[sanjeetsuhag]

Honestly, I can't imagine switching to Apple Music. Speaking as a guy who owns an iPhone and a Mac. I love being able to smoothly control playback from any device. I love how seamless the experience is, I've only tried the Apple Music Trial when it first came out and I can't see any possible reason to switch to it now.

Spotify is excellent for music discovery, and I love the top songs and everything. It's perfect. It's the kind of software I wish I could make someday.

[sgustard]

I live in a fully Mac/iOS household, and I had no idea until I saw this article that Apple Music was a thing that competes with Spotify. That's probably due to iTunes and iCloud being such a confusing mess that I just don't use Apple services and I haven't launched those apps in years.

[hellweaver666]

It is indeed a mess. After sharing an iCloud account for years my wife and I decided to upgrade our Apple Music to a family account so we could have separate music (and listen to music on different devices at the same time). Apple decided this must mean we also want separate iCloud accounts and upon logging into her own Apple Music account, also proceeded to remove our 15 years of family photos and a couple of years of shared notes from her device. Now she can't see the photos I've taken or any of her old photos unless we use the sharing functionality (we take a lot of photos of our kids and having them auto sync on both devices was brilliant for us). We tried doing it the manual way but it was such a pain.

Since Apple music's family service wasn't compatible with how we use our devices, we cancelled Apple Music and got a family account on Spotify instead. When Apple Music expired it wiped all the playlists we had in iTunes including ones I created years before Apple Music was ever a thing and not even containing any music from Apple Music.

I'm thinking of also dumping iCloud, but I really like the automatic backing up of all our photos to all of our devices. Heck, at this point I would switch to Android as well if it weren't for the years of apps I've purchased for Apple and don't want to buy again.

[Angostura]

If you share an iCloud account, you're going to find things painful, its really not the way that things are designed to work.

Here's how to get back to where you were, if you want to use separate iCloud accounts.

1. On your device create create a Shared photo album. 2. Share it with your wife using her new iCloud ID 3. Select the photos that you wan to share (basically all of them initially) 4. Tap Share > iCloud Photo Sharing 5. Select the shared album.

From then on, you and your wife share all photos you want to share to to that Album.

Same thing works with shared Calendars, Notes, To-do list etc.

If you share an iCloud account across multiple people you will find yourself fighting the system all the time

[josteink]

> proceeded to remove ... can't see the photos ... When Apple Music expired it wiped all the playlists ...

Adding my own experiences with iTunes-wiped devices and music-collections...

The only consistent thing with Apple and music/services is them accidentally wiping or deleting your data from both your devices and their services.

Applied this consistently, it's clearly a design decision.

What kind of company designs things to behave this way? Really?

[sah2ed]

> Applied this consistently, it's clearly a design decision.

Perhaps the design decision assumes the separation is due to a divorce? In that case, keeping them separate is a reasonable decision since neither party would want to be forced to endure further shared memories on any device.

[harryf]

Likewise. The UI is a disaster for any pre-Apple-music iTunes users so I try to go there as rarely as possible. And after years of deleting half my music every time I switch phone or device (intentionally? https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lawsuit-apple-delete... ) I doubt I will ever trust Apple with anything music-related again.

[yeahdef]

Another perspective: I am less concerned with music discovery or seamless device hand-offs. I know what I want to listen to. As a former club DJ, I accrued a large amount of records that are simply unavailable via streaming networks. I recently starting ripping a lot of those vinyl records to mp3. I have tried spotify, google play music, and Apple Music. Apple Music is the clear winner when it comes to the importing, tagging, artwork curation workflow. I am really enjoying building my up library from scratch (forgive the pun).

[thirdsun]

Why would you rip your collection to a lossy format like MP3? Sure, you're probably going to explain how you don't hear a difference which is fair, but a lossless format like FLAC or ALAC (recommended if you're in the Apple eco system) has other advantages besides superior audio quality. It allows you to convert to any other format, including MP3, at a later point. Storage is cheap these days and there's really no excuse not to use a lossless format. You can set up iTunes to automatically transcode everything you sync to your mobile device to a smaller, lossy format while leaving the lossless master copy untouched at home.

