Apple Music: really cool, but also problematic

I’m loving the integration with Siri, and they have already figured out my tastes better than Spotify did after years of use.

BUT the interface can be confusing, it’s annoying that you can only add a song to an already-created playlist, and what is confounding most of all right now is that playlists don’t seem to transfer across multiple devices. My wife and I each use three devices with our music (a desktop iMac for her and a desktop Dell for me; plus we each have an iPad and an iPod Touch or “iTouch” as we call it), and it is going to be super frustrating if we have to create playlists separately on each device (it’s already enough of a pain that we have to manually transfer them from Spotify).

So far it’s confusing all of the crappy Mexican music I purchased for my ex-wife for my preferences. Yeah, sure, I bought it, but that doesn’t mean I actually like it.

Initial setup didn’t go well, either. I picked a few of my favorite genres in the little bubbles, but then didn’t recognize any of the band names that it asked me about in the subsequent little bubbles.

Streaming is touch and go. The Apple 1 station only reports error numbers. Streaming a sample music station had too much buffering, but I’m in China using a US account, so I’m probably not getting data from a local CDN. GFW may be interfering with Apple 1; I’ve not tried with a VPN yet.

I hate the fact that my audiobooks are second class citizens not only in iTunes now, but on my iPhone. I guess on the plus side, I don’t seem to lose my place in audiobooks anymore when switching between music and books.

What mostly sucks about the situation is now I have to keep three separate apps and icons instead of a simple, single icon for music, audiobooks, and podcasts.

I’ve really liked it so far and have few problems. Certainly my playlists are immediately synced across all my devices.

What is really confounding me, and I found really easy in Beats Music is navigating from song to album to artist and back. It seems to be different when listening to a playlist vs listening to a live stream vs listening to things in my collection.

If I like a give song, it’s inevitable that I will ask myself ‘what’s the rest of this album like?’ And then ‘what other albums does this artist have’ and I keep getting lost navigating that connection.

I also find it difficult, again liking a song, to make the leap to adding the whole album to my collection or a playlist and not just the individual track. I recognize that my album focus may just be creeping fogeyism. Maybe the kids these days don’t want that?

Eta: I also have really liked Beats One. I’ve done a fair amount of listening so far and picked up several new artists and tracks that I’m excited about. But I’m concerned that I’m hearing more repeats than I’d want. There does seem to be a core of stuff that’s in heavy rotation, and if it becomes more noticeable, that’s kiss of death for me.

Technical people: Please get Sonos working soon.

I’be been spending a lot of time in the New section this evening, specifically navigating through the premade playlists. This could consume a huge amount of time. I’m listening to all kinds of things I have had little exposure to.

Still sucks when I’m on a song I like np and I can’t easy get to the artist summary page.

Can’t find it now but on cNet it stated possibly Apple didn’t obtain the rights to interconnect them with their new music service. It went on to saying that they should fix this before the free trail period (1 month IIRC) is over or risk many people leaving their new service.

A bit underwhelmed to start with, mostly because I’m using iTunes as the interface and it’s still confusing as hell to navigate. I’m stuck with iTunes for the free trial period as my iPod is a 4th generation and is stuck with iOS 6, and my phone and tablet are Android. Plus, I’m used to other streaming services including Rhapsody and MOG. In my opinion, MOG was excellent, but Beats then trashed it and Apple bought what Beats destroyed. Still, three free months to try it out.

One odd thing is that right now I am listening to a cover of ‘Jockey Full of Bourbon’ that was on one of the Rolling Stone curated playlists. But searching Apple Music for “jockey full of bourbon” turns up nothing, not the Tom Waits original nor the Los Lobos cover that I’m playing on Apple Music right now. That seems like a big problem, searching by track name is really basic and it’s not working. If I search for the same song on Rhapsody, I get 36 hits, two from Waits and 34 covers (not, however, the Los Lobos cover).

I’ll keep listening for the 3 month free period. Won’t consider paying until the Android app is out and it better be pretty good, the Rhapsody app is excellent.

Missed the edit window: Ok, Apple Music will find ‘Jockey Full of Bourbon’ if you actually hit enter, but the drop down menu in the search field states “no results found”. Odd.

OK, the radio stations (not Beats 1, but the genre stations) are pretty good.

Anyone know how to follow another user’s playlists? With Spotify, it was simple–my wife and I particularly used it to follow each other’s playlists, not least so that if we were going somewhere in the car we could alternate between them without having to constantly switch devices. But we can not figure out how to do this now with Apple Music, even though we are both under the same umbrella of a “family plan”.

I wouldn’t know because I don’t use Apple Music; however you are correct in that Spotify is extremely simple to use. I personally don’t think Apple Music will be a successor to Spotify - or even a rival.

Huh, that’s weird: I got an email notification about a response ITT from Antene, but it’s not here. I didn’t think people could delete their posts (as opposed to just editing them down to “N/m” or something like that).

I’m not impressed with Apple Music and I think the new iTunes interface on my iPhone and iPad sucks ass.

You’re holding it wrong.

I’m finding the recommendations to be just Godawful, and this after taking the time to set it up.

I mean seriously awful.

The recommendations are my favorite part.

I have found some of the glitches have gotten fixed. But there is one thing that they still could definitely fix in the Windows/PC version (this is not an issue on my Apple devices): the volume slider. Through 98% of its length, it makes only the most subtle reduction in volume, then the last little (barely visible) bit, it goes down to silent. What is the point of that?