Eight Months Later, Apple Music Connect Still 'Fails Miserably' at Social

[MacRumors]

Eight months after posting a detailed summary of the "clunky" behind-the-scenes process musicians have to go through when using Apple Music Connect, Dave Wiskus decided to revisit his stance on the platform to see if Apple had made any notable changes to its grasps at socially connecting artists and fans. Wiskus -- an app developer and lead singer for the band Airplane Mode -- admitted in the blog post that he feels less "connected" to the musical world and thinks the actual social aspects of the experience have failed "miserably."

Similar to his post from July, Wiskus expounded on Connect's basic inability to function as a normal social network: it lacks a follow button on artist pages, a metric for how many followers a band has, and individual profile pages for a more engaged community, among other things.

One of his most interesting points detailed a blunder with Connect's support, centering around the fact that an artist with a similar name managed to change the profile picture on Airplane Mode's page. After weeks of back-and-forth with Apple Music Connect support, eventually the band discovered that Apple's solution was creating an entirely new profile for Airplane Mode and abandoning the one with the wrong picture.

Rather than swap out images, the Connect support folks created a new profile for us with the correct photo (which we still can't change, by the way). The frustration would end here if not for one little side-effect: we lost all of our posts and all of our followers.

Worse yet, those posts and followers are still attached to a now-unmanned "Airplane Mode" profile, so not only do we not have any way of telling our fans to follow the new profile, they have no way of even knowing that we relocated. Anyone who was following us can now assume that we've just stopped making new things. How many followers did we lose? No idea. How do we get them back? We can't.

Wiskus notes that, despite all of his frustrations, "Apple is in a unique position to unify and democratize the music business" thanks to Connect's ability to integrate music sharing with social interaction, if the company decided to commit to bolstering both sides of that equation, that is. As it currently stands the artist isn't sure who Connect is for, and doesn't see much of a future for the platform if Apple continues to do nothing. "Seven months later--from a company the size of Apple--this isn't just unacceptable, it's pathetic."

Read all of the thoughts that Wiskus has on Apple Music Connect on his blog Better Elevation.

Article Link: Eight Months Later, Apple Music Connect Still 'Fails Miserably' at Social

 

[ButteryScrollin]

I know many will dismiss Connect, but it's useful for following the Apple genres as they post new songs and playlist.
It's terribly broken but it's not useless.

 

[Chuck Kostalnick]

It's a great point about Connect. As much as I love Zane Lowe, whenever he says something is on Connect I genuinely try and find it. It either a) doesn't exist or I can't find it b) is cached and doesn't load anything newer than the last time I opened iTunes.

 

[brunosh]

Well, hello Ping! It was obvious since the beginning.

 

[gramtrax]

Welcome to the new Apple. Too big to fail?

 

[kevinkyoo]

I'll say this again - create SEPARATE apps. Having all of these things bunched up in ONE iTunes is a disaster. Having one for your library, one for Apple Music, and one to purchase songs/videos/movies would be absolutely perfect. More direct in the UI, easier bug fixes rather than having to deal with all of these three in one currently, and a more satisfied customer base.

 

[KALLT]

I know many will dismiss Connect, but it's useful for following the Apple genres as they post new songs and playlist.
It's terribly broken but it's not useless.

They could bring that under a separate section though. Why not just publish these as separate public playlists, for instance? That is what the New section is for.

I have disabled Connect immediately. Apple just sucks at these things and they do not even care. I believe that some executive had this lofty idea, but no one else. Just like Ping, the feature will eventually just disappear instead of being fixed.

 

[adamneer]

Even if it was a "success", or at least didn't have such poor customer service, at best, socially connecting musicians with their fans would just be another avenue for advertising. As if somehow, the artists that self-promote on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter would decide that with Apple Music, they actually want to interact with their fans on some meaningful level.

 

[oopsroger]

I swear to God. Since subscribing at the very beginning, I have NEVER used the feature.

 

[FSMBP]

I don't know if 'social' is just where it fails miserably. When you have Apple fanboys like Jim D./Gruber hating on Apple Music, you know it's bad.

