What Do You Want to See Apple Music Do in 2016?

[MICHAELSD]

Apple Music still has a lot to prove as the new kid on the block. Although they are my best all-around streaming service, I have been playing around with Tidal and Google Play trials while my Apple Music account remains inactive although the radio features certainly don't go unused (I do plan to re-subscribe to Apple Music once I've exhausted all my trial options).

In order for Apple Music to really be my perfect music service, I would look for these key improvements:

- The option for higher sound quality. I tried to get around it, but I can't: Apple Music is not leading the way for sound quality. It sounds very good, but on audiophile equipment can be a little lacking. Regardless, Apple seems to be working on this and hopefully it launches sooner rather than later.

- More Beats radio station integration. Unbeknownst to Apple, Beats1 has become my favorite radio station and I have been looking for incentives to subscribing that would enhance the experience but beyond poorly-constructed replay functionality there is not much. This is one of the cornerstones of the service, which Apple knows, and I hope there are deeper features when the 4 other trademarked Beats stations launch.

- Offline/carrier mindfulness. I enjoy listening to Beats1; my data limit does not. If Apple could strike a deal with carriers to not count Apple Music towards data limits a la T-Mobile that would be very tempting. Either that, or radio station caching options/downloading replays.

- More prominence given to playlists, in turn leading to more quality playlists. Apple's music curators put together some great playlists, it's too bad one has to really dig to find them.

 

[bgro]

"Just work"

 

[Tech198]

We all want that.... but don't just want Apple music to work.. i want icloud to work just work as a whole....

Even though u have multiple services, users still have problem with finding photos, merging from iphotos to photos library and it accidentally deleting etc. in some cases.

Giving u "optimized versions" on the phone is good, but it must most of the time to be effective.. It it doesn't, then its not a feature.

I would like to see Apple borrow some of Google "auto-aweome" some they do facial recognition in the cloud, compared to Apple forcing users to do it within an app. which by the way, can then only be used by that app if u want those features.

Apple music is getting better, but there is still artwork issues.... Not a day goes by i see Apple's own music i've added from "for You" get updated with different artwork....many times a day in some cases. So much so, i was thinking of saving a listing PDF of all my albums, deleting everything and starting over.

 

[bgro]

I would like to see Apple borrow some of Google "auto-aweome" some they do facial recognition in the cloud, compared to Apple forcing users to do it within an app. which by the way, can then only be used by that app if u want those features.

This. Apple NEEDS the auto face tagging, keyword tagging that Google Photos has. Not many people (especially those with kids who take a bunch of pics) has time to tag everything. Locating photos in iOS is near impossible unless you take the time to tag them in OSX Photos.

 

[whsbuss]

1. User-created searchable and sharable playlists
2. Apple curated playlists saved that do not add the tracks to your library

 

[yg17]

Work

 

[henry72]

Play Adele's new album
Actually I'd like to see Continuity feature on Apple Music.

 

[KimBieber]

Work.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I want it to not mess up pre-existing libraries. That's all I'm asking for. Once those issues are sorted out I'll gladly sign up for the free trial. If they can secure more exclusives like the Taylor Swift concert I'd be inclined to become a paying subscriber.

 

[Loge]

I want it to not mess up pre-existing libraries.

Exactly this. And allow purchased music to continue to sync with iTunes.

 

[Tech198]

Work.

Already mentioned I guess "really work"

 

[navaira]

Another vote for "just work". Whenever someone asks me about Apple Music I have to respond "use only for streaming, do NOT enable iCloud no matter how much it asks you to". This must be fixed... three months ago.

 

[Bradley Easton]

Seen a lot of people mention that the iCloud feature doesn't work well. What does iCloud even do within Apple Music? I only ever stream music.

 

[navaira]

For this example I'm going to use the song I tested it with two weeks ago, but it works the same with every song.

What iCloud is supposed to do:
1. You put a song called "Rebel Heart (Demo 4)" from the album Iconic on your Mac
2. It uploads to iCloud
3. You sync it to your phone, or, if deleted from Mac, re-download it from the iCloud
4. You listen to "Rebel Heart (Demo 4)" from the album Iconic in peace and harmony

What iCloud actually does:
1. You put a song called "Rebel Heart (Demo 4)" from the album Iconic on your Mac
2. It uploads to iCloud
3. You sync it to your phone, or, if deleted from Mac, re-download it from the iCloud
4. You listen to "Rebel Heart" from the album Rebel Heart, which has a different length, comes from a different album, has a different artwork and simply speaking is a whole different track, and you curse and swear a lot and scream "to hell with iCloud! I am never going to use it again!"
5. If you're a smart person, unlike Jim Dalrymple, you have a backup of everything and your life continues to unveil in peace and harmony, iCloud free.

