Apple Music - anyone heard of it? Or not, I don't care.

First impression: This blows Spotify out of the water. Being able to save albums to my phone so I can stream them even when I'm offline or in airplane mode is incredible. The interface is great, too.

Do I have to update the desktop OS to 10.10.4 to get the iTunes update to 12.2? Because it's saying my current version of iTunes, 12.1, is the most up to date.

xpost Being able to save albums to my phone so I can stream them even when I'm offline or in airplane mode is incredible.

You can do this with Spotify, too.

only with Premium iirc, and I dunno about stuff from yr personal library

Yeah this saves all the albums you want right to your iTunes music library, within seconds

only with Premium iirc

Yeah, but Spotify Premium costs the same as this, so it's a wash.

http://i60.tinypic.com/13yp66e.jpg

THINK ABOUT IT, SHEEPLE

I might not have time to do an update for a few days, so can someone who has the new iOS Music app report how the library artist view (local files) is handled? Essentially I'm wondering if you can get to an individual album view by navigating from artist > albums > album track list, rather than the combined album/track list view that was introduced a couple of years ago. It drives me nuts that you can't just view a list of the artist's albums from artist view without seeing all the tracks too, making it a pain to scroll through when you have a lot of albums from an artist and making it impossible to play a single album without the next one in the list starting up when the one you selected is finished.

(Was kind of hoping this thread would be titled "Apple Music - anyone heard of it?")

It drives me nuts that you can't just view a list of the artist's albums from artist view without seeing all the tracks too, making it a pain to scroll through when you have a lot of albums from an artist

oh yeah this is kind of a dealbreaker if it is still in effect

how does the library compare to the spotify library?

That part is better. You choose the artist and it shows their albums. Doesn't seem to be a way to see all tracks by an artist regardless of album though.

(And no way to see the tracks you don't have but which are available on Apple Music, which is a miss)

Library seems better/as good as Spotify. Has the new Fall, which Spotify didn't when I looked.

I assume Drag City has withheld its catalog from Apple Music?

only with Premium iirc

Yeah, but Spotify Premium costs the same as this, so it's a wash.

haha youre gonna have to pay premium for apple . Dont be conned

So I upgraded my stupid iTunes to 12.1.2.27 just to check this out, and I'm not seeing where the Apple Music part of it exists. Still just the store/library/etc.

Oh, nm. I'm running into the same problem William mentioned upthread. I need 12.2 but was only offered 12.1 - further reinforcing my position that iTunes for PC is total bullshit and I have good reasons for hating it.

I'm reading it's not available for desktop yet

Did some googling and 12.2 is coming out later this afternoon according to Apple tech support.
xp

I get that mobile is the focus these days, but don't launch your product until it's available in all formats! Tidal did this too. Not saying Apple Music will go the way of Tidal, but c'mon!

My hopes are pretty low for the desktop version, tbh. iTunes is one giant, clunky, slow program, and I can't imagine this massive new addition making it run any smoother. I'll probably wait a while before downloading that update.

Apple has even less stuff on Tzadik than Spotify does, near as I can tell.

i thought spotify had nothing from tzadik

They have a little. Aram Bajakian's Kef; MC Maguire - Meta-conspiracy; Derek Keller - Impositions and Consequences; Ayelet Rose Gottlieb - Mayim Rabim.

Apple only has the Gottlieb I think. Still exploring.

Figured out how to do the complete album thing: press the ... Next to a track, then press its title in the action sheet that appears.

they have peter gabriel unlike spotify, nice since i've been in a pg place for awhile

This app seems to have wiped out all my mp3s from my phone. Anyone else have this problem?

There's no way the mp3s got wiped, they're probably just not accessible or hidden from view. Check your Settings to see how much space is allocated to music.

When you add the app it asks you if you want to "merge" Apple Music with your My Music library or "replace" your library. You might have clicked replace.

The UI is so fast and responsive. At least compared to spotify.

Still playing around with adding things to my music, have found everything I've looked for so far. Will need to add my local files to get a true test.

Actually, I wiped the music to make space for the new OS. But now when I click on "music" under settings, there's no option to click on various playlists to be copied to the phone.

Evan R, I think you're right about this. Any idea how to "merge" from this place?

Eep, no idea. For me I can click on the Music app, then the "My Music" tab, and get a list of mp3s on my phone integrated with albums/tracks I added from Apple Music. Maybe try re-adding mp3s to your phone from iTunes and see if it asks you if you want them merged?

Ah ha! For some reason it's now letting me add them to my phone. Thanks for the help and sorry to belabor the thread.

pleased so far. Anyone know how I upload stuff from my private library to their cloud, though? I wanna test that. Maybe that has to wait for the desktop app to come out?

Yeah, you either need iTunes Match or the new version of iTunes that supports iCloud Music Library to do that. It's causing a lot of confusion.

sounds like there's no last.fm support atm :(

have they made it so iTunes match can accommodate a big library yet or is it still 25 k songs?

