“Apple Music feels like an attempt to take on every competitive app from Pandora to Spotify to YouTube and advance the idea of online radio at the same time.,” Ryan Nakashima writes for The Associated Press.
“As a result, Apple Music feels crowded with features and buttons — unusual for a company known for promoting simplicity and ease of use,” Nakashima writes. “And as much as Apple Music tries to suit my personal tastes, I find many of its recommendations off-base.”
MacDailyNews Take: We find exactly the opposite. Apple Music has already introduced us to several artists we’ve never heard, but love. Many reviews that we’ve read echo our experience. Apple Music is uncanny with its music recommendations (provided to pick your favorites and love songs you love along the way. Did Nakashima perhaps expect it to read his mind?).
“Two innovations stand out: One is Beats 1. The concept of a radio station taken online and delivered to mobile devices in 100 countries around the world is refreshingly simple. Hosted by Zane Lowe in Los Angeles, Julie Adenuga in London and Ebro Darden in New York, Apple is presenting three tastemakers whom I’m just getting to know. They play music and conduct interviews. Live listening is fun, and I can switch when I want more control over listening,” Nakashima writes. “Siri, Apple’s ever-evolving digital assistant, can now take voice commands and launch music immediately, even responding to relatively complex commands. Ask it to ‘Play the top songs from 1973,’ and you’ll get that year’s top 25, including ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.’ In fact, if Apple Music had only these two features, I’d feel satisfied.”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, who needs a celestial jukebox with virtually every song ever recorded? (smirk)
“The service benefits from being featured prominently on Apple’s mobile devices, but I’m not sure that will be enough for people to switch from another service,” Nakashima writes. “If you’ve already spent time creating playlists on Spotify, for instance, you’re not going to want to start over on Apple Music.”
MacDailyNews Take: An easy step by step proccess to import all your music and playlists from Spotify to Apple Music: http://movetoapplemusic.ramonfritsch.com
“t’s no doubt difficult to encapsulate the world of music in a product that aims to mold itself to millions of different tastes,” Nakashima writes. “But we’ve come to rely on Apple to address these very vexing problems. Usually it does so in a way that feels less cluttered.”
Read more in the full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: This reviewer comes off as pretty confused about the whole thing. The review also screams “rush job!” How long did he spend with Apple Music? How much input did he give to Apple Music about his own tastes? After reading his whole review, we’d say “not enough” on both accounts.
That said, yes, Apple Music/iTunes/iTunes Store – the whole conglomeration – is a hot mess right now. Hopefully the UI can be refined going forward.
Found some absolutely amazing deep house albums through Apple Music.
Been using it since the launch and thought I’d wait 3 months before deciding whether to carry on. I’ve already decided however, I’m subscribing.
Well, deep house albums are not going to inspire me. It’s enough of a mess right now that I’m sticking to iTunes and CD’s. I hope it gets better. I listen to music, not constantly, selectively. No radio, no background, no suggestions. I discover quite a bit of new stuff without relying on streaming. But yes, it’ll definitely be Apple over Spotify or Tidal when the time comes. And Neil Young can get of MY lawn- STFU already!
The amount of sunshine that MDN and certain people here blow up Apple’s ass is truly staggering.
Agreed. I am liking a lot of Apple Music but it is long past time that Apple unbundled “iTunes” on Mac and “Music” on iOS into several more focused apps.
The one feature I want to see … a “Never play this artist again” list.
Yes. I would also like a “Never play this genre again” button. Am I missing something?
I am getting tons of country music recommendations and that is probably the only genre I really don’t like. I even reset my Apple Music preferences to be sure there was no accidental positive feedback for country music.
Please let me know if I am missing something!
There is a lot to Apple Music. I’ll still finding stuff out.
I’m not sure if cluttered is the right description. I would say that it is not clear what all the functions are and how they can be used. Even setting up Family share is not straightforward especially since it means you need to enable iCloud music for all users.
Step by step guides would be useful.
Windows and android world calling iTunes Cluttered? Gotta be kidding.
iTunes has been cluttered even by Android/Windows standards for a long time. It is unlike any other Apple application.
Apps and Music (mine, Apple’s, playlists, etc) and Audiobooks and Movies and TV series all in the same application is extremely cluttered.
Could you not have a system whereby you ask siri (or just push a button) to listen to an hour, a day a week or whatever time you are listening to your Spotify or other playlists and form a new one automatically on Apple Music by detecting those songs? A bit of fine tuning and job done. Or is that too obvious..