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My assumption is that there's one library, the Apple Music library. And it brings in what you buy separately and what you pull in from streaming. That's what's making me really happy about this.

However, if that's untrue then I will be much less happy.
 
$120 for what?

No word on:

Streaming Quality
iTunes Match compatibility
Skipping Songs
Offline listening
Personal Playlists
Select What I Want When I Want

Beats Radio is just mystifying?!
Every Internet Radio station is Global and highly curated!!!
I regularly listen to BBC Radio 1 for Pete Tong Essential Mix
along with Intergalatic FM from Netherlands
KFAT from California (it's off the air, just replays old broadcast from the 70s/80s)
The above are all FREE, besides the (data) I pay for while listening in my car.

Spotify still wins at the moment.

It's actually not that hard if you can read.

It is compatible with iTunes Match. In fact, if you subscribe to Apple Music, it will automatically upload your own Music Library like iTunes Match - you can say iTunes Match is a "part" of a Apple Music subscription.
You can skip songs infinitely.
Offline listening is possible.
Of course you can make personal Playlists.
 
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$120 for what?

No word on:

Streaming Quality
iTunes Match compatibility
Skipping Songs
Offline listening
Personal Playlists
Select What I Want When I Want

Beats Radio is just mystifying?!
Every Internet Radio station is Global and highly curated!!!
I regularly listen to BBC Radio 1 for Pete Tong Essential Mix
along with Intergalatic FM from Netherlands
KFAT from California (it's off the air, just replays old broadcast from the 70s/80s)
The above are all FREE, besides the (data) I pay for while listening in my car.

Spotify still wins at the moment.

$120 a year for access to a library of tens of millions of tracks, to listen to whenever and wherever you want. Details aside, that's the jist.

Streaming quality - I assume (and it seems to have been confirmed above) that it will be the same 256.

iTunes Match - not sure what the deal is with that. But unless I'm missing something, iTunes Match gives you access to everything in your library at 256, even if its some crappy old download from Napster back in the day. Essentially a music amnesty. If Apple Music gives you access to (pretty much) everything their library, what you have in your library available via iTunes Match is presumably moot.

Skipping songs - I would assume you can slip songs just as you can in Spotify. I think streaming services have gotten past having those sorts of restrictions. I am to sure if it has been confirmed anywhere, but I'd be surprised it it did have skipping limitations. A. because that would be a deal breaker for a lot of people. And B. because the record companies have already come round to that with the likes of Spotify, so there's no reason for it to be an issue with Apple Music.

Offline listening - think this has been confirmed as possible. Same reasoning as for skipping songs would apply.

Other internet radio stations tend to be playlists that are pre-programmed to play out, often without DJs, and largely curated by algorithm. Beats will be a proper radio station, just like Radio 1, with programmes broadcast live, with actual DJs.

All else being equal (and no reason for it not to be), I think Apple Music wins simply because of the proper live radio station. And if a big part of connect works along the same lines as BBC Introducing, I think that's another win over Spotify. (Seeing as they headhunted BBC Introducing people from the BBC as well as Zane, that indicates that that's what they have in mind.)

Radio 1 gets a lot of unfair flack - usually from Daily Mail readers who would never listen to it, but the evening schedules are probably as good and diverse as you're going to get from a single broadcast radio station. And seeing as Apple did quite a bit of headhunting from there seems like a good sign of the direction they want to go in.
 
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Thanks. TheNext Web is pretty reliable. I believe them, however, 256 AAC sounds identical to 320 MP3 so I don't believe this will be a problem. I will continue to build my personal library by buying CDs for 5$ or less on amazon and ripping in ALAC then tossing the Disc.

Tossing? What a waste! I'll pay you $2 for shipping before you throw it in the trash.
I also buy mostly CDs of Amazon and ALAC rip them, but I do usually keep them in large cardboard box for archival & recovery purpose.