The one thing you probably want to avoid is regretting your choice and ripping your collection again because you opted for the lesser format on the first try.

[yeahdef]

Fair reasoning from the archival master standpoint. I share a lot of what I rip with other DJ friends. If I sent them a FLAC or ALAC file, they would respond "what the hell is this? how do i listen to this?". mp3 is ubiquitous and 320 kbps does the trick for me. I hope I don't feel that sting of regret you mention, but my gut feeling is that I will not. I still have the records themselves on the shelf which should last longer than the harddrives :)

[thirdsun]

I highly doubt that any of your friends use a player that can't play FLAC or ALAC - any decent player does these days.

And if you really need the occassional lossy copy it's trivial to quickly create one with XLD or similar tools.

I'm sorry if I sound more upset by this than I should be, but ripping an entire record collection is a time intensive task and you're cutting corners on an issue that doesn't save you any effort, but might actually cause more someday.

[ScottBurson]

When I ripped my LP collection I first saved each recording out as FLAC (16 bits @ 48kHz), then re-exported it as VBR MP3. Audacity (a Mac recording app) makes this easy. I keep the FLAC files on my home server for future use (or for when 1TB microSD cards become cheap :-).

[thirdsun]

While it's not cheap I recently got a 1TB external SSD ( http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/po... ) in order to be able to take my whole lossless collection with me if I need to (in addition to the NAS at home). Admittedly, music doesn't need an SSD drive but I won't buy any spinning drives these days. Plus, this thing is incredibly small, robust, bus-powered and very performant. Great product.

[lev99]

I agree. I own a lot of music (some legal digital downloads, some rips from CDs and vinyl) that isn't available for streaming on any platform. Apple Music is the best at allowing me to mix in my library with theirs.

Many people subscribe to Spotify even if they also subscribe to Prime because Spotify has more music. Apple Music is one step further.

Publishing to a streaming service isn't always a good deal for small acts. It's important for independent musicians that some music listeners are willing to buy directly from them to decrease their margin. In addition, even some larger bands, Tool being a prime example, are absent from streaming services. I'm concerned with how much power streaming services will have as they consume a lager and larger part of the music industry. It creates a new cultural gatekeeper, and the internet is best when is removes cultural gatekeeper.

[tomduncalf]

I really like this aspect of Apple Music, and I wish Spotify would do the same. I too have a lot of music which is not available in their catalogue, that I'd love to have available in the same cloud service that I use for the rest of my listening.

However, iTunes Match's file size/length limit (200mb/2 hours) means that I can't upload many of the DJ mixes I'd like to have in the cloud. That and the fact that I love Spotify's recommendations means that I end up using Spotify most of the time, but have all my mp3s uploaded to Google Play. Works OK, but I'd rather have them all in one place!

[ck425]

Didn't Apple have major issues with overwriting and syncing up imported music?

[josteink]

I've also had issues with Apple-products (iTunes) erasing the MP3-metadata for my entire collection in the past.

It had taken me ages to build up in the first place and fixing it afterwards was a painstaking manual labour which took weeks and weeks and weeks.

Needless to say, I won't allow another Apple music-product near any of my files ever again.

Edit: This thread brings back memories. I can't tell how many times iTunes have formatted or deleted all music on my iPods and iPhones over the years, forcing me to re-copy or re-sync everything. Again

I really, really, really won't let Apple touch my music-files ever. So much wasted time....

[yoz-y]

They had. There was a problem when Apple Music would try too aggressively to pull in songs from their library if it had the same name/artist. But this has been fixed some time ago (by doing fingerprinting properly)

[rxhernandez]

Google music has been the best for me:

- IT doesn't block it at work(it blocks spotify)

- I don't have to install anything

- I don't see ads on youtube

- it has all of my music that came from CDs backed up to it

- I regularly discover new music through their Radio feature so long as the artist/song isn't super popular

[Someone1234]

Google Music's multi-device support is terrible though.

