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Apple Focused on Improving Apple Music Ahead of Android Launch
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I tried to like Apple Music. I was excited for it, and I've given it a chance for the past 8 weeks, but it's too buggy and the interface is plain bad, so I will be going back to Spotify.
There are too many gripes with AM, at least for my experience (on iOS):
* "Matched" song is not always the version I have in my library. Sometimes it'll play a remix (even though the original song is also on AM?), sometimes it will play the studio version when it's a live album (and vice-versa), sometimes it plays the "single" version which is very annoying when I'm listening to a gapless album, sometimes it will play the clean version... the list goes on. There should be some sort of control over which version you want - I know Spotify will at least tell you accurately which album it's playing the song from, and you can just select the album you want to hear and it will play gaplessly.
* Songs skip half a second or so very frequently even when I have full LTE signal. Some days it's worse than others, but it happens frequently enough.
* If I have poor signal, it won't play saved songs. I either have to move towards better reception, or put my phone in airplane mode. Why would it need a good signal to play saved songs?
* Saving playlists offline does nothing. Somebody mentioned you have to actually save *every* song in the playlist. Really?
* The fact that AM is part of iOS and not its own app means the app only gets updated every so often. This will make getting rid of bugs and adding new features a very slow process.
* Playing a new song can take anywhere from 2 to 10 seconds, even with good signal. Spotify takes a second at most in the same conditions.
* The numerous interface complaints that have been raised before. Can't go to an artist or album page from the Now Playing screen is my main beef with it.
* Playlist sharing. Come on.
If it's any consolation for anyone who might care, what I do like about AM is integration with my iTunes library on my PC and some of the playlists (no, not the "Introduction to [artist I already have in my library]" or their "Deep Cuts"). I don't use Siri or Beats 1 so I don't care about those.
I'm just waiting until the end of the month to go back to Spotify because I'm a stingy fella.
There are too many gripes with AM, at least for my experience (on iOS):
* "Matched" song is not always the version I have in my library. Sometimes it'll play a remix (even though the original song is also on AM?), sometimes it will play the studio version when it's a live album (and vice-versa), sometimes it plays the "single" version which is very annoying when I'm listening to a gapless album, sometimes it will play the clean version... the list goes on. There should be some sort of control over which version you want - I know Spotify will at least tell you accurately which album it's playing the song from, and you can just select the album you want to hear and it will play gaplessly.
* Songs skip half a second or so very frequently even when I have full LTE signal. Some days it's worse than others, but it happens frequently enough.
* If I have poor signal, it won't play saved songs. I either have to move towards better reception, or put my phone in airplane mode. Why would it need a good signal to play saved songs?
* Saving playlists offline does nothing. Somebody mentioned you have to actually save *every* song in the playlist. Really?
* The fact that AM is part of iOS and not its own app means the app only gets updated every so often. This will make getting rid of bugs and adding new features a very slow process.
* Playing a new song can take anywhere from 2 to 10 seconds, even with good signal. Spotify takes a second at most in the same conditions.
* The numerous interface complaints that have been raised before. Can't go to an artist or album page from the Now Playing screen is my main beef with it.
* Playlist sharing. Come on.
If it's any consolation for anyone who might care, what I do like about AM is integration with my iTunes library on my PC and some of the playlists (no, not the "Introduction to [artist I already have in my library]" or their "Deep Cuts"). I don't use Siri or Beats 1 so I don't care about those.
I'm just waiting until the end of the month to go back to Spotify because I'm a stingy fella.
No crime. Copying is not illegal no matter which way the corrupt industry try to reinterpret Copyright.
Apple can't be good at everything, no company can. Yet where Apple has it made is a vast number will buy no matter how buggy the product is. Knowing this Apple ships it, the apologists come out en mass defending Apple and the money fills Apples coffers. Now that's brilliant influence and marketing.
My primary means of listening to music is through a traditional OS. I still have a 160 GB iPod Classic and have two iPhones, but overall, my experience has shifted toward a laptop or desktop. While I did not have much to complain about on the iOS Music App, utilizing Apple Music through iTunes has been nothing short of horrendous.
