in Apple Music then, haven't you? I mean, what, 75% of the usage of the grown ups who can afford the $120 a year commitment are using the service in the car, right? Siri is good for specific use cases (ex "play Bruce Springsteen") but she can't help you find something new in For You or play what you're seeing on the screen you can't touch.

BJ

So, I call you out on being a reckless driver, you decide that's another point for you to be right?! That's downright distasteful. If you hadn't already invalidated any points you had already, that post alone makes any argument you have worthless.

If you hit someone whilst driving, because you were using a mobile device to go looking for music, are you going to blame that on Apple too?

You shouldn't be using a device full stop when driving! Maybe you'll learn that when you get arrested for it.

 

[shandyman]

What should I project my own opinion as? Fallacy?

You realize that this is a discussion forum and posting style matters, yes? If you view my opinions as projected fact, I'm doing my job. Do a better job yourself and you won't feel this way. Make a decent argument.

BJ

Present your opinion as YOUR opinion. Not as a universal fact. You're failing at civilised debate and need to understand that.

 

[whsbuss]

Hey folks, its time to stop feeding the animals.

 

[shandyman]

Hey folks, its time to stop feeding the animals.

This thread needs to be closed or dumped to wasteland.

 

[blasto2236]

This thread needs to be closed or dumped to wasteland.

Yeah, I mean we're talking to someone who decided they never needed to hear The Kinks or Pearl Jam because they have Lenny Kravitz in their iTunes library. Let him keep his terrible taste to himself and stop trying to convince him.

 

[Supermallet]

Correction.

Paying to stream music you don't own is just fine so long as a) the price is commensurate with what consumers should be spending and b) the quality of the experience is vastly superior to what is available currently in other forms.

Apple Music loses on both counts. It's 10x more expensive than the existing Paid iTunes Downloads + Free iTunes Radio model and it's not vastly superior to that offering. If anything, it's inferior. You don't own the media you're paying for, you don't get a full catalog, Tidal and Spotify are locking up exclusives, artists are delaying new releases, etc.

BJ

In that case, please enlighten me as to what model you think would satisfy both the consumers and the artists and the record companies.

Again, whatever model you propose would have to allow for unlimited on demand streaming of all available titles on a given service. Telling people to use artist radio to find specific songs isn't the same thing at all.