 

[Uofmtiger]

5. If you're a smart person, unlike Jim Dalrymple, you have a backup of everything and your life continues to unveil in peace and harmony, iCloud free.

It is funny, last time I was on his site, they had an advertisement for an app similar to Crashplan...if he had only looked at his own advertisements, we could have avoided hearing about him in every article about Apple Music this last year (and probably deep into 2016). By the way, Apple Music is not a backup plan, so if you delete your music from you computer, you will lose that music the day you stop subscribing to Apple Music.

For me, the matching stuff has worked pretty well. I matched my stuff on my computer and turned off iCloud in iTunes. As some have mentioned, you occasionally get the wrong version of a song or bad artwork. I have about 25,000 songs on Apple Music, but I have rarely run into that issue. Even when I do, I think to myself, if I was on Spotify, I wouldn't have access to any of my own music via the cloud.

Therefore, for my personal needs, the iCloud fixes aren't very important. However, they do need to clean it up, if only to shut up the person with the large megaphone constantly complaining about his problem (and every tech article that was written that couldn't duplicate the issue, but mentioned his isolated problem as being a major problem).

1. My top requests would be updates to Airplay so that I can send it to multiple locations without a computer being involved. If they can't make that happen, they need to add Casting support. Casting is already in apps like Spotify, so there is no reason Apple can't add Casting support if they don't want to compete in this arena. Personally, I would rarely ever use the feature, but they need to add it for the many people that want it. (As a side note, iOS is very capable of sending an Airplay signal to multiple rooms via Whaale, so Apple just needs to add the feature to Apple Music or the iOS interface)

2. The ability to remotely control the app running on a computer via the Apple Music app on iOS. Rdio had it, Spotify had it later, and Apple needs to add it. Right now they have the Remote app, but it is VERY limited.

3. Continue play - when a album ends, I want the option for it to continue playing music that it knows I like.

4. Lossless bitrates

5. More Siri options (it should know what I want to hear when I say "Siri Play", for example, "Classic jazz")

I could go longer, but these would be my top five. For me, the app already "works", I just want new features added.

As a side note, if you have a bunch of weird live stuff that is causing issues, you might be better of running Plex or something alongside Apple Music that actually access your own music with converting it. In reality, I never get my own music because I have lossless files and Apple converts (or matches) them to 256k.

All that being said, I love the app and use it for hours every day. However, I can think of a lot of ways to make it better.

 

[o0OBillO0o]

1. My top requests would be updates to Airplay so that I can send it to multiple locations without a computer being involved. If they can't make that happen, they need to add Casting support. Casting is already in apps like Spotify, so there is no reason Apple can't add Casting support if they don't want to compete in this arena. Personally, I would rarely ever use the feature, but they need to add it for the many people that want it. (As a side note, iOS is very capable of sending an Airplay signal to multiple rooms via Whaale, so Apple just needs to add the feature to Apple Music or the iOS interface)

2. The ability to remotely control the app running on a computer via the Apple Music app on iOS. Rdio had it, Spotify had it later, and Apple needs to add it. Right now they have the Remote app, but it is VERY limited.

3. Continue play - when a album ends, I want the option for it to continue playing music that it knows I like.

4. Lossless bitrates

5. More Siri options (it should know what I want to hear when I say "Siri Play", for example, "Classic jazz")

1. I hear ya. iTunes is still the "Master", I use a MacMini as a music hub with a 8TB Thunderbolt Drive.
2. Use the remote app with iTunes for now.
3. Use iTunes, continue play is a feature.
4. Buy CDs.
5. Classic Jazz might be a genre to you, but Apple has their own set of genres ; I don't know if classic jazz is in Apple's genre listing.

I use Plex and Roon as alternatives, nothing beats Apple's integration and convenience.

 

[Uofmtiger]

1. I hear ya. iTunes is still the "Master", I use a MacMini as a music hub with a 8TB Thunderbolt Drive.
2. Use the remote app with iTunes for now.
3. Use iTunes, continue play is a feature.
4. Buy CDs.
5. Classic Jazz might be a genre to you, but Apple has their own set of genres ; I don't know if classic jazz is in Apple's genre listing.

I use Plex and Roon as alternatives, nothing beats Apple's integration and convenience.

Ummm... The thread is about what I want to see Apple Music do this year.