Agreed on 256AAC vs 320MP3, same was true about 128AAC and 192MP3 before. In fact, for mobile listening on cheap ear pods, you couldn't tell diff between 128 & 256, so having a data plan saving option to reduce to 128 would be helpful. For home use, otoh, it would be better to have an ALAC option for streaming.
 
Has anyone actually confirmed whether it is truly the entire iTunes catalog that is available for streaming? Or some subset of it?

For example, can you stream Beatles? AC/DC? Taylor Swift?
 
$120 for what?

No word on:

Streaming Quality
iTunes Match compatibility
Skipping Songs
Offline listening
Personal Playlists
Select What I Want When I Want

Beats Radio is just mystifying?!
Every Internet Radio station is Global and highly curated!!!
I regularly listen to BBC Radio 1 for Pete Tong Essential Mix
along with Intergalatic FM from Netherlands
KFAT from California (it's off the air, just replays old broadcast from the 70s/80s)
The above are all FREE, besides the (data) I pay for while listening in my car.

Spotify still wins at the moment.
Pretty much everything you listed has been answered.
Uggh, I didn't know that.

I hate how iCloud Family Sharing works.

Which brings up a question from me.
How does Apple Music work if all three in my family log onto the same Apple ID?
I'm assuming it will work.
Pretty sure it'll work but y'all would share preferences.
 
Has anyone actually confirmed whether it is truly the entire iTunes catalog that is available for streaming? Or some subset of it?

For example, can you stream Beatles? AC/DC? Taylor Swift?

Regardless of what some people here would have you believe it has NOT been confirmed or denied.

Probably the sticking point for me. I'm not going to subscribe only to find I still have to buy albums/songs of certain artists.
 
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Tossing? What a waste! I'll pay you $2 for shipping before you throw it in the trash.
I also buy mostly CDs of Amazon and ALAC rip them, but I do usually keep them in large cardboard box for archival & recovery purpose.

Agreed on 256AAC vs 320MP3, same was true about 128AAC and 192MP3 before. In fact, for mobile listening on cheap ear pods, you couldn't tell diff between 128 & 256, so having a data plan saving option to reduce to 128 would be helpful. For home use, otoh, it would be better to have an ALAC option for streaming.

Yeah, I kinda meant that as well...I actually haven't thrown anything out....yet. The biggest question I have will be with volume. iTunes radio has the lowest volume of any radio service I have ever used. It is so soft it is bearly loud enough to listen to on the highway in my truck. Spotify is way louder.
 
Regardless of what some people here would have you believe it has NOT been confirmed or denied.

Probably the sticking point for me. I'm not going to subscribe only to find I still have to buy albums/songs of certain artists.

Yea, I didn't think it had been confirmed one way or other. This seems like a very important detail, one that I'm surprised more journalists aren't harping on.

What happens if you add songs to a playlist are later removed? Do they get deleted from your playlists? Is there a notification to let you know when this happens? If the songs are later re-added, does your play count, rating of that song, and its place in a playlist persist or is it reset anew?
 
$120 for what?

No word on:

Streaming Quality
iTunes Match compatibility
Skipping Songs
Offline listening
Personal Playlists
Select What I Want When I Want

Beats Radio is just mystifying?!
Every Internet Radio station is Global and highly curated!!!
I regularly listen to BBC Radio 1 for Pete Tong Essential Mix
along with Intergalatic FM from Netherlands
KFAT from California (it's off the air, just replays old broadcast from the 70s/80s)
The above are all FREE, besides the (data) I pay for while listening in my car.

Spotify still wins at the moment.
I suspect most, if not all your concerns will be addressed in a couple of weeks.
 
$120 for what?

No word on:

Streaming Quality
iTunes Match compatibility
Skipping Songs
Offline listening
Personal Playlists
Select What I Want When I Want

Spotify still wins at the moment.

I thought offline listening, personal playlists, and selecting what you want when you want were all specifically mentioned (or were on the blog post). It sounded almost exactly like Spotify premium, which I love.