100K when iOS 9 comes out in the fall http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/29/apple-itunes-match-100k-songs/

At least it's 25K more songs than spotify can handle from my local library.

yeah cool! wish it was included in the apple music fee (want cake and eat too, etc).

does this come with that free U2 album

$300 a year to get the fam setup and have iTunes matched seems ok I guess.

I'll prob do the 25 buck fee when they get to 100k; itunes informs me i have 138k at the moment

U+K: Can you import spotify playlists

aaaaaaand no, so until that's changed i guess i'm staying put
http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/30/8871591/spotify-to-apple-music-migrate

1989 front and center.

i would say the chances of the whole taylor tumblr kerfuffle not being a pr stunt are 0%

yeah cool! wish it was included in the apple music fee

Match functionality is included with the Apple Music fee, if that's what you mean. You don't need both.

Pleasant surprises in the Apple Music catalog: The Dead C, Henry Cow, Half Man Half Biscuit, Magma, Keiji Haino/Fushitsusha, Sonic Youth SYR series, The Necks.

Some of these guys were previously in the Beats catalog, but Apple Music is MUCH deeper with most/all of them.

seriously though it's bad and lame xp

it's almost economically feasible to just run your own cloud these days

Subsonic

is that any good? I use Plex for home streaming and like it.

It's very good and works a charm, not that hard to set up either. I've heard Plex is similar.

I mostly use Plex for video streaming, the PS/Apple TV bits are pretty nice

i use plex for streaming my old library plus video, it's fine. it stutters a bit if I stream to my phone over the data plan and not on wifi but otherwise it's great.

lol at "update"

http://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/05/05/apple-officially-discontinues-webobjects/

"still randomly skipping tracks, a lot. apple music tracks" is this while streaming? how is your connection?

all tracks downloaded and connection is solid. no errors popping up. when it skips, i go straight back and it plays the skipped song like nothing happened.

I haven't experienced track skipping either, with neither local or streamed music. Not to say other people don't, just that I haven't personally.

this time around i deleted my whole library and started from scratch, so it's not even a 10yo corrupt itunes library. playing an mp3 is hardly a pioneering task. i'm assuming the code base is terrifying and hilarious.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7523/26782080441_edbf152024_o.png

Confirmed, I use Apple Music and still have all my original local files.

Same problem with the skipping tracks on iOS but I would only notice this by looking at my phone and seeing artwork flash by (ie the song does not start it just seems unplayable). I've been having this problem on iPhone way before apple music and he files in iTunes do not seem corrupt so I suspect it's a phone issue?

I've been having this problem on iPhone way before apple music and he files in iTunes do not seem corrupt so I suspect it's a phone issue?

same here. i think it started happening around ios7/8 (hence me assuming my itunes db was corrupt). i scrapped and resynced the music db several times but the skipping continued. my ipod classic's playback never missed a beat syncing with the same itunes library. so yeah, ios/music app issue, most likely down to shitty code.

My iPod classic used to skip tracks as well, it was just harder to notice unless you say watching the display

lol @ the webobjects saga

afaik webobjects is pretty good, definitely solid for enterprise-type development. i don't think any startups are going to jump on that technology stack any time soon, though.

It was also great for iOS back ends, especially with native plist support when that was by far the fastest thing on iOS.

We retired our final bit of WO at work this month. It started in the objective C days!

awesome

I did quite a bit of WO work back in 1998-1999 when it was still a NeXT product. Good times, but never dealt with it since then.

http://www.macrumors.com/2016/05/11/apple-ending-itunes-music-downloads/

(Update: Apple Says 'Not True')

i just added a playlist in itunes and my phone stopped playback. when i started playback all my hearts were gone. the rebuild wants to be impeccable because this current service is trash.

hearts are back. uh okay.

http://www.imore.com/apple-confirms-reports-potential-bug-itunes-safeguard-patch-expected-next-week

In an extremely small number of cases users have reported that music files saved on their computer were removed without their permission. We’re taking these reports seriously as we know how important music is to our customers and our teams are focused on identifying the cause. We have not been able to reproduce this issue, however, we’re releasing an update to iTunes early next week which includes additional safeguards. If a user experiences this issue they should contact AppleCare.

Good to know that a couple of idiots button mash-deleting their entire libraries is occupying the dev team's time, rather than oh I don't know, something important like FIXING MATCHING

on the whole the new ios app redeems its weird ugliness by being pretty solid. the only functional bug i have now is that non-downloaded songs get loud after 6 seconds. apparently it's been this way since the ios 10 betas.

also there's a fuzzy rumour that individual & family subscriptions will drop by ~20%.

also since ios 10.1.1 the You may also like section is now called FUSE.Product.YouMayAlsoLike.CapitolCase

it's skipping tracks again. a major rebuild and it still can't do the one thing it's supposed to do.

when i go to android i think i'll ditch this. apple has completely lost the plot.