Granted, the user experience for iTunes has gone down the toilet when Apple first thought it was a good idea to make its new browsing schemes an incomprehensible maze instead of the older library system. That being said, what Apple Music did was slap even more confusion and bloat in the process.
Over the last couple of years, iTunes seemed like an inconvenience that pushed me to use Foobar and Spotify, but it wasn't an abomination. When moving from either program to iTunes with Apple Music, finding and listening to music was no longer fun. I started to dread the process of trying to find music on Apple Music (the vanilla iTunes experience had also worsened by making searching even more irritating than before). It was so much more difficult to locate artists, songs, and add them to a playlist. The amount of time and effort it took blew my mind. Every little step they forced me to go through not only complicated matters, each one's analogue that may have been in Spotify actually took far longer to accomplish than Spotify. Was this really an Apple software program I was using? I seem to recall them being sticklers for simplicity and quickness.
When I went back on Spotify after giving Apple Music a couple of weeks of undivided attention, I actually enjoyed listening and searching out music again.
The amount of work Apple has to do on improving Apple Music is nothing short of tearing down the entire structure and starting over again. I will not step back in unless they do so. It has also made using vanilla iTunes way too frustrating to bother with anymore as well. It will sit there, but will not be used.
Granted, the user experience for iTunes has gone down the toilet when Apple first thought it was a good idea to make its new browsing schemes an incomprehensible maze instead of the older library system. That being said, what Apple Music did was slap even more confusion and bloat in the process.
Over the last couple of years, iTunes seemed like an inconvenience that pushed me to use Foobar and Spotify, but it wasn't an abomination. When moving from either program to iTunes with Apple Music, finding and listening to music was no longer fun. I started to dread the process of trying to find music on Apple Music (the vanilla iTunes experience had also worsened by making searching even more irritating than before). It was so much more difficult to locate artists, songs, and add them to a playlist. The amount of time and effort it took blew my mind. Every little step they forced me to go through not only complicated matters, each one's analogue that may have been in Spotify actually took far longer to accomplish than Spotify. Was this really an Apple software program I was using? I seem to recall them being sticklers for simplicity and quickness.
When I went back on Spotify after giving Apple Music a couple of weeks of undivided attention, I actually enjoyed listening and searching out music again.
The amount of work Apple has to do on improving Apple Music is nothing short of tearing down the entire structure and starting over again. I will not step back in unless they do so. It has also made using vanilla iTunes way too frustrating to bother with anymore as well. It will sit there, but will not be used.
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Keep telling yourself that, criminal. At least have enough honor to admit you are getting the benefit of someone else's talent without compensating them for it. You are stealing entertainment. Sorry, but it really annoys me that some people think they can treat artists as slave labor.
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How else would you interpret what he said? And especially what he said next?
Actually copying records *you own* has been made illegal in the UK recently, meaning that you commit a crime when you rip your CD to iTunes. In most other countries, as far as I know, the acceptable use case is copying records from/for friends and family members. (Torrent websites are not your friends and family members.)
At the time you called him a criminal, all he had said was that he won't pay for music. So he may well have meant that all he was gonna do was listen to the radio.. You had no way of knowing what he was gonna say next.. You owe him an apology..
Nope. I'm not naive enough to think that he was just listening to the radio. When people start nitpicking how they think copyright works, they are most likely justifying pirating.
The industry is so fearful of torrents because its a free de-centralised distribution system, which goes against the current very expensive distribution system where everyone down the line profiteers. View:
"To read the true history of copyright is to understand just how completely this reaction plays into the industry's hands. The record companies don't really care whether they win or lose these lawsuits. In the long run, they don't even expect to eliminate file sharing. What they're fighting for is much bigger. They're fighting to maintain a state of mind, an attitude toward creative work that says someone ought to own products of the mind, and control who can copy them. And by positioning the issue as a contest between the Beleaguered Artist, who supposedly needs copyright to pay the rent, and The Unthinking Masses, who would rather copy a song or a story off the Internet than pay a fair price, the industry has been astonishingly successful.