2. I have been. The thread is about what I want to see.
3. Try jogging with an iMac strapped to your back. I want the feature in iOS and I want it in a way that they use the curated music they think I will like.
4. I have over 1500 CDs. However, I want the feature added to Apple Music (which is the point of the thread)
5. It is a genre to the world. That is my point. I want more genres available from Siri.

As a side note, Roon is by far the best for home use with your own collection and will integrate beautifully with Tidal. Personally, I listen to more music away from home and prefer Siri. Not to mention the price of Tidal + Roon is more than I want to spend to listen to music.

However, the only way that Apple can be sure they have 100 percent of your library is exact is by loading the entire library into the cloud in its current format. I don't see that happening, so people need to be less picky about their bootlegs being substituted (by the way Apple did upload my "non-commercial" files without issue) or go about accessing them another way when their world would fall apart if they don't have access to their live bootleg of "Everybody Hurts". I do think Apple can improve in this area, but I still think we will see issues for a long time. They had iTunes Match long before Apple Music Matching, so they have had years to streamline this process.

 

[navaira]

Well – Google Play Music managed not to replace any of my demoes/live bootlegs, Apple Music, as my experiment shows, replaced a demo with different title, production (so no sound matching), length (so no length matching, even) and album title (...) with the final album version.

I do realise this is a 0.1% problem though. I tend to hang with music obsessives so for us it is a major ERMAGERD MY LIVE RECORDING FROM 1998 WAS REPLACED WITH A LIVE RECORDING FROM 1994 situation. I imagine that replacing explicit with clean versions is going to be a problem for many more people (i.e. teenagers).

 

[o0OBillO0o]

Ummm... The thread is about what I want to see Apple Music do this year.

2. I have been. The thread is about what I want to see.
3. Try jogging with an iMac strapped to your back. I want the feature in iOS and I want it in a way that they use the curated music they think I will like.
4. I have over 1500 CDs. However, I want the feature added to Apple Music (which is the point of the thread)
5. It is a genre to the world. That is my point. I want more genres available from Siri.

As a side note, Roon is by far the best for home use with your own collection and will integrate beautifully with Tidal. Personally, I listen to more music away from home and prefer Siri. Not to mention the price of Tidal + Roon is more than I want to spend to listen to music.

However, the only way that Apple can be sure they have 100 percent of your library is exact is by loading the entire library into the cloud in its current format. I don't see that happening, so people need to be less picky about their bootlegs being substituted (by the way Apple did upload my "non-commercial" files without issue) or go about accessing them another way when their world would fall apart if they don't have access to their live bootleg of "Everybody Hurts". I do think Apple can improve in this area, but I still think we will see issues for a long time. They had iTunes Match long before Apple Music Matching, so they have had years to streamline this process.

We can agree on all points. I appreciate some of your snark too, we are much more alike than different in this realm. I have the exact troubles as you.

Apple Music is in its infancy. Apple delivers iTunes for free and Apple Music for $9.99/mo. Roon is $500 and Tidal is $20/month. iTunes with Apple Music is a very capable system for the masses.

Apple Music future must include the feature of NOT Managing files.

The analogy is, you walk into a room with all the music in the world, including music you have purchased, and you pull the album from the shelf, put it on the turntable and enjoy the music.

Users and subscribers should be given this experience through Siri (or not) and while doing whatever activity.

Apple Music is not quite there.

 

[bilibug]

Well – Google Play Music managed not to replace any of my demoes/live bootlegs, Apple Music, as my experiment shows, replaced a demo with different title, production (so no sound matching), length (so no length matching, even) and album title (...) with the final album version.

I do realise this is a 0.1% problem though. I tend to hang with music obsessives so for us it is a major ERMAGERD MY LIVE RECORDING FROM 1998 WAS REPLACED WITH A LIVE RECORDING FROM 1994 situation. I imagine that replacing explicit with clean versions is going to be a problem for many more people (i.e. teenagers).

I am on your side - I also experienced the Iconic vs. Rebel Heart issues, as well as having my "sequenced" version of Confessions on a Dance Floor replaced with the iTunes version having individual separate tracks (which I never even knew existed).

However, I disagree that this is a minor 0.1% issue. I have also had full length album versions of songs replaced with shorter single versions or re-recordings due to them being matched to a greatest hits compilation, as well as the "explicit to clean" version issue. There are many of us with libraries that are too large for us to check that every track was matched correctly, and as time goes on, I believe that more and more issues will be identified.