"Playback Paused Because Your Account Is Being Used in Another Location"

I have a Google Music Family Plan ("up to 10 devices each"). But it simply doesn't work, I cannot even play both YouTube and Google Music on the same account, let alone playback on multiple devices.

We have a few Google Home Minis and a Google Home. They were initially all set up using the same Google Account (with the Google Music Family Plan), that meant music could only play on one device throughout the whole house and computers would be blocked if any Google Home started music playback.

The only workaround is to create a new Google Account per device, then hook it into your family group which will receive your family plan. I now have four additional completely useless Google Accounts just so I can play back music in different rooms or use YouTube and Google Music at the same time.

Netflix is the only service which gets multi-device right.

[dingaling]

> I now have four additional completely useless Google Accounts

I wouldn't call them useless. With Google's propensity for algorithmicaly-determined account suspension it's probably wise to have dedicated accounts for each combination of ( person / device ) * ( Google service ).

Certainly I would encourage anyone with a reliance on G-Mail to create separate accounts for other services.

[acct1771]

Does anyone know if this is against their ToS?

Not that I give a good goddamn, but, I just realized I'd always assumed it probably was, but have never bothered to check.

[jeffhuys]

Well, check it, then! You never bothered to check but you're already waiting for 7 hours now... ;p

[KirinDave]

I agree about this. I like Google Music and unlike Apple Music it didn't and doesn't want to delete all my music then shrug and say it's my fault for not buying from Apple, but... I can't even use youtube while my 3 year old daughter tries to listen to her bath music.

It's pretty ridiculous.

[crdb]

This happened with MP3s?

It happened to me with several hundred PDFs of sheet music from IMSLP that I was storing on iBooks. I couldn't work out where they had gone or why they were wiped. I switched to GoodReader and painstakingly had to rebuild the entire collection.

[KirinDave]

It happens with all forms of stored media.

Apple is not just an expensive cloud service provider, they're an untrustworthy one.

These problems have been going of for years. Apple just doesn't invest enough to fix the problem.

[myrandomcomment]

If your job blocks Spotify and you are not in a secure area (government) you might want to find a better place to work. It just seems wrong in today’s world.

[rxhernandez]

I'm allowed to work from home >90% of the time and am paid well enough to work on state of the art biomed research; I'm not switching just because of a nuisance like IT.

[acct1771]

> I'm allowed to work from home >90%

You had us sold here.

[jacquesm]

Playing music at work comes with some pretty weird legal implications so I can totally see why some companies would block online music services so they don't accidentally crate public performances of copyrighted works.

[avianlyric]

They would have to try pretty hard to create a public performance in a workplace. Public performances need to be accessible to the public without any sort of signup or invite, and just the act of being an employee means you have an invite/signup.

[jacquesm]

Well you'd be surprised. Where I live we have this semi governmental entity that collects fees for music played in the workplace and they will happily use a set of speakers connected to a computer as proof that music has been performed publicly. It's totally nuts but they have a lot of power here.

https://www.bumastemra.nl/faq/hoe-betalen/ (Dutch)

[cageface]

Playing in a browser is unfortunately a non-starter for me. It burns way more CPU than a native player, doesn't integrate well with the MBP media controls, and can't download songs locally for listening when I'm on a bad network connection. Spotify is still my first choice but I do really miss being able to upload my own music for things that aren't in their catalog.

I don't use Apple music because I'm not willing to commit to a single-platform service.

[kalleboo]

> I don't use Apple music because I'm not willing to commit to a single-platform service

What do you mean by "single-platform service"? Apple Music is available for Windows (via iTunes) and Android (via a dedicated app)

[KozmoNau7]

Where's the Linux player? Spotify has one.

[cageface]

iTunes on Windows is garbage and the Android version of Apple Music is buggy as hell.

[dawnerd]

To be fair it’s also buggy as hell on iOS and Mac.

[IBM]

The Android app has 3.5 stars. It must not be buggy for most people.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.andr...

[thirtyseven]

3.5 is a bad rating for an Android app. Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Netflix and even the IRS app all have > 4.0 scores.

