Apple Music isn’t the best streaming music service — it’s just the least annoying::Competitors like Spotify and YouTube Music may be your first choice for music on Android, but you might want to reconsider
Yah no. Apple’s insistence on making everything a pain in the ass if you don’t own an Apple device makes it a nonstarter, and YouTube Music just works.
My kids have iPads because they’re both artists, but I’ll be damned if they’re getting any money from me for their craptacular - and yes, deeply annoying - music service. Hell, even setting up the iPads was annoying, because I don’t have any Apple devices of my own, and family controls require them, even though there’s no reason it couldn’t be done on a website.
Fuck Apple.
Hade you tried setting up an Xbox without being a Microsoft user?
Fuck Microsoft.
What kind of illogical comment is that? First, you bring in Microsoft to a discussion it is not a part of; second, just because Microsoft does it wrong, it doesn’t give Apple a license to do things the convoluted way too.
Apples and oranges. For all its faults (and there are lots), Microsoft doesn’t require you to own a Microsoft phone or tablet in order to set up an XBox’s parental controls. You can do it from a website with any device you want - including the Linux machines I use almost exclusively for computing.
Can you give me an example of where Apple requires you to have one of their devices to set up a different device? As far as I am aware this isn’t the case, and I believe that is actually illegal in the us.
You have to have a Mac or iOS device configured with a parent’s account to set up shared apps and parental controls on iPads for kids. That’s because there is no web interface to configure them.
That seems insane to me. Obviously using a parent account makes sense. I wonder if it’s just insanely difficult to find? I know I can change family settings on the website, but have no idea about parental controls. It seems like it’d be illegal to require a second device to set up the first device, no?
Believe me, if it existed, I would have found it. I spent hours searching, and basically all of Apple’s documentation said you needed to go to your own Mac or iOS device to configure it.
Yeah that’s insane to me.
If you want to register a laptop with the apple business manager you have to use the configurator mobile app, so not even having another apple pc is sufficient, to set up a mobile device you have to use the configurator desktop app.
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“Ive never used this service. I don’t intend to use this service. Having never tried, I will assert that this service is hard to use. The web interface is basically the same as popular competitor Spotify, but I have decided this company in particular is the worst. All of the companies that demand my loyalty suck, but this one sucks more because I don’t use it. Google and android are great because Apple sucks.”
They all suck. Companies are inherently greedy and selfish. But don’t confidently say something untrue because you don’t like the company that makes something. If your only input is based on biased hate, maybe just let that one go. Give input on things you have experience with and enjoy. Idk why you think Apple Music is so hard and deeply annoying. The website works fine and seems pretty basic as shit to me.
Spotify does have a terrible interface though.
lol I won’t disagree with you here. And I’m not saying Apple Music has a good interface. Just that it’s no worse than Spotify or Amazon.
I’ve never used YouTube music, so I can’t say, but if it’s anything like YouTube, I’m sure I’d hate it too.
I like YTM. The play button has never defaulted to random order, and it’s all pretty logical.
I’ve used Apple services. My kids have iPads. The parental controls and shared app library controls required for them was a pain in the ass to set up, because there is no web interface for it. You have to use the iOS or MacOS app store for certain steps.
I succeeded only because I managed to get a hold of an old, unused Mac from my work, which I could configure with my Apple account.
I can’t speak to parental controls, as I’ve not ever and hopefully will never set them up. That could be a completely valid point. I don’t know, and I wasn’t talking about that.
What I want to know is whether you’ve used Apple Music to come to the conclusion that it is craptacular and deeply annoying.
I’m not saying Apple doesn’t have some shitty services. I just think Apple Music isn’t one of them, and I’d like to know how you arrived to that conclusion.
Admittedly it’s been a few years since I messed around specifically with Apple Music, but my recollection is that its recommendations were mediocre, it made playing a full album unreasonably complicated, and its playlist tab was horrible (at least on iOS).
If it’s changed for the better, I’m sure there are plenty of genuine fans, but it lost me pretty permanently with the experience that was available around 2020 or so.
I use it because it came bundled with Apple one. I’ve found it to be really solid personally. I can’t speak to YouTube music as I haven’t used it, but Apple Music is just as good as Spotify and Amazon music in my personal experience.
My experience with Apple Music has been overwhelmingly positive. Student plan is dirt cheap, barely any more expensive than Spotify and has Hi-Fi included. And the app doesn’t connect to a disgusting amount of trackers like Spotify does. I’ll stay on AM for the foreseeable future
Same. It’s an impossible fight, with all this magical thinking about Apple biasing any discussion. So much blind hate and no way to debate it.
Apple pays much more to artists - period. That’s why I use it.
That’s the fediverse for you! I’ve had better software discussion outside of it tbh.
Anyhow, library management on Apple Music is also way less annoying than on Spotify, especially when handling tracks you import from your local library.
I’d not just blame the fediverse - I’d call out all social media. Popularity reigns there, not accuracy or facts.
Last time I tried apple music, i went to import my saved songs from Spotify along with my local songs. There were about 12000 of each at the time. Somehow I ended up with 40000 songs in my iTunes after it finished loading, and the interface was so slow it was basically unusable… I will be sticking with Spotify for now.
