Apple Music: Our Complete Guide

[H3LL5P4WN]

This is pretty comprehensive, however I do have one question that wasn't covered.

On a family share plan, where the child account was already an existing, separate, unique Apple ID with it's own purchased content and own music ripped and imported into iTunes...

...how does that user get access to their own music?

Now, I personally have iTunes Match/iTunes in the Cloud still, and my end works fine. My girlfriend is the 'child' account. We have Family Sharing on. Her phone and photos are backing up into my iCloud Storage. She can access Apple Music.

However she doesn't see any of the stuff she had pre-Apple Music on her phone, and her Windows desktop isn't automatically downloading anything she adds from Apple Music on her phone.

 

[barkomatic]

Prior to subscribing to Apple Music, I built these massive playlists with owned music. When I subscribed to the service, I added new playlists that only had Apple Music songs that I didn't own. When I let my subscription lapse, not only wouldn't the Apple music songs not play--which I completely expected they wouldn't--but *all* my playlists on my iOS devices were deleted upon opening the app regardless of whether they were built with my owned music.

Luckily, older versions still existed on my computer so it wasn't a complete disaster but I don't like the idea of Apple taking ownership of playlist that took years to build and have evolved. This was supposed to supplement what I had--not replace it. When I subscribe to a new music service it will not be Apple Music as I clearly need a service that has a wall between what I own and what I rent.

 

[SteveW928]

I still have iTunes Match and it’s a frequently flip-flopping love-hate experience. And I think for me, Apple Music would be a more expensive way to massively boost the hate-side.

And yet there are a few things that together, if they fixed, could possibly make me subscribe quite quickly.

- Lossless audio.
- Easy ability to have the option to force-upload (instead of incorrectly matching because it thinks it knows better).
- A tag or something that is always respected that just signals ‘leave the artwork and meta-data alone, hands off!’
- Put headphone jack sockets back in the iPhone and iPad Pro and admit it was a stupid thing to ever remove them.

If they did all that I’d seriously consider it. As it is, I’m constantly teetering on the edge of rage-quitting Match, never mind ever subscribing to Apple Music.

But good luck to anyone who uses it and likes it.

Yeah, we subscribed to Apple Music, hoping it would take care of the problem of keeping everything in sync and allowing downloads of our library... the way it worked before Apple stripped that feature from iTunes (ie: family sharing) in order to push AM.

Well, it doesn't work as well. The 'Match' or even with AM, only matches things AM actually has in their library, so if you have other music in iTunes or tracks AM doesn't have, then you get nothing.

I want one central library of everything, from which I can stream OR download stuff from it to individual devices. That doesn't seem so hard, but for some reason, Apple can't seem to do it. (And, which actually worked several years back with iTunes and family sharing turned on.)

So, I'm more than a bit pissed off that they first took features away from me, then got me to start paying them $15/mo for an inferior service.

Also, I constantly run across tracks that I'd like, which aren't in the AM library. I'll find an album, for example, and then realize it is missing a track or two. (Apparently, because they couldn't get the rights to it?)

So, we're thinking about quitting as well. Has anyone used something like Plex to store the master music library? I'm going to have to try that, as in theory, it seems like it might work.

 

[justafew]

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Wish you could see play history

#29
You can, although not natively. In iTunes, create a Smart Playlist - make the first criteria “Last Played”, “in the last” “5” “days” or however many days you want to set it for. Then that playlist will appear in your iTunes and as a Playlist on all your iOS devices.
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How do I stop Apple Music from screwing up the music artwork, replacing the right artwork with the wrong artwork, sometimes even the wrong artist? How do add the correct artwork where there is a microphone icon instead of an artist picture in the music app ?

The microphone has also bugged me - wish we could make our own or at least use the latest album cover as an alternative. But no, for years the artist have a microphone icon.

Funny thing is that Apple Music on my Android shows nearly all of my Artists WITH some kind of picture or album artwork whereas iTunes and my iPhone still show the microphone. That is mind-boggling to me.

See this link for two screenshots. The first (in white) is a screenshot from my Android, the second (dark) is from my iTunes on my iMac.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/eDrS75QkGv2DzBT38

 

[swanseaboy]

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#29
You can, although not natively. In iTunes, create a Smart Playlist - make the first criteria “Last Played”, “in the last” “5” “days” or however many days you want to set it for. Then that playlist will appear in your iTunes and as a Playlist on all your iOS devices.
[doublepost=1552867948][/doublepost]

I've just tried this, it only shows music currently in your library, not music you have played? Unless I'm doing it wrong.

 

[justafew]

I've just tried this, it only shows music currently in your library, not music you have played? Unless I'm doing it wrong.

Oh, my bad. You are correct, this will only work for songs you have in your current library. I'm so used to finding songs of interest and then just adding them to my library (which automatically dumps them into a "New" playlist) and later determining if I want to keep them that I forgot my Recent playlist only works on items in my library. I apologize for the confusion.

 

[mmfood]

Is there a way to search Apple Music from the Mac app like you can on iphone?
Could someone point me in the direction of a guide on how to use the Apple Music Mac App?

Thanks

 

[geno44]

As usual, Apple Music gives us more little used bells and whistles for PR splash but overlooks what the app is for…listening to music. My question is if this service claims to have 50-70 M songs, why can’t I just hit a random button and hear them…all. My taste is too eclectic to stay tied to one genre or playlist. You may want to hear the “Top Ten” ad nauseam, but I outgrew that in grammar school.

 

[PissedOffUserName]

You CANNOT search for a KEY WORD located in the GENRE field of an .MP3 file, inside of "Apple Music"
You CANNOT find a KEY WORD located in the GENRE field of an .MP3 file, EVEN USING "FINDER" ON A MAC.

If you look hard, you can find the way to DISPLAY the GENRE field (it isn't enabled, by default) ... and it it will list the words found in the GENRE field, but you cannot SEARCH for a key word or string.

Try it. Open an .MP3 file and edit the GENRE field, and put in some unique string, such as a6dF7*a9$Q
Upload that into your "Apple Music" and then see if you can find it.

"Apple Music" should be hauled away AS garbage.

 

[Curtis M]

Just made the switch from Spotify, which I loved. But the spatial audio that Apple is offering, along with a 6 month free trial, motivated the change. I do love the spatial audio. It's fantastic. But the app itself is terrible compared to Spotify. It feels so dated and lacking in smart, modern functionality. For example, if I go into my playlists and try to click on the artist name in a song in my playlist, it's not linked. I have to go up to search and search the artist. I do hope it is something they work to improve.

 

[justafew]

Just made the switch from Spotify, which I loved. But the spatial audio that Apple is offering, along with a 6 month free trial, motivated the change. I do love the spatial audio. It's fantastic. But the app itself is terrible compared to Spotify. It feels so dated and lacking in smart, modern functionality. For example, if I go into my playlists and try to click on the artist name in a song in my playlist, it's not linked. I have to go up to search and search the artist. I do hope it is something they work to improve.

I'm assuming you are on an iPhone for this? You can go to the Artist two different ways. Either click the ... to the right of the song in the playlist or Click and hold the song and you will get a pop-up with lots of options (delete, download, share song, show lyrics, show album, etc). Click on show album or click the section at the top with the name of the song/artist and it will take you to the whole album in Apple Music. On that page, just click on the Artist name under the album cover and it will take you to the artist page (see first attachment).



Funny thing on my Android Apple Music app, when I click and hold the song, a similar menu appears, but the artist is highlighted at the top and you can click on the Artist name. I could have sworn I used to be able to do that on iOS as well. (see second attachment).