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
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.
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)
No normalization adjustments for songs that are too loud or too quiet
No per-device (or at all iirc?) Equalization
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.
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
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.
#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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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)
No normalization adjustments for songs that are too loud or too quiet
No per-device (or at all iirc?) Equalization
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.
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
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.
#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.
I love how no one still knows about Deezer even though it’s been around since 2007. Best bang for the buck.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Everyone I know uses Spotify
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.
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
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 artist rates continually decline for every platform. In the not-to-distant future Tidal will be as shit as Spotify is now.
Why is this ad not removed?
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.
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
I mean, FOSS YouTube music clients + FOSS downloaders and maybe a system wide adblocker can never get wrong