2016
I enjoy music a lot and I stream it often. Before Apple Music came along I used Spotify for my music streaming needs. I recently tried Apple Music for three months as my main music streaming source thanks to their free three-month trial. Now that the trial has ended I’m happily back to using Spotify as my main streaming source again with no plans on renewing Apple Music. Here’s what I liked and disliked about Apple Music.
Pros
- Generated playlists (usually had some gems even with half of it being songs I already knew about) up
- Getting music early (specifically the new Radiohead “A Moon Shaped Pool” album)
- Siri….sometimes. When it works it’s great, but it tends not to work well often. Siri also makes an appearance in the Cons section.
- Works with Apple TV. I don’t have an Apple TV but that’s a good thing for those that do.
Cons:
- Initial music taste setup. Had to choose from generated lists so I couldn’t select specific bands. There were bands on there that I liked for sure, but for every band I saw that I liked on one screen I could think of several similar bands that I liked more.
- No Chromecast or PS4 support. I use both of those devices somewhat often, especially Chromecast in regards to listening to music.
- Search results (if you spell a band name or track wrong they don’t try to guess what you meant. I know I’m not the only one who quickly searches for a band or song while in the car….at a stop of course.)
- Search results layout (example: why have a Top Albums section, how about just Albums?)
- When you go to search a Trending Music section is shown below which would be great if I listened to a lot of “trending music” but I don’t. The only artist I ever saw on that section that I would listen to sometimes is Drake. It would be better if this section showed what music is trending with me personally, like bands that I’ve searched for or listen to often. Then it would be an efficient section where I could quickly click on bands I’ve search for like The Strokes, Young the Giant, Foals, Beach House, Metronomy, & etc. Instead it just shows popular music by some genres of music that I don’t listen to much like Rap or Pop.
- Siri (this should be something that would just be in the Pro section, but most of the time when I asked Siri to play a specific song or album it either played the incorrect response or didn’t even attempt to do anything. I must add also that I speak proper English and I don’t have any kind of thick accent. People have even told me that I sound really proper. I’ve also been randomly told that I sound like I’m from Ohio & California oddly enough.)
- Force touch is limited. The only two options available when using force touch are play Beats 1 & search. It would be better if it was customizable, showed things more related to how you use the app or specifics like recent playlists, artists & etc.
- No free ad-supported version like Spotify.
- Playlist management isn’t as quick & seamless as Spotify makes it.
- The user interface. I could go on & on comparing it to Spotify and what I like about Spotify more in this regard specifically, but I’ll just keep it simple and state the Spotify interface is more efficient and user friendly.
