Apple Music Estimated to Have 8M Paying Subscribers, Predicted to Hit 20M by End of 2016

[iLunar]

I'm really enjoying Apple Music now that a lot of bugs have been ironed out. I like having access to a lot of bands I wouldn't have before; the recommendation engine is terrific; and it integrates well with my previous music files.

BUT they really need to fix the matching algorithm or enable a way for the user to upload mis-matched tracks. I have loads of live music that I've spent years tagging and curating, and Apple Music keeps matching live tracks with studio cuts. It's a major issue, and I have yet to find a decent work around.

 

[Tech198]

The only issues i would need to actually notice this for me to stop piching Apple music's music, would be :

(1. fix up libraries... while u can adjust title or other meta-data then upload, no one will do this for large libraries..
(2. prevent duplicate of songs from randomly disappearing from playlist (Apple music), and duplicates of songs..
(3. prevent album art from being replaced. (this is Apple music own catalog, they can get this right i would have thought)

Till these happen, Your mine Apple

 

[Waterndirt]

Will we ever be able to control Apple Music from our Apple Remote App on our iOS devices? We used to be able to control Radio, etc. and then select multiple Airplay receivers. While at home, I use my iMac to send music via Airplay to various locations throughout my house.

Sending music directly from my Apple Music iOS App only allows me to gain access to one Airplay location, unlike iTunes, I can send to multiple.

I don't get it!!! Come on Apple... Lets get this functionality back.

 

[Fortimir]

I use it and don't have any major problems. If you have CarPlay it's essential.

 

[phillipduran]

Is it still a ridiculously unfinished, buggy and incoherent application? I didn't pay for any service prior to my free trial but a month in I was a fully paid up Spotify subscriber, it was that bad. Would have been so much more ideal for me if Apple Music was the platform it promised to be.

It just didn't really work. As in, the buttons I pressed did nothing.

I can't understand how that app got released by Apple. When adding items to a playlist, there is no feedback. Nothing. You press the button to add a song to a play list and . . oops, I must have missed it. Press again. Man, missed it twice. Press again, then again. What the heck is wrong with my screen. Does the back button work, OK, that worked, hmm, must have been buggy, ok, back to pressing plus to add some more music to my play list, press add, what the heck is going on? Why aren't these buttons working. click accept. Look at my playlist. 5 copies of the song in my play list. -_-

Buttons that do nothing visible or audible when pressed. Why??? You don't know if you missed the button or if it performed the action you want. How did this get released like this.

I also just don't get that 2mm wide bar that shows your current playing music that you have to bullseye to open up your music player controls. Thats wonderful.

 

[friedmud]

It does work with the watch


It started a bit buggy. It's mostly ironed out. I have 17000 tracks successfully matched in iCloud music library. I no longer have the playlist issue I had when it started. It's hands down the best music subscription service on the market


Apple does release subscriber numbers in investor calls. 6.5 million as of the last quarterly call

It does and has worked with the watch for awhile. Make a song available offline, add it to a playlist, and sync that playlist to your watch. As I am a runner, it has been great for me. I've went from a phone in an armband with wired ear buds to only my watch and a pair of Bluetooth ear buds.

If you mean music that you've added from Apple Music, that's been available since day one. Just create a playlist in the Music app and then sync that playlist through the watch app under 'Music'. Once it's done, it'll be stored on your Watch without the need of your phone

Holy crap! How did I miss this? I don't think it worked right in the beginning, right?

Regardless, this is awesome. I'm off to try this now... and I'll use it during my workout later...

Spotify may have just lost a customer (unless they get their act together on the Watch before my trial runs out)...

Thanks for the replies!

 

[betabeta]

Never thought I would ever be willing to pay monthly for music. I pretty much have about 10,000 songs from 70's and 80's, complete collections from artist I like.

But here I am still paying after the free trial and just love the ability to ask Siri to play whatever I want. So much music I am finding from when I was younger bringing back good memories

Oh and I love Apples playlists.

Matching is horrible, I just saved my library and started from scratch, maybe they can fix it, or maybe I can eventually just upload my music keeping my painstakingly accurate meta data.


Would love to have an option to pay for the full year at say $99

 

[magicschoolbus]

i like apple music but i 100% can't stand the interface.. espically the desktop version

 

[jonnyb098]

Agree with the tapping but on Spotify the content is where I expect it to be as they use universal gestures and icons.

Apple Music is using a lot more of the more uncommon/non-natural gestures and taking the design chic to stupid (IMO) levels. Hiding the shuffle button for reasons of design dogma is not a good approach.

I dont see how they're hiding the shuffle button.....its right at the top of a playlist or on the now playing screen. And Apple music uses the standard swipe to go back gesture.....how is that not natural? Its in almost every iOS app. Example: In Apple Music if you drill down into a bunch of things, you can just tap whichever tab you're in at the bottom (for you , new, my music, etc) and go right back to the star screen of those tabs. No such thing exists in Spotify, you have to just go back, back, back, back, back......you get the point.

