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Here's a First Look at Apple Music's Voice Plan Launching With iOS 15.2

tomnavratil said:
Am I the only one who thinks this plan is so confusing and useless? I mean many users still don't understand what the hell it even is.
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My guess is that the target market is Apple users who prefer listening to curated music playlists instead of searching for artists or songs on their own within an app.

The siri voice plan is also designed to not compete with the existing Apple Music plan (since the interface is more limited), so we will not likely see existing music subscribers downgrade to it.

This will probably help gain a couple extra users who didn’t plan on subscribing to Apple Music to begin with, and I guess that’s the whole intent.
 
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radioflyer said:
I thought I could always say “hey, Siri, play “80s Hits” radio” or whatever song and it would play? Half the time when I ask for a song it plays some random song not even close to the same name. I don’t get the point to this service when it’s something we’ve been able to use anyway. What am I missing?
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This service ONLY works with Siri. You can’t browse music in the music app, or create playlists, etc. You must use Siri for EVERYTHING.

With that being said, instead of paying $9.99/month you’re only paying $4.99/month. So for the inconvenience of only being able to use Siri to play music, you save $5/month.

This might be worth it to some, I suppose, but I can’t imagine a lot of people signing up for this plan.
 
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Siri blows so you’d have to turn on the Siri keyboard accessibility feature to even consider it. For me it’s all about browsing song, album or artist lists to see what I’m in the mood to hear. One feature I do miss is being able to browse the album art like you could on early iPhones. That was a fun way to browse a collection. To this day I still purchase the tracks or albums I really like. I don’t want to cancel my Apple Music subscription and lose access to my favorite songs. I don’t have a limited budget now but in 20 to 25 years if/when I retire I doubt I’ll need a streaming service as long as I have the music I like.
 
contacos said:
That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard and I thought Spotify only playing random songs from a playlist on a certain plan was already random.
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A lot of people are completely missing the point. You're paying less to use the same exact user interface you would already use on a HomePod mini or an Apple Watch with AirPods. This is to give those users access to Music, if they don't already subscribe. This is not for iPhone or Mac Apple Music users, though it'll still work there.

If you already go around the house asking your HomePod to "play music that I like" or lift your wrist as you begin a run and say "Hey Siri, play workout music", then this is for you and it'll work the same way, but for half the price.

If you don't understand what this is for because it makes it harder to do the specific music searches you typically do, then your way of using Apple Music is outside the scope of this tier and you should (and probably do) have the full Apple Music experience.
 
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If the idea is to frustrate users so they’ll upgrade their plan, this should do it.

Not being able to create custom playlists is a dealbreaker.
 
cnnyy20p said:
Type to Siri is now useful. :D
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ah, suddenly the current state of Siri makes sense.

Siri Dev Team types to Siri some query, query works, concludes: “see?! It works!”
Ok fine, I’ll cut them some slack, if they had to debug it via the appalling phrase recognition the backend development would be never ending.
 
Incredibly dumb looking interface. However, I understand that there’s a teeny-tiny market of users who only access Apple Music through smart speakers and that this is enticing for small business owners to make the Pandora -> voice plan shift. Still, who thought this was Apple Music’s top priority?
 
Apple introduces a significantly lower cost (50% less) option that meets the needs of many who use Apple Music, myself included (via HomePods through my house), and everyone gets a major case of the shakes like it was some kind of nefarious opt-out intrusion trickery being shoved down their throats.

Bewildering.
 
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It’s not the plan for me, but I think it’s not a terrible idea. 1) Apple probably has usage data that shows that a large number of Apple Music users exclusively use it through Siri. 2) It’s more price competitive with other services now. 3) It could sell Apple Music to the Spotify crowd. That is, while I happen to like that Apple Music gives me a proper library and integrates with my existing library, there’s a whole generation of young people who probably have no conception of physical media, albums, or playlists and whose only exposure to music has come from the radio and services like Spotify.

And, honestly, while Siri isn’t great at individual songs (I suspect no AI assistant is due to natural language processing being hard, especially with things as open ended as song titles, but I only have experience with Siri), it’s pretty good at things like “shuffle my library”, “play some [adjective] music for me”, that sort of thing. And it’s probably better at pulling up more popular artists (“play some Ke$ha”) than more obscure artists (“play some Schooner Fare”). And I’d imagine that this is how most Apple Music users actually use the service, even if I tend to use it more as “iTunes in the Cloud+’free’ tracks from the iTunes Music Store” or as a cloud based jukebox in free play mode.
 
