After ruling the headlines in recent weeks, Apple Music is finally here. First, Taylor Swift wrote Apple an open letter, which caused the company to reverse course and pay artists during the initial three-month free trial period. Naturally, she followed up by gifting them 1989. Exclusives such as Pharrell’s new single, “Freedom,” and Dr. Dre’s classic album, The Chronic, have been announced, while Beats 1 Radio programming was revealed to include various celebrity hosts and an exclusive interview with Eminem.
None of this matters, however, if Apple Music can’t deliver on its initial promises:
- Better recommendations for artists and playlists
- Highlighting new artists and releases
- Compelling live programming, featuring Beats 1 Radio
- Seamless integration of ripped / purchased music with 30 million tracks available for streaming
Let’s tackle each feature individually.
Better recommendations
Apple Music is built atop Beats Music, which claimed its human curation would result in better playlist and album suggestions. Based on the setup process, which involves selecting favorite genres and artists, it looks like Apple has this feature well covered.
Highlighting new artists and releases
At first glance, it looks like the New tab merely duplicates the Music tab of the iTunes Store app. Scrolling down reveals more curated music by Apple Music Editors, as well as activity-specific playlists, but it’s not immediately obvious to find. Bad job by Apple here.
Compelling live programming
Beats 1 Radio was featured heavily during the Apple Music announcement, and the hype hasn’t let up: There’s an exclusive Eminem interview coming, and a slew of celebrity hosts, including Elton John, Drake, Pharrell Williams, Jaden Smith, St. Vincent, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and Disclosure.
Day 1 lived up to the hype, though, despite some bugs — liking one song means every song after is automatically liked — and a half-hour outage. Zane Lowe, Julie Adenuga and Ebro Darden each put their stamp on the “always on” radio station, and St. Vincent even showed up for her weekly “Mixtape Delivery Service” segment.
Bugs aside, there were a few surprises. First, Beats 1 is technically “always on,” but it isn’t actually airing original programming 24/7: Lowe, Adenuga and Darden’s shows air twice per day. Second, it plays the clean versions of songs.
Overall, we can call Beats 1 a success… for now. Perhaps live radio isn’t dead.
Seamless integration of iTunes library with Apple Music streaming catalog
Apple Music allows users to store 100,000 songs online in the iCloud Music Library. Theoretically, this feature fills in the gaps of music unavailable for streaming, like The Beatles or mixtapes. In practice, Apple has never gotten iCloud to work properly since its initial launch. Indeed, our editors have found that many of their albums aren’t uploading properly.
Hopefully this will change in the future, but don’t count on it.
Here’s a more detailed look after a day using Apple Music.
Signing up is pretty simple. First, update to iOS 8.4, and then tap the newly designed icon for the Music app. Choose the three-month trial option to get started, and then pick either the $9.99 individual or $14.99 family plan at the next screen.
Next, to optimize recommendations, tap the For You tab on the bottom. Beats Music users will recognize the familiar circles interface. Pick favorite genres and artists, and Apple Music then populates the screen with Apple-curated playlists and albums based on the previous selections.
As for the New tab, it mostly looks like the Music tab of the iTunes Store app, but you can stream instead of purchase. Specific songs and albums are featured on top, like the Apple Music exclusive of The Chronic. However, scrolling way down reveals curated music and activity-specific playlists.
The new Radio tab shows Beats 1 front and center, naturally, but it’s also home to the newly dubbed Apple Radio (formerly iTunes Radio) stations.
As for the Connect tab, there’s not much to say. It’s basically Tumblr for artists. Apple’s never been good at social, so we’ll see how it pans out.
And then there’s the My Music tab. It combines music from your iTunes library with anything you’ve added from Apple Music. As result, it can often be confusing to navigate. For example, it took one of our editors several hours to figure out how to show music which he added to his library, but not stored offline (tap Artists, and deselect the option at the bottom which defaults to only show offline music).
Bottom line
There’s no reason not to sign up for the Apple Music three-month trial because, hey, it’s free. However, it’s up to each individual user to decide whether it’s better than his/her current streaming service (if they have one in the first place).
For some people, having everything in the pre-installed Apple Music app is enough. Others were counting on seamless integration of their own music with the streaming catalog, and that’s unfortunately not the case quite yet. Regardless, Apple has three months to get consumers to buy in and hopefully make improvements to the service.