They have managed to substitute the loaded terms "piracy" and "theft" for the more accurate "copying" — as if there were no difference between stealing your bicycle (now you have no bicycle) and copying your song (now we both have it). Most importantly, industry propaganda has made it a commonplace belief that copyright is how most creators earn a living — that without copyright, the engines of intellectual production would grind to a halt, and artists would have neither means nor motivation to produce new works."
Most of these new laws are illegal, and I am not in the UK. Suffice to say it's not illegal to copy music. Read: http://quesitoncopyright.org/promise - below is an excerpt:-
"To read the true history of copyright is to understand just how completely this reaction plays into the industry's hands. The record companies don't really care whether they win or lose these lawsuits. In the long run, they don't even expect to eliminate file sharing. What they're fighting for is much bigger. They're fighting to maintain a state of mind, an attitude toward creative work that says someone ought to own products of the mind, and control who can copy them.
And by positioning the issue as a contest between the Beleaguered Artist, who supposedly needs copyright to pay the rent, and The Unthinking Masses, who would rather copy a song or a story off the Internet than pay a fair price, the industry has been astonishingly successful. They have managed to substitute the loaded terms "piracy" and "theft" for the more accurate "copying" — as if there were no difference between stealing your bicycle (now you have no bicycle) and copying your song (now we both have it). Most importantly, industry propaganda has made it a commonplace belief that copyright is how most creators earn a living — that without copyright, the engines of intellectual production would grind to a halt, and artists would have neither means nor motivation to produce new works."
Apple Music on iOS is in need of some serious work. It's littered with bugs already mentioned here and I could add UI issues to these.
So you've extrapolated "most likely" in to definitely and labelled him a criminal.. Jeez, ever considered a career in law enforcement.. If so, DONT!!!
What you people never understand is that when you steal art, it's not the "physical" thing you are stealing or not stealing. That's why your analogy with the bike doesn't apply. The product of an artist's labor is not 1s and 0s. Artists, especially musicians and filmmakers, are selling experiences, emotions. The result of their labor makes you FEEL a certain way while experiencing it and that's why you want to have it. You are also stealing CONVENIENCE and ACCESS. You could legitimately listen to the radio all day long for free but your favorite songs don't come on whenever YOU want them to. So you are supposed to pay for the privilege of playing them whenever you want, as often as you want. Artists play their songs on the radio for free to encourage people to PAY later to go to their concert or buy the ability to play the songs any time they want. The file or cd is merely the means to get that access. It's not the THING you are buying or stealing. Your easy access to steal experiences is solely the work of unscrupulous individuals who are making money off the backs of legitimate workers. And that money they make often gets used to fund other illegal activities.
You will never EVER convince me that what you are doing is anything other than telling the world that you don't respect what artists do but you want what they do so badly that you will throw away any honor and scruples you have to get it. And spare me the BS that you are making some honorable statement in what you are doing. Pirates are simply cheap ****s who want entertainment without paying for it. How cheap do you have to be to steal a song that only costs $1.99 or less? I used to pay that much for a 45 back in the '70s for crying out loud.
BTW- That question copyright link is full of crap. Do you really think it would be ok with musicians to only get paid if someone voluntarily donates money to them? Is that how YOU would want to get paid for whatever it is YOU do? What do you think pays for advertising, promotion, putting on concerts, etc. etc.? If an artist wants to give away their labor, they can. Miley Cyrus just gave away her newest album. That's fine for her. She's rich and can afford it. But that should be the artist's choice, not yours.
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And I was right. You know, when a cop sees someone sneaking around your house at 3am with a flashlight and a crowbar, maybe they should let them because it wouldn't be right to assume they are doing anything wrong, huh?
That is a fantastic post and as an unsigned musician I would thumb up ten times if I could.
You deserve to get paid for your hard work just like everyone else. And if you ever choose to give it away, that should be your choice and yours alone. Knowing artists in the music and movie industry and being an artist myself, I know we often do but it's only ok when it's our decision. Good luck with your career!