Spotify became so slow for me that I had to move the other direction.
I’ve manually handled my library, but I’ve used Playlisty for whatever playlists I wanted from Spotify.
FYI: Spotify’s Plans to Demonetize Tracks With the Lowest Royalty Payouts Is ‘Discriminatory and Offensive,’ Says Competition Policy Expert https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2023/11/07/spotify-plans-to-demonetize-tracks-discriminatory-offensive/
Time to catch up. Spotify is getting shittier daily.
I only use Spotify for song discovery, and if I find something i really love I’ll buy it.
I like the idea of Tidal’s plan where they pay your top artists more… But tidal is god awful at helping me find new music.
Also, i was only talking about functionality, not artist payouts. Apple/iTunes is a functional disaster (at least if you dont own a mac).
Tidal pays artists even more, and has some features Apple Music doesn’t have for the same price (or cheaper if you’re Military/First Responder)
But of course Apple Music is better for some people for certain features it has. And Tidal’s hi-fi plan is more expensive. I get the knee jerk dislike of Apple, but nuance almost always gets lost online.
That being said, Spotify sucks lol
Why is this ad not removed?
Everyone picks a streaming service for their needs. YT music has a large library bundled with ad free YT, Apple Music is a natural choice if you’re in the Apple ecosystem and Spotify exists too.
I recently switched to Tidal from Spotify and haven’t looked back. The UI is familiar enough, having lossless is really nice, and not having my phone lag whenever I open my library is great.
Then there’s the other factor of how much each streaming service pays it’s artists. To make 1000$ in revenue, this is how many streams an artist needs:
YT Music : 500,000 ($0.002 per stream)
Spotify : 314,465 ($0.00318 per stream)
Apple : 125,000 ($0.008 per stream)
Tidal : 77,882 ($0.01284 per stream)
Granted, musicians almost never make their money from streaming services. However, if an artist were to have that 314k streams on Tidal instead of Spotify, they’d make 4 times as much money.
The number you pulled for YouTube Music is based on free users watching YouTube videos. YouTube Music streams from paying subscribers are 4x that at $0.08 per stream.
The Spotify number is also averaged across free and premium users - I’m not sure the number for premium users only but it is likely closer to what Apple and Tidal pay since those are premium-only.
The other problem though is that none of the services have implemented user-centric payments. So your money on any of the services is going to Taylor Swift, Drake and Bad Bunny no matter who you listen to because everyone gets paid based on their percentage of the total streams.
The artist rates continually decline for every platform. In the not-to-distant future Tidal will be as shit as Spotify is now.
I also switched to Tidal and agree it’s a huge improvement over Spotify. The improved quality alone is worth it but I also like not having the podcast stuff pushed all the time (Tidal has none) and also the Tidal algorithm seems “worse” in that it’s weirder but it also makes it better. The Spotify algo is great if you want to hear exactly the same sounding thing all the time, but if you like to branch out and be surprised it’s terrible. Listening to Tidal radio kinda feels like listening to college radio. Weirder, not always great, but certainly more varied.
Also your top listened to artists on Tidal get a direct cut of your monthly fee if you have the top plan.
Didn’t apple overwrite people’s music with different versions of their songs or something?
Regardless, fuck Apple. I’m happy with Jellyfin.
Yepp - all my bootleg and vinyl rips was suddenly replaced with other versions. Even some of my ripped albums ended up as songs from different albums.
Only reason I still have the Apple Music app is because when I connect my phone in my car with usb, the stereo will give errors if it’s not there. Also starts auto playing when connected even if tidal is playing while connection is made.
Yep. It has screwed up album art and as a very visual person it has really fucked my ability to browse through my library. Also the older the album/song was added, the more broken tracks there are.
As a result I am now working to switch away from Apple Music and streaming in general. I was perfectly happy paying the student price for Apple Music. However with it increasingly breaking my library and needing me to conduct “library maintenance” to keep up with their licensing issues. Well fuck that.
Nah, InnerTune is the best. Has the library of YouTube music, no ads, free, can download songs as actual files (at least in a previous version, which is still available on F-Droid archive)
Also worth noting some other nice free music apps also available on F-Droid:
- SimpTube (uses YouTube Music)
- Musify (uses Spotify)
- Spotube (uses Spotify, streams the actual tracks from YouTube Music or via a Piped instance)
Not to mention newpipe or of course the many many local storage players, Vinyl my first choice
Those are the discussions I’m interested in. YT music is making me cringe with ads between nearly every song.
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Simptube seems to not exist
They probably meant SimpMusic.
Yepp this is what I meant, my bad! Thanks for the correction
Does it have a Linux app? no
Does it have a duo plan? no
Does it have a good rating on Google Play? no
Does it have a decent Windows app? last time i checked, itunes looked like an app from 2005
Try Cider, it’s a FOSS and it works on any platform including Linux. There are others, but they are mostly just wrappers around the web app, and Cider is not.
Windows app is pretty good these days, as is the Android app.
