Chance Miller, writing for 9to5mac digs into Apple Music. Good review, from someone who obviously loves both Apple and music.
The For You tab is arguably the most useful in the app on iOS and the desktop. When you first launch Music in iOS 8.4, you’ll be presented with an interface that allows you to choose your favorite genres then your favorite artists within those genres. Apple will then use that data to customize the For You tab with suggestions as to what it believes you would enjoy. The tab gets more accurate the more you use the Music app and tap the “heart” option on radio and streaming content. The For You tab also takes into account what you listen to and what you already have in your music library.
I’ve found that the curation aspect of Apple Music is unrivaled by any other streaming music service. Spotify would often try to tell me what artists and songs it thought I should listen to, but often to little or no avail. With Apple Music, however, I’ve already discovered several new artists worth listening to, as well as several playlists that are great from start to finish.
Amen.
One major playlist feature that is missing from Apple Music, however, is collaboration. You can’t start a playlist and invite other users to add content to it. Only one user or source can have master control over the content. It’s a feature that rival services like Spotify offer, …so it’s disappointing that Apple neglected to include it, but it’s nothing that can’t be added at a future date.
Agreed. I’d also like to see a more sophisticated For You interface. As is, when I click on the For You tab, all I see is the tip of a very large iceberg. I’d love an interface that allowed me to winnow the list, perhaps by genre, perhaps by era, etc. My musical tastes run wide. Some days I’m in the mood for jazz, other days electronic, r&b, soul, or driving metal.
As large as it is, the iPhone 6 screen still offers limited real estate. I’d love an interface that respected that. How about an option that presented all my For You options in a tight scrolling list, then let me filter that list by genre/date/etc., select any number of matches, then randomly shuffle them together. Maybe let me fold in the top 20 from the New list to keep things fresh.
In other words, a smart, extensible playlist, that lets me intelligently include everything I can touch with Apple Music.
All this said, it’s important to keep in mind that Apple Music is truly a 1.0 product. I can only imagine that Apple Music 5.0 will be a far different/better product than this version. For a 1.0 product, Apple Music is an amazing achievement.
I’m an Apple loyalist, but Apple Music is bogus. It’s sloppy and inconsistent. I’ve been battling with the Playlists for a few days and still no joy. Not sure what to think of all these bodacious reviews either. User experience doesn’t live up to manufactured hype and trust is eroding.
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What manufactured hype? The Taylor Swift stuff?
I love it. Seriously. Beats1 is great. I was listening to the request show yesterday and loved how the DJ instructed requests come in – use the Voice Memos app and send the audio file in so it can be played for broadcast – really tying in the iPhone into the experience beyond just listening. I thought – what an “Apple” way to do it. I’m on a phone, I COULD call, but here is a way to incorporate an app that gets no love from general users and make it part of the experience.
“For You” has been bang on to the point that it’s a little scary – almost like a music diary I’m not sure I want people to read.
You are right – for an Apple 1.0, this is amazing. If Maps was this good on launch it would not be the butt of so many jokes today, even though it has very much caught up. As of right now I rarely listen to my own music files anymore.
Just to add my anecdote, I’m having very little trouble with the new iOS app. I welcome the change that took away that useless tiled view when I turned my phone landscape. The way the song info slides out of the way to a mini-player and allows me to view other things is much better to me than moving things back and forth with breadcrumbs at the top — although those are still there for some things.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard about the mini-player and the shuffle and such buttons is that they are difficult to use while driving. Honestly, we shouldn’t be fiddling with the phone while driving. When I told the complainer that and suggested he use Siri by saying “Shuffle play all my music,” he just brought up complaints about Siri not understanding his Chicago accent or how he liked to switch between shuffle and album play all the time. The first complaint is bogus — unless Siri prefers a thick Oklahoma drawl over a Chicago accent, because I can talk to Siri fine. The second — again, one shouldn’t be fiddling so much with a phone screen while driving (and it is possible to switch to album play with Siri, too).
Sometimes, I think people just want anything at all to complain about, especially when things change. Hell, I made a big fuss when they put Expose into Mac OS X and broke my Windowshades plugin — until I actually used Expose and found it to be a thousand times better. (Okay, that’s hyperbole. Maybe 100 times. It got 1000 times better as it improved.)
To give a little credit, I handle my playlists on my Mac instead of my phone or iPad. I’ll play with some more playlists on the phone itself — but I’ll have to subscribe or move more music over. The rest of the app, though, is far from the travesty a lot of people seem to be trying to say it is. (My wife seems to have little issue with it, too, and she’s a graphic designer and is usually the first person I hear complain when I button is ridiculously out of place or something is really screwy with a layout.)
That music diary quip is excellent!
It’s true! I’m showing a friend some of the service’s features and some WHAM! shows up in “for you” – “oh, um that’s nothing… it’s not like i have a lot of George Michael albums or anything…” – they knew damn well I did…
I need to lock this down – maybe make it TouchID locked, lol…
I stop right there at “I’m an Apple loyalist,”
Enjoying it immensely. Is it perfect? Hell, no! But I never discover many songs I like in a short span of time like this. Honestly sometimes it’s just too tough a choice to choose between my playlists or Beats 1. I just wish I can listen to them both at the same time.