You are simply repeating the "industry" lies and its all b.s. The "industry" switched the terms for a start. The question copyright site tells you the origins of copyright and how it was originally designed for sharing without restrictions for over 300 years, but the Stationers of England decided to be agents to control creative works by others for their profit. Paying for music means I agree with the corrupt system and partaking in their corruption and deceit, and prolong the system which should be dismantled. I will not partake in corruption, and copying is still legal despite efforts to pass illegal laws. Did you read -
"To read the true history of copyright is to understand just how completely this reaction plays into the industry's hands. The record companies don't really care whether they win or lose these lawsuits. In the long run, they don't even expect to eliminate file sharing. What they're fighting for is much bigger. They're fighting to maintain a state of mind, an attitude toward creative work that says someone ought to own products of the mind, and control who can copy them. And by positioning the issue as a contest between the Beleaguered Artist, who supposedly needs copyright to pay the rent, and The Unthinking Masses, who would rather copy a song or a story off the Internet than pay a fair price, the industry has been astonishingly successful. They have managed to substitute the loaded terms "piracy" and "theft" for the more accurate "copying" — as if there were no difference between stealing your bicycle (now you have no bicycle) and copying your song (now we both have it). Most importantly, industry propaganda has made it a commonplace belief that copyright is how most creators earn a living — that without copyright, the engines of intellectual production would grind to a halt, and artists would have neither means nor motivation to produce new works."
Plus
"Yet a close look at history shows that copyright has never been a major factor in allowing creativity to flourish. Copyright is an outgrowth of the privatization of government censorship in sixteenth-century England. There was no uprising of authors suddenly demanding the right to prevent other people from copying their works; far from viewing copying as theft, authors generally regarded it as flattery. The bulk of creative work has always depended, then and now, on a diversity of funding sources: commissions, teaching jobs, grants or stipends, patronage, etc. The introduction of copyright did not change this situation. What it did was allow a particular business model — mass pressings with centralized distribution — to make a few lucky works available to a wider audience, at considerable profit to the distributors.
The arrival of the Internet, with its instantaneous, costless sharing, has made that business model obsolete — not just obsolete, but an obstacle to the very benefits copyright was alleged to bring society in the first place. Prohibiting people from freely sharing information serves no one's interests but the publishers'. Although the industry would like us to believe that prohibiting sharing is somehow related to enabling artists to make a living, their claim does not stand up to even mild scrutiny. For the vast majority of artists, copyright brings no economic benefits. True, there are a few stars — some quite talented — whose works are backed by the industry; these receive the lion's share of distribution investment, and generate a correspondingly greater profit, which is shared with the artist on better than usual terms because the artist's negotiating position is stronger. Not coincidentally, these stars are who the industry always holds up as examples of the benefits of copyright."
This means the whole industry currently is fraudulent and criminal, and all these people, excluding the artists should be in prison and pay restitution.
Bottom line is, I don't know why you think you are entitled to enjoy someone's hard work without giving them something in return. That's all. People pay you for what you do for a living, right? Is entertainment a charity? Are artists just trained monkeys for your pleasure? I really think it's just sour grapes that people with an artistic gift sometimes get paid more than you do. You hate that so you steal what they do to express your rage. To prove to yourself that you are superior and can get one over on them. That's why you post on threads like this bragging that you are "sticking it to the man", like it's something to be proud of or you are oh so much more clever than the rest of us who pay. It's sad.
Your detailed post summed it up nicely for me as well.
I tried to overlook what bugs and annoyances are there and continue to use Apple Music. But like so much of their software lately, there are just too many bugs. The major reason I find it a deal breaker is that I know what Apple is capable of. This is not their best work, or even close for that matter.
If they were a start up, or a lesser company than they are, I might be patient. But knowing their pattern I do believe they'll eventually get it right, but it'll take a very long time as they juggle many projects.
While Apple plods along, I'm going back to Spotify, a service I was enjoying and had no major complaints about.
Paying for music also means you give a crap about artists. Obviously you don't.