I'd say I'm about 95% satisfied. One annoying issue: My Loved songs playlist has about 2500 songs that I keep downloaded on my mobile. However when a song becomes unavailable for whatever reason, the playlist shows as not being completely downloaded and I have to scroll though all those songs to see which one has been grated out. Takes a good 5 minutes. Minor annoyance.

on top of that, when it downloads tracks as normal and one gets stuck, it interrupts me (with a modal dialogue) to ask whether i want to try again. instead of just trying again. this shouldn't ever happen and indicates their ui design is being done by circus clowns.

how about remembering what state you were in / what minute of the 2 hour mix i was at you piece of shit app

and updating/downloading playlists automatically. and not deleting my downloads. and not undoing my loved songs.

i swear they didn't address most of the major bugs. record-breaking profits and vastly overpriced hardware, and they can't pay four developers to fix this bloody thing.

why the hell does apple music just list every release, even guest spots, under "albums"

i've cycled through most of the streaming music apps by this point and Tidal (tidal! of all things) is the only one that does albums/eps/singles/guest appearances correctly

i mean, it's all splitting hairs as to what counts as a release but wanting to see a newer artist's 2 - 3 albums and having to sort through a dozen "albums" that are singles or different versions of a single with one remix is ridiculous

i think my official stance is everything is garbage, bring back what.cd

yeah spotify puts singles under "new releases" mixed with albums and ep too, it's obnoxious

i just signed up for an apple music trial after i figured out that sonos can't play spotify local files. i like how local files and streaming files in apple music coexist so seamlessly, and after a few painful minutes i think i got the hang of adding things to my library and THEN adding them to my icloud library (instinctively i still wanna drag stuff to my phone but whatever).

so i love that, i love having smart playlists back, and i love that i can control the album art of my local files instead of spotify picking some random image via match and forcing it upon me.

so things i don't like (which is always a longer list no matter what i'm talking about):

-no list view of library, just bigass icons on my phone
-have to manually mark any locally added album as "compilation" if it has more than one artist
-playlist offerings are terrible...i guess playlists are only visible if a "curator" made them? i liked that on spotify people would have already taken the time to make useful playlists public...like someone created a playlist with all the songs from jock jams 1-5, or someone else made a playlist with the billboard top 100 songs of 1972
-when you are scrolling through a specific artist's albums, the number of tracks is not specified. this really is only a big deal when i'm adding stuff from older artists, like when i'm scrolling through ray price's discography i want to add the most thorough anthology i can find to my library, but i have to open each album to see if it's some cheapo 10-song compilation or not.

anyway i have it free for three months so i'll give it a try. try to win me over apple music!!

also, for those who have been using apple music, is there a way to get notifications when a particular artist has something new?

no but you get a notification when an apple bug deletes all your local music

the ios app is infinitely more robust, but occasionally it'll refuse to play certain songs and i need to restart my phone. 'my favourites mix' is pretty good apart from being moderately repetitive and giving me the same fennesz song every fucking week (unloving it seems to have kept it away).

ON IPHONE 6 i'm forever having to tap screen elements 2–3 times before they fire, but i have ui issues with springboard too so it's probably just ios 10 being laggy on old iphones.

can someone explain why the search function takes forever sometimes

because this world is your own personal hell that you've created....
now you have a choice: you can stay here, and have access to millions of songs at your fingertips but it's all a LIE.. or you can take the red pill and i'll show you how to use some other app bc fuck apple lol

why do some albums have random missing songs?

Broke w Expensive Taste is missing Idle Delilah (Spotify has it)

the Goofy Movie soundtrack is missing Stand Out?????? (meanwhile Spotify is missing Stand Out too so idk, why would one song my Tevin Campbell be on the OST but another song of his has licensing issues?)

I saw a woman using this ON ANDROID today. Who even? I mean what?

sample clearances or label disputes xp

when I'm in the office I use apple music on my work phone (galaxy) so that if I get phone calls while listening to music I don't have to switch headsets. I had googled "apple music android" on my phone preparing to look for some 3rd party app that would let me do it, it didn't occur to me that apple actually had an android app too.

Leaving one album track out might be some sort of tactic to encourage people to buy the whole thing (tho this might make more sense if several tracks were omitted).

so, I searched for the album in apple music to see if it prompts you to buy the song in the error message, and when I pulled up the album Idle Delilah is there! And included and playable.

But when I opened the album through my library (via artists, or albums, or whatever) Idle Delilah is grey and when I click on it it says "Item Not Available: This item can't be played". So I deleted it from my library and readded it, now everything is there. Weird. you can all rest easy tonight knowing the entire album is confirmed as available and intact.

As for Stand Out...I feel like my theory that Prince ghostwrote the Tevin Campbell songs on the OST totally explains this; wherever there's Prince there's contractual issues.

Valerie 68 isn't on Lioness (Amy Winehouse) for some reason which is really annoying.

it's never the crappy throwaway bonus track that no one likes that has the "contractual issue"

Anyone tried out much Dolby Atmos-mastered stuff? Anything interesting over regular versions?

I'm playing around with this on headphones and a USB DAC to headphone amp. There's this bit on Tiesto's "BOOM" that goes in a circle around your head. I guess they could've done it on the regular master, but it's pretty flat there.

The new Billie Eilish album seems better with some added breathing room. But most of what's available sounds worse.