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Honestly, I can't imagine switching to Apple Music. Speaking as a guy who owns an iPhone and a Mac. I love being able to smoothly control playback from any devi

• maxaf 9y ago
  This is why I normally stay away from Apple services. My household runs on an eclectic mix of Android and Apple devices, and this is exactly how we like it. Google seems to have embraced the presence of Apple devices in its ecosystem, so why not the other way around?
  • toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > Google seems to have embraced the presence of Apple devices in its ecosystem, so why not the other way around? Google must, Apple is not under the same pressure to reciprocate.
  • comex 9y ago
    Apple Music has an Android app.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Google seems to have embraced the presence of Apple devices in its ecosystem, so why not the other way around? Google is an online services company with incidental hardware, Apple Music is a hardware company with incidental online services. Google's primary concern with it's hardware is driving online services. Apple's primary concern with online services is driving it's hardware ecosystem. So, sure, Google has no problem embracing other hardware platforms for it's online services, but Apple has a lot less interest in that.
• rxhernandez 9y ago
  Google music has been the best for me: - IT doesn't block it at work(it blocks spotify) - I don't have to install anything - I don't see ads on youtube - it has all of my music that came from CDs backed up to it - I regularly discover new music through their Radio feature so long as the artist/song isn't super popular
  • animex 9y ago
    Man, I miss Songza. While some of it seems absorbed, it just doesn't seem as UX/UI elegant as it was.
    • rock_hard 9y ago
      It sure feels like a regression not to have it. The surving players in the market are uninspired in comparison :(
  • Someone1234 9y ago
    Google Music's multi-device support is terrible though. "Playback Paused Because Your Account Is Being Used in Another Location" I have a Google Music Family Plan ("up to 10 devices each"). But it simply doesn't work, I cannot even play both YouTube and Google Music on the same account, let alone playback on multiple devices. We have a few Google Home Minis and a Google Home. They were initially all set up using the same Google Account (with the Google Music Family Plan), that meant music could only play on one device throughout the whole house and computers would be blocked if any Google Home started music playback. The only workaround is to create a new Google Account per device, then hook it into your family group which will receive your family plan. I now have four additional completely useless Google Accounts just so I can play back music in different rooms or use YouTube and Google Music at the same time. Netflix is the only service which gets multi-device right.
    • KirinDave 9y ago
      I agree about this. I like Google Music and unlike Apple Music it didn't and doesn't want to delete all my music then shrug and say it's my fault for not buying from Apple, but... I can't even use youtube while my 3 year old daughter tries to listen to her bath music. It's pretty ridiculous.
• aantix 9y ago
  I think you’re missing out by not using YouTube Red. You can download _any_ video. Lecture. Music. Whatever. And the app plays in the background on your phone. Working out, whatever, you have any video/music production at your disposal.
  • sanjeetsuhag 9y ago
    I live on a university campus, with excellent internet (and LTE on my phone). Downloading videos is not something I need at the moment. The background playback feature is the only thing I would like, but I think it is a really shitty decision to have such a fundamental feature as a paid one, therefore, I won't pay for it.
  • throwa_way_ 9y ago
    You can also use youtube-dl to download videos, and NewPipe to play videos in the background. Both are free tools.
• yash1th 9y ago
  One thing that made me choose apple music over spotify is the indian music library. It’s way more better in Apple music
  • malshe 9y ago
    Exactly my reason. Spotify has such a limited collection of Indian music and within that regional music that there is no way I will ever pay for it. In contrast Apple Music has a wide selection.
• tjr225 9y ago
  I feel like the only person on the planet who finds spotify annoying and its library shallow. I really am not trying to sound pretentious. Full disclosure I say this as someone who doesn't pay for their service, so I don't know how it is if you do, but if you shuffle play an artist- it will automatically play suggested songs. This makes 0 sense to me. I specifically wanted to listen to that artist and if I wanted suggestions why wouldn't it simply have an additional button for suggestion songs in addition to shuffling songs by the artist?
  • electricslpnsld 9y ago
    > I feel like the only person on the planet who finds spotify annoying and its library shallow. I've run into this as well, Apple Music seems to have much wider coverage than Spotify, even when it comes to fairly mainstream 'indie' labels. Both services have big holes in their catalogs, though, and sometimes when deep diving into particular artists or labels, I find YouTube more likely to have rarer albums and such (usually recorded from vinyl by some kind soul).
  • adamrt 9y ago
    It makes sense. You don’t pay and it acts like a radio station (suggesting songs). You do pay and it’s like a music library (play what you want).
    • tjr225 9y ago
      I find their unpaid for application annoying, then(yes I know that's the point).
  • philtar 9y ago
    That's only in the free accounts.