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barkomatic said:
I hope this doesn't result in more people talking to their iPhones at the gym, on the subway and on the plane.
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I’d almost prefer they talk to their phones. I don’t know about other subways, but, in New York, all too many people are perfectly fine with playing music out of their phone speakers without headphones (never mind the question of “how can you hear it over the train?”) or FaceTiming in public. And I’ve seen too many people carrying large (and, by large, I mean “could be used as outdoor PA systems”) Bluetooth speakers and using those on the train. Honestly, the level of rudeness I’ve seen on the subway astounds me. I’ve seen multiple people decide that being on the train during rush hour is the perfect time to light up a cigarette or cigar (or worse, a crackpipe!).
 
citysnaps said:
Apple introduces a significantly lower cost (50% less) option that meets the needs of many who use Apple Music, myself included (via HomePods through my house), and everyone gets a major case of the shakes like it was some kind of nefarious opt-out intrusion trickery being shoved down their throats.

Bewildering.
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Because it’s MacRumors. There was a time when MacRumors might have been a decent forum, but these days, it’s mostly anti-Apple trolls and a good heap of “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” Too many people today are incredibly self centered. Whether that results in “why should I care if this thing I want to do inconveniences others in public?” or “this product isn’t for me, so who even is the target for this product?”, the root cause is still the same.
 
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darkcompass said:
We shall see how this plays out, but if the subscription could also be used on Amazon & Google devices then they could be onto a winner against Spotify and Tidal.
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Considering that Apple Music can already be used on Alexa devices, this should work on them (maybe it would require an update to the Apple Music skill, but still).

If someone has an Alexa speaker and an iPhone+Apple Watch and doesn’t use the music app, I could see this being a sweet deal for them. And it wouldn’t surprise me to see this in some capacity for non-Apple devices eventually, given Apple’s focus on supporting non-Apple platforms for its subscription media services. A $5 a month subscription to Apple Music voice only that works on Android would be a good halo effect for Apple.
 
kc9hzn said:
Because it’s MacRumors. There was a time when MacRumors might have been a decent forum, but these days, it’s mostly anti-Apple trolls and a good heap of “No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” Too many people today are incredibly self centered. Whether that results in “why should I care if this thing I want to do inconveniences others in public?” or “this product isn’t for me, so who even is the target for this product?”, the root cause is still the same.
Click to expand...

Well stated. I would also say it's selfishness. And think many are also hurting inside.
 
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Seems pretty straight forward to me: a not insignificant portion of consumers and investors are quite vocal in their complaints that Apple Music does not have a free tier to compete with Spotify.

Apple staunchly will not give into a free tier as that would almost certainly require turning to at least a partially ad supported structure. Apple does not want to be in the ad selling business anymore than they already are. As both a consumer and a stock holder, I think this is very wise.

Thus we are left with this compromise. Will such offerings result in market share domination? Nope. But Apple has a long history of refusing to engage in a race to the bottom just to capture market share. Not only does this preserve their brand’s reputation but profit margin as well. Additionally, in this particular case it allows them to pay artists nearly double Spotify’s rate. So not only do I support this as a business strategy but it’s better for the creative community as well.

As noted many times in this thread, this compromise plan will either be a perfect fit for someone’s use case (are truly happy just listening to play lists, radio stations, genres, etc) OR they extremely price sensitive.

This second group does not currently have an Apple offering to turn to. If they try this out and are dissatisfied…well, then they’ll cancel and return to using a free ad-supported alternative. As a business, you’re never happy to have a customer be dissatisfied — but if what they are satisfied with is free, frankly you just let them walk and move on.
 
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Someone here referred to a teeny-tiny audience who might use this. Others have pointed out quite a few audience types who would find this to their liking. I'll add another: Some of us use pricier music services like Qobuz and Idagio that focus primarily on high resolution music. Now here's something from Apple that features 90 million songs of the popular genre for only five bucks. So .. Okay .. I've stubbornly stuck to only the one music service .. But for five bucks, heck, I'll give it a go.
 
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Fungus Amongus
Amon Duul (1 or 2)
Oresund Space Collective (The Tricophantic Spire or I teleported to Acapulco)

Maybe if I listened to normal? Music ?

Tom

edit: alexa echo isn’t much better. Just tried voice playing Oresund Space Collective and I ended up with Luciano Pavrotti
 
Maybe this is for the casual user like me that does not have any music subscription currently. Everyone assumes this is for people who have already gone all in and are willing to pay $10, $20, $30 for full featured interface and plan. As if they’ll see this and be tempted away from something like Tidal. Stick your head out the window and check out the others in the world around you ?
 
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