I use AM mainly on my PC and my Samsung Fold
The best streaming service is my selfhosted Jellyfin. I serve me no ads and I’m 100% sure I don’t do any shady business with my data.
My experience with apple music has mostly been around being incredibly annoyed at the account management and signin process for people who don’t have any apple hardware. So I would probably disagree there.
Not to be pedantic but why on earth would you use Apple music if you aren’t in their ecosystem instead of one of the many other options for music?
I try out different things, they have apps on other platforms so the expectation is for those apps to not be a hateful cluster fuck on those platforms
If Microsoft made a thing for Mac I wouldn’t want or expect it to suck either.
Everyone I know uses Spotify
Spotify isn’t the least bit annoying for me though? It works brilliantly and does everything I need it to do and more.
It’ll be a cold day in hell before I use an Apple product though.
- Can’t turn off album art or colorized elements changing bright colors while driving. (I just want simple buttons to press to change tracks or pause music without distracting album art). This one is legitimately dangerous
1a. The last straw for me was when they deprecated car mode entirely and insisted on even more flashy moving elements in the standard player. It became a safety hazard to use.
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Can’t combine your own music with cloud music anymore (when Spotify started, you could combine their libraries with your own music if you had something that they didn’t)
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No normalization adjustments for songs that are too loud or too quiet
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No per-device (or at all iirc?) Equalization
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Periodic check-in required every (30d last time I used the service) for offline content, meaning if you download stuff to your laptop, don’t touch it for a month, and then go on a plane you don’t have access to your music.
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Constant background app openings. App opens itself constantly to track your location, and broadcast to other devices whether or not you’re playing music. Integrated with lots of ad/tracker networks
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Quality is terrible. I dunno what it is because apparently I’m not even one of the people that can tell the difference between 128 and 256, but the same song in Plexamp at 320 vs Spotify whatever is night and day, especially on bad car speakers.
I haven’t used the service in years and that’s just off the top of my head why Spotify is terrible.
Some of these are valid, especially #6 and #7
But a lot of them, frankly, just aren’t true:
- Can’t turn off album art or colorized elements changing bright colors while driving
You can turn off the flashy moving stuff entirely with one setting, if you get distracted by a static album art image while driving then you really should be using a hardware device to control playback instead tbh
1a. The last straw for me was when they deprecated car mode entirely
Car mode is still here, and works perfectly well - in fact they’ve improved the visual clarity recently to make it even clearer
- Can’t combine your own music
They won’t host it for you, but you can absolutely combine the music on your local device with your local library
- No normalization adjustments for songs that are too loud or too quiet
There is a setting for exactly this. I personally think there’s something to be said for not modifying songs in the background though
- No per-device (or at all iirc?) Equalization
Yes there is, afaik it’s per-device only
- Periodic check-in required
Ehh, this one’s kinda fair from a business perspective - it makes sense that the platform would need to verify your subscription occasionally for licensing reasons, but I can see why this would be mildly annoying if you use it very infrequently and are eg on a plane
- Constant background app openings
I’m not sure I can say I’ve seen any issue with this, but if you really don’t like it being active in the background, you can just turn off Spotify Connect in the background in settings
- Quality is terrible
If the audio quality is audibly bad then it’s likely due to not using the very high audio quality setting, or automatic quality adjustment due to network conditions (again, you can turn this off though it may result in buffering)
Honestly, I don’t think playing music through the worst speaker you can find is a reasonable way to assess the audio quality - like yeah, no shit it’s going to be bad. “Doctor doctor, it hurts when I do this”
Tldr: just look at settings lol
I did say it had been a couple of years, and this was all true when I stopped using it a few years back.
- Yeah some album art is pretty distracting, especially when it goes from dark to light at a song switch. You can’t tell me that I’m the only one that might distract while driving.
1a.Car mode deprication in 2021 without a replacement at the time: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/26/22803670/spotify-retiring-car-view-android-mobile-playback-auto-driving
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Yes there’s a global toggle, but if it is not to your liking, there’s no way to take X song and boost it 20%.
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Per device as in per-bluetooth, not per-app. When you have bad car speakers but good headphones you might want wildly different EQs.
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If memory serves, I did try that. It still opened itself constantly. Most people probably aren’t monitoring background activities on their phones, but it was like 15-30wakelocks/hr just to exist.
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This was with hq on. And automatic adjustment off. I can’t describe it other than flat and crunchy but there’s something to it, or at least there was in ~2021
#2 would kill it for me. I have plenty of music in AM that isn’t available to stream on any service. A lot of older stuff isn’t available on streaming.
Apple Music is the best music platform by far due to clean and simple focus and UI, performance, and also lyrics. Unfortunately, it still sucks in all the ways that streaming inherently sucks though, combined with its intention to suck you into the Apple world.
Apple Music is prob the only Apple service that you can sub to while mostly avoiding the rest of the Apple world
True
Google Play Music died and was resurrected as Plexamp.
I had a 3 month trial, that I cancelled in two days. Apple music does not play a lot of songs. Why show them to me when I’m not allowed to hear them? Youtube music works really well, and I am using an iphone!
I much prefer Spotify, interface is definitely more intuitive than Apple Music.