All Apple needed to do is: scan your existing downloaded music library (NOT REPLACE anything), have a reference in the Cloud. And mix that with the streaming music. I don't get how the world's richest tech company (which spent $3 billion on 'Beats') failed on that.

 

[teslo]

disclaimer - i haven't tried apple music. but it is - as it stands - simply intrusive. just give me an iTunes without connectivity and cloud options. i'm a music purist with only 1 goal: listen to my own music in an clean organized way. not a splintered disorganized mess that tells me i have different music depending on whether i'm on wifi or cellular.

between this and photo stream/camera roll/my photos/and whatever Photos is trying to do, i consider much of apple's Cloud/Internet 'solutions' to organizing plain and simple media a pretty big bloated 'miss'

 

[FieldingMellish]

Steve would never have released such problematic software. Tim?

 

[Kissaragi]

ping all over again?

 

[randymac09]

I use connect to find Beats1 shows of people I like to listen to. As I scroll through I sometimes listen to things that other artists post and try and discover new music. I think it's a pretty neat feature. Is it a killer feature? Not at all. But it is cool to see artists put up random mixes and pictures of their travels.

Hopefully Apple improves upon the idea and makes it easier for the musicians. If Connect were a standalone app, I would probably download it, and I can see this happening. This would allow them to expand the idea and make it a little more user friendly I think. Time will tell.

 

[HaukeHauke]

You can turn off Apple Music Connect in Restrictions. Then you get a "Playlists" Button instead

 

[DakotaGuy]

Maybe if they had called it Ping 2.0 it would have been successful?

 

[djcerla]

Removed the Connect tab altogether, and not looking back.

However, many companies leave products or features lagging only to cancel them eventually, and nobody's calling the practice "Pathetic" when it's Facebook or (typically) Google doing that. It's good old throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

 

[Fuchal]

I'll say this again - create SEPARATE apps. Having all of these things bunched up in ONE iTunes is a disaster. Having one for your library, one for Apple Music, and one to purchase songs/videos/movies would be absolutely perfect. More direct in the UI, easier bug fixes rather than having to deal with all of these three in one currently, and a more satisfied customer base.

Meh, I want my Apple Music music and my local music in one Library, not two. Otherwise, I'd use Spotify.

 

[Simplicated]

Welcome to the new Apple. Too big to fail?

Ever heard of iTunes Ping?

 

[charlieroberts]

Its a shame Apple has made the same mistake as with Ping. How can such a great company suck so badly at services.

Welcome to the new Apple. Too big to fail?

Do you even know what that means?
Never mind, if you did you would not be using it.

 

[kevinkyoo]

Meh, I want my Apple Music music and my local music in one Library, not two. Otherwise, I'd use Spotify.

Eh, you have a point. Perhaps have an option then where if you're subscribed to Apple Music, you can combine your local music? I'm not subscribed to it, so it's frustrating having an icon taken away by the Radio, and having to stare at an Apple Music ad (That may or may not disappear - and if it does, it takes at least 10 seconds to do so)

 

[gugy]

Not sure it's only me but I do fail to recognize any real value on Apple Music. Not really willing to spend $15 for my family on this. I already have too many bills.

 

[kevinkyoo]

disclaimer - i haven't tried apple music. but it is - as it stands - simply intrusive. just give me an iTunes without connectivity and cloud options. i'm a music purist with only 1 goal: listen to my own music in an clean organized way. not a splintered disorganized mess that tells me i have different music depending on whether i'm on wifi or cellular.

between this and photo stream/camera roll/my photos/and whatever Photos is trying to do, i consider much of apple's Cloud/Internet 'solutions' to organizing plain and simple media a pretty big bloated 'miss'

People are yammering about the problems with iCloud, and I'm here with my DropBox happy as can be

 

[avanpelt]

Apple Support can't revert the profile picture back to the previous one and their only solution was for the band to abandon the page and start over from scratch?! Talk about customer unfriendly.

 

[2457282]

You can turn off Apple Music Connect in Restrictions. Then you get a "Playlists" Button instead

This was amazingly helpful. Thank you. Don't know why I was not aware of this, but as someone who refuses to pay $10 a month for streaming getting my playlist back is fantastic!