I just can't believe that they don't have a better matching algorithm, other than some fuzzy logic title based method. This is what I would love to see improved most in an update.

 

[whsbuss]

What Apple needs to provide is a switch/field that a user can enable on a per-song basis to handle the match issue. If you have it set, it tells Apple's match to do nothing but store it and make available for other devices.

 

[navaira]

@bilibug I prefer the unmixed Confessions however yes, I'd be livid. I'm so glad I couldn't enable the iCloud library originally. Not going anywhere near it now. Not while I have Confessions mixed, unmixed, instrumentals, early version, Confessions tour and Confessions tour studio versions!

@whsbuss That would be cool but it's really inelegant. If Google can handle my library why can't Apple? And the only way (if I understand correctly) to find out what needs to be stored would be to upload it to iCloud and check what happens...?

 

[Uofmtiger]

Well – Google Play Music managed not to replace any of my demoes/live bootlegs, Apple Music, as my experiment shows, replaced a demo with different title, production (so no sound matching), length (so no length matching, even) and album title (...) with the final album version.

I do realise this is a 0.1% problem though. I tend to hang with music obsessives so for us it is a major ERMAGERD MY LIVE RECORDING FROM 1998 WAS REPLACED WITH A LIVE RECORDING FROM 1994 situation. I imagine that replacing explicit with clean versions is going to be a problem for many more people (i.e. teenagers).

At least we agree that it is hardly even an issue and typically you don't pay $10 a month to listen to your own music when you can do that for free with Plex. Also, it isn't really "replacing anything". It is an incorrect match on their site, but it has no affect on the original file.

I tried to load my music up to Google Music when I signed up for a trial. It loaded about 8000 of my 25,000 songs and croaked. I restarted it several times over several days and it would only load a few hundred more at a time, so I gave up on getting my entire library on it. Even with a partial library loaded, I am missing album covers of several commercial and non-commercial albums that Apple Music has. Google is missing the cover for "The Beatles" (White Album) as one prominent example. However, there are many albums that are missing covers that Apple has.

In other words, my experience on that service was far from perfect. If I really have to have an album in its exact form, I use DS Audio with my Synology app. Obviously, that isn't ideal, but it is available if needed.
[doublepost=1452800502][/doublepost]

We can agree on all points. I appreciate some of your snark too, we are much more alike than different in this realm. I have the exact troubles as you.

Apple Music is in its infancy. Apple delivers iTunes for free and Apple Music for $9.99/mo. Roon is $500 and Tidal is $20/month. iTunes with Apple Music is a very capable system for the masses.

Apple Music future must include the feature of NOT Managing files.

The analogy is, you walk into a room with all the music in the world, including music you have purchased, and you pull the album from the shelf, put it on the turntable and enjoy the music.

Users and subscribers should be given this experience through Siri (or not) and while doing whatever activity.

Apple Music is not quite there.

By the way, these aren't complaints. They are features I would like to see....which is the point of the thread. I realize the service is barely six months old. I have also said it is my favorite app of the year, so I believe we are coming from this from the same place, but I still think there is a lot of room for updates.

As a side note, Roon is also available for $119 a year. The $500 is for a lifetime membership. I would venture to say that a lifetime of Apple Music would cost more than $500. In any event, it is too expensive for me because it is useless away from home and doesn't work with Siri.

I turn iCloud off so that my matched files do not show up in my home library. The only time I turn it on is to load a new album that is not available on iTunes.. which is rare.

For me, the service is still the best at what it does on iOS and it is mainly because of Siri (however, things like Mastered for iTunes, integration with Bluetooth in my car (which is better than any other service), Apple Watch integration, etc are also unique to the service and played a part in my decision to stay with the service.)

 

[whsbuss]

Something strange/different I noticed today. I had two tracks not on Apple Music that I added to my iTunes account on my mac. They were then uploaded automatically to iCloud music library. Later when I checked my iPhone, not only were they available, but they were marked as downloaded..... and in fact they were actually downloaded for offline listening without any intervention. I don't remember this happening before.

 

[BSben]

This. Apple NEEDS the auto face tagging, keyword tagging that Google Photos has. Not many people (especially those with kids who take a bunch of pics) has time to tag everything. Locating photos in iOS is near impossible unless you take the time to tag them in OSX Photos.

That has nothing to do with Apple Music, or am I missing something?
Anyway, I hope they either improve or just get rid of the Connect feature, it was lame when it was ping, and if anything Connect is even worse. And who designed those cheap icons in the radio tab? it looks rubbish, cringeworthy.