Also, I'll add that Siri indeed is a killer feature, especially for those of us who have hands free voice activation in our cars. Thats something that horribly lacking in Spotify.

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

love this app.. probably my favorite feature on the iphone right now.. im a big music head and used to spend so much money buying music on iTunes.. I have a hour or so commute to the city everyday and it's great to be able to have a unlimited amount of music on your phone. I can delete and new music as space fills up.. Apple music is really great. never really got into spotify but this apple music is pretty simple to use..

 

[BillyMatt87]

I just want a simple, elegant default music app for my own personal collection they way it used to be. How hard is that Apple?

 

[redmac]

If Apple paid people to sign up, MacForums would still be full of people bitching about it, that they are not being paid enough, or some song they want is available.... Bla bla bla....

They would be bitching about some song they hate that is available.

 

[bilibug]

...

BUT they really need to fix the matching algorithm or enable a way for the user to upload mis-matched tracks. I have loads of live music that I've spent years tagging and curating, and Apple Music keeps matching live tracks with studio cuts. It's a major issue, and I have yet to find a decent work around.

What they really need to do is make this optional, and off by default. I should be able to sync my personal music through iTunes, as I have done for years in the past, and add cloud based tunes to my library (with a download option) through Apple Music. I should have an option to use the cloud based versions of songs I own (to free up space on my devices), but not be forced to, especially if I know that the version I have will not be matched properly by the algorithm.

 

[redmac]

You do understand that Spotify is only $9.99 if you subscribe without going through the Appstore...right? That Appstore surcharge should be enough to make you sick.

Do you expect Apple to make an exception and not charge a company for using it's store, because it's a competitor? What kind of logic is behind this expectation?

 

[DrumApple]

For me it was just too difficult to navigate, the UI is bad. I much prefer Spotify, sure it's not perfect either but it's a hell of a lot easier to do what you want to do with minimal clicks/buttons and scrolling. The layout is much cleaner and straightforward. Also didn't care for the playlists, the "new" tab always felt static and dependent on what genre I want - Spotify is so much more dynamic and offers things up to me that I didn't even know I wanted to listen to. They should consider making an Apple Music standalone app, iTunes is crap.

**edit, here's a simple example: the new Star Wars movie comes out tonight/tomorrow. I open Spotify and right on the homepage is a special Best of Star Wars playlist. This makes me feel connected in real time, it ties into current events. It's awesome.

 

[neutralguy]

I actually joined and am now paying. I dumped Netfix, and applied that what I was paying for to Apple Music. Netflix, other than a few series has crap for movies online. I find the Music service a lot of fun. I use it every day, we were using Netflix maybe once a month.

Thanks for the weird comparison. That's like saying I stopped going to movies because movie tickets were 15$. Instead I could buy the soundtrack of music and listened to it. It's more fun!

 

[macintologist]

Well I'm not one of them. I don't pay for media.

 

[dk001]

Dear Apple:

You have all the content, hardware and great ideas you need for this to work.
Now just Kill iTunes (with fire, twice), then we all come back.
Sincerely
//Everyone

No we won't.
I stopped using iTunes for music. After Apple Music borked my music library on load and I found out that AM songs are DRM .... nope. They have far too much to fix.

 

[ipedro]

I like it. I don't worry about owning music. Every song that I can think of (and many that I cannot) is one Siri request away. I've discovered a ton of music this way and stopped worrying about organizing my library. It's even better now that it's on AppleTV.

I'd like to see it simplified a little more and iTunes replaced by Apple Music for Mac but it's well worth the $10/mo for me rather than spending more than that when I bought albums or refraining from buying music because I didn't think I should spend the money.

 

[johngordon]

If Apple makes it $4.99 a month, I'd jump right back to Apple music...

Is that because you think $9.99 is way too much to pay for access to pretty much any and all music?

Call me old fashioned, but $9.99 seems a complete bargain to me.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Apple pays artists even when the customer isn't paying Apple (3 month trial). Apple is being extremely generous.

Is it generosity or is it the only way they can get enough people to try it?

 

[ani4ani]

If it were really THAT bad, they wouldn't have so many subscribers thus far, would they? I for one user the service every day, and have had almost zero issues with it.

Apply that same argument to iTunes and nobody would be using that either, but they do!

 

[mikecorp]

I love it, my kids love it. easy to have music offline so i'm not bothered with any other downloading, When they will add movies?

 

[Precision Gem]

Thanks for the weird comparison. That's like saying I stopped going to movies because movie tickets were 15$. Instead I could buy the soundtrack of music and listened to it. It's more fun!

No, it's like saying: I was spending $15 per month on a form of entertainment, that I really wasn't getting that much value from. So I took that $15 and applied it to a different from of entertainment, that I am getting more value and use from. I don't think that is weird.

 

[chromite]

Yes, it is so silly to ask... Spotify has had this feature for years now. It isn't an issue whatsoever.

Spotify allows someone to download Spotify's entire music catalog for offline listening? Well crap, sign me up, I just need to buy 2000 one TB hard drives and I'm good to go.