[wolco]

Those are weak numbers. The majority selected 5 but the recent comments are very low which usually means changes that made the product worse. The second most popular entry is 1.

[fourthark]

That's typically a bad rating online.

https://xkcd.com/1098/

[dangoor]

The MBP media controls part of your concerns can be solved by Radiant Player: http://radiant-player.github.io/radiant-player-mac/

Your other concerns aren't made any better though.

[bitmapbrother]

Google Play Music also allows you to upload your own music:

>You can add up to 50,000 songs to Google Play Music from your personal music collection using Google Play Music for Chrome or Music Manager (up to 300MB per song). Once you've added your music, you can listen to it through the Google Play Music app and on your computer.

[joecool1029]

I've used this for years but moving away to use Plex as Google never seems to have figured out reliable caching.

Syncing to device offline is fine but Google music often seems to crap out streaming between songs on Android and iOS and I'm stuck skipping tracks or having to restart playing.

Never had issues with Spotify, plex, tidal, or Pandora in this regard.

[animex]

Man, I miss Songza. While some of it seems absorbed, it just doesn't seem as UX/UI elegant as it was.

[rock_hard]

It sure feels like a regression not to have it.

The surving players in the market are uninspired in comparison :(

[askafriend]

IT blocks Spotify? That's just bizarre. I would personally quit working at any place that tried to infantilize employees by blocking sites like that.

[Trav5]

My guess would be that IT would block streaming to reduce load and/or internet connection cost. Especially if you have a lot of people in the building.

[gurkendoktor]

A quick google search says that Spotify is using 144 MB/h for high-quality streaming[1] (premium only), so that's roughly 1 GB per person per working day. That's quite a bit - without Spotify, I burn through roughly 500 MB per day when working.

[1] https://thomas.vanhoutte.be/miniblog/spotify-data-consumptio...

[mikehines]

I was at first skeptical but Google Music was better than I expected that it was responsive and helped me discover new music. Apple Music however...

[jxn]

Further, it works really well with "Assistant" / Home. "Play that song that goes ... " "Go back 10 seconds" "Pause" "Resume" "Listen to song X on all speakers" "Play Journey song from the Tron Soundtrack" all work well... but... they've got no damned API, so that sucks.

[KozmoNau7]

Google Play Music's catalogue is absolutely terrible. They cram together artists with similar names, put wrong artist pictures on artist pages, and there is absolutely no way to get them to fix it. I have submitted a large number of support requests and error reports for mislabeled content, and exactly none of it has been fixed.

In comparison, Spotify usually fixes reported content errors within a week or two, and they're started a thing called Line-In, where users can directly submit edits to content information. The edits are obviously still vetted, but it speeds up the process significantly.

[peterburkimsher]

Music is blocked at work? That concept seems so strange to me.

I use iTunes 10.6.3, and sync using USB to an iPod.

Yes, it uses a lot of disk space. But no network admin can take it away from me. I don't get adverts.

Discovering new music is more challenging, but I've found that talking to friends, or seeing what bands they Like on Facebook is more efficient at finding music I really enjoy instead of trusting some algorithm.

[rmwaite]

Apple Music also supports adding your own ripped CDs.

[jagger27]

As does Google Play.

[thisisit]

So you are working with a bank? Those are the places which mostly block these kind of apps. If you are then it is a matter of time before they are on to Google music and blocking it too.

[rxhernandez]

No I'm in the biomed industry. I've heard of several other major tech companies doing this as well. I've been doing this for 4 years while spotify has been blocked for 4 years. I doubt IT at my company will look into finding a way to block google anytime soon.

[n1000]

On T-mobile in the US, spotify streaming doesn’t count against mobile data quota ;)

[dingaling]

But if a fixed-line provider did that it would be considered a violation of network neutrality and the pitchforks come out.

How can a future challenger to Spotify compete in such am environment? etc

[millstone]

Well there's 45 services that already do, and it doesn't seem particularly hard to get on that list:

https://www.t-mobile.com/offer/music-freedom-list.html

[scarface74]

Easy. Ask T-mobile to be included. It's free for the provider and from everything I know, relatively easy for a provider of legal video or audio content.