• sgustard 9y ago
  I live in a fully Mac/iOS household, and I had no idea until I saw this article that Apple Music was a thing that competes with Spotify. That's probably due to iTunes and iCloud being such a confusing mess that I just don't use Apple services and I haven't launched those apps in years.
  • harryf 9y ago
    Likewise. The UI is a disaster for any pre-Apple-music iTunes users so I try to go there as rarely as possible. And after years of deleting half my music every time I switch phone or device (intentionally? https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lawsuit-apple-delete-songs-itunes-20141204 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lawsuit-apple-delete... ) I doubt I will ever trust Apple with anything music-related again.
  • hellweaver666 9y ago
    It is indeed a mess. After sharing an iCloud account for years my wife and I decided to upgrade our Apple Music to a family account so we could have separate music (and listen to music on different devices at the same time). Apple decided this must mean we also want separate iCloud accounts and upon logging into her own Apple Music account, also proceeded to remove our 15 years of family photos and a couple of years of shared notes from her device. Now she can't see the photos I've taken or any of her old photos unless we use the sharing functionality (we take a lot of photos of our kids and having them auto sync on both devices was brilliant for us). We tried doing it the manual way but it was such a pain. Since Apple music's family service wasn't compatible with how we use our devices, we cancelled Apple Music and got a family account on Spotify instead. When Apple Music expired it wiped all the playlists we had in iTunes including ones I created years before Apple Music was ever a thing and not even containing any music from Apple Music. I'm thinking of also dumping iCloud, but I really like the automatic backing up of all our photos to all of our devices. Heck, at this point I would switch to Android as well if it weren't for the years of apps I've purchased for Apple and don't want to buy again.
    • Angostura 9y ago
      If you share an iCloud account, you're going to find things painful, its really not the way that things are designed to work. Here's how to get back to where you were, if you want to use separate iCloud accounts. 1. On your device create create a Shared photo album. 2. Share it with your wife using her new iCloud ID 3. Select the photos that you wan to share (basically all of them initially) 4. Tap Share > iCloud Photo Sharing 5. Select the shared album. From then on, you and your wife share all photos you want to share to to that Album. Same thing works with shared Calendars, Notes, To-do list etc. If you share an iCloud account across multiple people you will find yourself fighting the system all the time
• yeahdef 9y ago
  Another perspective: I am less concerned with music discovery or seamless device hand-offs. I know what I want to listen to. As a former club DJ, I accrued a large amount of records that are simply unavailable via streaming networks. I recently starting ripping a lot of those vinyl records to mp3. I have tried spotify, google play music, and Apple Music. Apple Music is the clear winner when it comes to the importing, tagging, artwork curation workflow. I am really enjoying building my up library from scratch (forgive the pun).
  • thirdsun 9y ago
    Why would you rip your collection to a lossy format like MP3? Sure, you're probably going to explain how you don't hear a difference which is fair, but a lossless format like FLAC or ALAC (recommended if you're in the Apple eco system) has other advantages besides superior audio quality. It allows you to convert to any other format, including MP3, at a later point. Storage is cheap these days and there's really no excuse not to use a lossless format. You can set up iTunes to automatically transcode everything you sync to your mobile device to a smaller, lossy format while leaving the lossless master copy untouched at home. The one thing you probably want to avoid is regretting your choice and ripping your collection again because you opted for the lesser format on the first try.
    • yeahdef 9y ago
      Fair reasoning from the archival master standpoint. I share a lot of what I rip with other DJ friends. If I sent them a FLAC or ALAC file, they would respond "what the hell is this? how do i listen to this?". mp3 is ubiquitous and 320 kbps does the trick for me. I hope I don't feel that sting of regret you mention, but my gut feeling is that I will not. I still have the records themselves on the shelf which should last longer than the harddrives :)
      • ScottBurson 9y ago
        When I ripped my LP collection I first saved each recording out as FLAC (16 bits @ 48kHz), then re-exported it as VBR MP3. Audacity (a Mac recording app) makes this easy. I keep the FLAC files on my home server for future use (or for when 1TB microSD cards become cheap :-).
• abritinthebay 9y ago
  It’s really interesting you say that to me because one of the reasons I loathed Spotify (aside from its awful UI) is that music discovery was so achingly bad. IMO - Pandora > Apple Music > Spotify for discovery at least. Then again I like that Apple Music throws me a curveball occasionally, it’s usually something I wouldn’t expect but quite like. Which, to me, is the point. YMMV ofc.
  • KozmoNau7 9y ago
    I've found Spotify to be vastly superior for discovery, in the genres I listen to (metal and hard rock, mostly).
    • abritinthebay 9y ago
      Could be they are better at different genres. Would not be shocking.