Apple Music's radio stations are abysmal - discuss

[alexjholland]

Hey, I've had Apple Music for around one year.

The ability to download albums to my iPhone is good. Very good, actually - although it makes my 320GB SSD iPod somewhat redundant, which is frustrating.

However, radio is how I listen to most music now - as I like variety.

It seems if I click on 'Jazz' or 'Chillout', I basically get a single playlist, which I quickly know all the tracks of within a few days.

These aren't actually radio stations at all, no?

I am struggling to find anything new I want to listen to (don't care about commercial pop music, at all).

In contrast, when I log into my girlfriend's Spotify, there seems to be loads of combinations of cinematic music, chillout etc.

Basically, it seems like Apple Music is great for 15 year olds following the charts; whereas Spotify is for people who actually like discovering innovative, unusual music.

Am I wrong, or missing anything?

 

[mjschabow]

I don't know about the jazz genre but I like the A-List playlists a lot. Yeah a lot of songs stay on there but they do add new releases too.

Otherwise I am a big fan of using the rating system and the using the My Top Rated playlist as my radio. To find new songs sometimes I'll just browse through new music and if I like it, I'll add it to library and rate it 5 stars.

 

[whsbuss]

Radio is also based on what you normally listen to. For example I like jazz as well and will create a station in two ways;
1) artists I like and 2) certain songs I like. After a few days I start getting many new tracks based on either artists who play similar instruments, or tracks based on the type of jazz (i.e. smooth jazz, r&b, etc).

I do still have an issue with Apple Music not providing a My New Music Mix each Friday and there's a ticket still pending since end of December. Others than that, Spotify does have a good music discovery list each Monday, but their daily mix leave much to be desired along with their radio stations

 

[Julien]

.....It seems if I click on 'Jazz' or 'Chillout', I basically get a single playlist, which I quickly know all the tracks of within a few days.

These aren't actually radio stations at all, no?

I am struggling to find anything new I want to listen to (don't care about commercial pop music, at all).....
Am I wrong, or missing anything?

As you are listening when you hear a track you like then make a new Radio Station out of it. You will then get new music based on the tracks you like. New Radio Stations with new music.

 

[tonyr6]

This is why I rather listen to full albums which is what I mostly do on AM. Playlist stations are terrible on all services (PM, Spotify, Slacker, Pandora). They seem to rotate the same 20 songs over and over again.

 

[adamhunteratc]

I do still have an issue with Apple Music not providing a My New Music Mix each Friday and there's a ticket still pending since end of December.

This happened to you too? For me, the "My New Music Mix" didn't just not refresh... it disappeared completely. Vanished. I couldn't scroll to it or find it anywhere. Then the "My Favorite Music Mix" stopped refreshing. Given that those are two of my favorite things on Apple Music, I contacted Apple Support about it. They were clueless and, honestly, not any help at all. One rep even told me that sometimes it takes a couple weeks for them to update. That makes no sense as the playlists say, "Updated every Wednesday/Friday". They then started saying things that implied that it was user error... somehow, it was my fault that it wasn't working.

Needless to say, I cancelled my Apple Music subscription.

 

[whsbuss]

This happened to you too? For me, the "My New Music Mix" didn't just not refresh... it disappeared completely. Vanished. I couldn't scroll to it or find it anywhere. Then the "My Favorite Music Mix" stopped refreshing. Given that those are two of my favorite things on Apple Music, I contacted Apple Support about it. They were clueless and, honestly, not any help at all. One rep even told me that sometimes it takes a couple weeks for them to update. That makes no sense as the playlists say, "Updated every Wednesday/Friday". They then started saying things that implied that it was user error... somehow, it was my fault that it wasn't working.

Needless to say, I cancelled my Apple Music subscription.

Sorry you dropped the service. My ticket has been there in Engineering since 12/31/16 and there's no update. Support did screen shots, etc. but still have no New Music Mix. Fortunately the Favorites Mix does refresh on Wednesdays.

 

[jonnyb098]

This happened to you too? For me, the "My New Music Mix" didn't just not refresh... it disappeared completely. Vanished. I couldn't scroll to it or find it anywhere. Then the "My Favorite Music Mix" stopped refreshing. Given that those are two of my favorite things on Apple Music, I contacted Apple Support about it. They were clueless and, honestly, not any help at all. One rep even told me that sometimes it takes a couple weeks for them to update. That makes no sense as the playlists say, "Updated every Wednesday/Friday". They then started saying things that implied that it was user error... somehow, it was my fault that it wasn't working.

Needless to say, I cancelled my Apple Music subscription.

The new music mix is based on your listening habits. When my girlfriend started with AM it took a week for both mixes to show up as she started using the service more. Are you "hearting" music, etc? Do you use AM regularly?

Just trying to possibly narrow it down.

 

[tonyr6]

Actually what I do is use the despicable Google Play Music free on my computer with ad-block and when I hear a song I like I go and search in AM and listen to the entire album so I hear the deeper but still great songs that are not played over and over again.