[cyxxon]

In Germany, It's the other way around - I'd love to continue using Google Play Music, but Spotify is included in the T-Mobile zero-rating, and GPM is not... :/

[dawnerd]

Pretty sure that’s not a thing anymore if you’re on their newer plans.

[wyclif]

Really? Where do their policies spell this out?

[dawnerd]

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-10969

Note that their new one plans are excluded because one plans are already "unlimited".

https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-24291

Also states this.

[TheArcane]

> it blocks spotify

I can't think of a reason justifying this.

[tjr225]

I feel like the only person on the planet who finds spotify annoying and its library shallow. I really am not trying to sound pretentious.

Full disclosure I say this as someone who doesn't pay for their service, so I don't know how it is if you do, but if you shuffle play an artist- it will automatically play suggested songs. This makes 0 sense to me. I specifically wanted to listen to that artist and if I wanted suggestions why wouldn't it simply have an additional button for suggestion songs in addition to shuffling songs by the artist?

[electricslpnsld]

> I feel like the only person on the planet who finds spotify annoying and its library shallow.

I've run into this as well, Apple Music seems to have much wider coverage than Spotify, even when it comes to fairly mainstream 'indie' labels. Both services have big holes in their catalogs, though, and sometimes when deep diving into particular artists or labels, I find YouTube more likely to have rarer albums and such (usually recorded from vinyl by some kind soul).

[adamrt]

It makes sense. You don’t pay and it acts like a radio station (suggesting songs). You do pay and it’s like a music library (play what you want).

[tjr225]

I find their unpaid for application annoying, then(yes I know that's the point).

[philtar]

That's only in the free accounts.

[yash1th]

One thing that made me choose apple music over spotify is the indian music library. It’s way more better in Apple music

[malshe]

Exactly my reason. Spotify has such a limited collection of Indian music and within that regional music that there is no way I will ever pay for it. In contrast Apple Music has a wide selection.

[maxaf]

This is why I normally stay away from Apple services. My household runs on an eclectic mix of Android and Apple devices, and this is exactly how we like it. Google seems to have embraced the presence of Apple devices in its ecosystem, so why not the other way around?

[dragonwriter]

> Google seems to have embraced the presence of Apple devices in its ecosystem, so why not the other way around?

Google is an online services company with incidental hardware, Apple Music is a hardware company with incidental online services. Google's primary concern with it's hardware is driving online services. Apple's primary concern with online services is driving it's hardware ecosystem. So, sure, Google has no problem embracing other hardware platforms for it's online services, but Apple has a lot less interest in that.

[comex]

Apple Music has an Android app.

[toomuchtodo]

> Google seems to have embraced the presence of Apple devices in its ecosystem, so why not the other way around?

Google must, Apple is not under the same pressure to reciprocate.

[abritinthebay]

It’s really interesting you say that to me because one of the reasons I loathed Spotify (aside from its awful UI) is that music discovery was so achingly bad.

IMO - Pandora > Apple Music > Spotify for discovery at least.

Then again I like that Apple Music throws me a curveball occasionally, it’s usually something I wouldn’t expect but quite like.

Which, to me, is the point. YMMV ofc.

[KozmoNau7]

I've found Spotify to be vastly superior for discovery, in the genres I listen to (metal and hard rock, mostly).

[abritinthebay]

Could be they are better at different genres. Would not be shocking.

[aantix]

I think you’re missing out by not using YouTube Red. You can download _any_ video. Lecture. Music. Whatever.

And the app plays in the background on your phone. Working out, whatever, you have any video/music production at your disposal.

[throwa_way_]

You can also use youtube-dl to download videos, and NewPipe to play videos in the background. Both are free tools.

[sanjeetsuhag]

I live on a university campus, with excellent internet (and LTE on my phone). Downloading videos is not something I need at the moment.

The background playback feature is the only thing I would like, but I think it is a really shitty decision to have such a fundamental feature as a paid one, therefore, I won't pay for it.