Answers to some of it are here: https://www.apple.com/pr/library/20...he-Ways-You-Love-Music-All-in-One-Place-.html
 
Watched the keynote today.... I'll say it: Eddy seemed drunk, or at least hung over from the night before. He presented himself as less than professional (unkept shirt, dancing, etc). I know he was trying to be funny, but Steve Jobs would have had a few choice words for him, if not a demotion to the Siberian Apple Store.
 
Uggh, I didn't know that.

I hate how iCloud Family Sharing works.

Which brings up a question from me.
How does Apple Music work if all three in my family log onto the same Apple ID?
I'm assuming it will work.

iCloud Family sharing is the best thing on iOS8 imo. I don't know what the other post is talking about because you can add separate credit cards on separate Apple IDs if you'd like. You don't have to turn on purchase permissions unless you want to monitor all the downloads.

You shouldn't have your whole family using the same Apple ID. Technically it will work but the music licenses are for individuals, so to use it for 3 people is illegal. On a user level, it's like sharing one Apple ID for iCloud with your family and peers. They have access to all your stuff (photos, contacts, etc) unless you disable them individually. If someone accidentally deletes your playlist or adds a new one that you hate, you'll have to live with the consequences.
 
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Uggh, I didn't know that.

I hate how iCloud Family Sharing works.

Which brings up a question from me.
How does Apple Music work if all three in my family log onto the same Apple ID?
I'm assuming it will work.

Why not, but then again, your teenager isn't going to want to share what he/she is listening with you.
 
Nobody is asking them about people like me, who listen to majority of music in car, who want to discover new music while listening in car, but whose cellular carrier's data caps make it impossible to enjoy a music streaming service. Downloading albums ahead of time while on Wifi is not an option. There are not any public WiFi that I can stream from while driving to/from my destinations. Heck when I go out during the week, the majority of places I go don't have free Wifi, the Wifi cannot support streaming, or the Wifi is on a business network and streaming services are blocked.

Apple Music is just going to make it harder for me to get to the music I own. Depending on how they implement these changes in the iOS Music App, I could be pushed to using another service. I'd miss iTunes Match, but not enough to deal with having to dig deep into the app just for the content I own.
 
Glad to see those hard hitting journalists pressed them on the difference between the "Apple Music" library and the "iTunes" library, if there is any. That seems to be a sticking point for a lot of people. Are we getting it all or not?

I know that's what's going to determine whether or not I sign up. I own most of what I want, if it's not everything I'll just continue to buy the songs I want (maybe one or two a month). If it does include everything then I'll probably subscribe and more actively seek out new music.

By the way, "for the cost of a CD" doesn't mean much anymore. Yeah, CD's cost $10-15 new but you can just as easily buy 5 CD's for that price on eBay. To me that speaks volumes on the value of their "product."

Over 30mil songs, so...that's substantially all of iTunes(there may be individual holdouts but that will be true for any streaming service).
 
Yea, you could. It's the price point Netflix charges for lotsa movies & TV shows. I find that reasonable, hence I'm a subscriber.

$9.99/month for radio, ie. renting music, is too much for me.

How about $30/year including Match, then I'd bite.

You're looking at it from a consumer standpoint only.....and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that but this is not Apple's call per say. You're sounding like Apple's trying to swipe every penny out of your pocket. It's the artists. If the price point isn't agreeable with the artists they will pull their music.
Also with Spotify being successful at $9.99/month it wouldn't make any sense for artists to work with Apple if they charged less.
 
Nobody is asking them about people like me, who listen to majority of music in car, who want to discover new music while listening in car, but whose cellular carrier's data caps make it impossible to enjoy a music streaming service. Downloading albums ahead of time while on Wifi is not an option. There are not any public WiFi that I can stream from while driving to/from my destinations.

And why can't you just setup your playlist from home so you can head out for the week? Is that so hard to do?
 
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