29 ms·

Apple Music Web Client

325 points by aplusplus 7y ago

bwip 7y ago
Ah, nice! I was an early Beats Music subscriber and really lamented the eventual loss of the web interface.
hprotagonist 7y ago
Nice! Now, how about some cross-platform iCloud Drive love? huh?
- minimaxir 7y ago
  You can access iCloud Drive on the web at iCloud.com
  - hprotagonist 7y ago
    i want something a lot more like dropbox or gdrive which have native applications, preferably with command line interfaces.
    - minimaxir 7y ago
      iCloud for Windows includes Drive: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283 If you are talking about Linux then you should be more explicit about that.
trillic 7y ago
Uses 50MB less memory as the sole tab in Firefox than iTunes does on my Mac. Easy decision to switch for normal playback purposes.
- bb123 7y ago
  Is 50MB that important? I would just use whatever provides you with the best experience (whichever that may be).
  - vonseel 7y ago
    He is either on a low powered device or overly focused on details. In my experience I have never needed to look at RAM usage on my 2017 16GB MBP, but sometimes I do check CPU usage just to see how hard that intense process is hitting the computer and when it finishes.
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    Yes because I have a whole bunch of apps running at once over multiple screens and the extra 50MB per app adds up fast.
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  > Uses 50MB less memory as the sole tab in Firefox than iTunes does on my Mac. Well that's because iTunes also includes Calendar, and Mail, and Safari... ;) https://youtu.be/psL_5RIBqnY?t=6254 https://youtu.be/psL_5RIBqnY?t=6254
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    I wonder if it’s possible to trick iTunes into browsing the web. It is a web view, after all (or at least the store portion is).
  - toxik 7y ago
    Didn't know Apple ever actually made jokes at their own expense. :-)
chrischen 7y ago
I’m curious what framework Apple uses for web now. Last I checked (a week ago) icloud.com is still implemented with SproutCore.
- kevin2r 7y ago
  Looks like Ember for the most part. Look at the code, it's not minified, yet...
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    It would be nice to save the code and upload it to github.com, is there a tool to make this automatically?
    - wrboyce 7y ago
      wget can do this, the --mirror option is probably a good start along with --page-requisite.
  - pier25 7y ago
    Indeed: https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musickit-components/core-02a04998.js https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musick...
  - nullvoxpopuli 7y ago
    That's weird. Ember minifies by default
- jpgvm 7y ago
  This is implemented using Ember which is the spiritual successor to SproutCore
- spankalee 7y ago
  Looks like a combination of Ember and web components.
RootReducer 7y ago
Very cool! I've loved Apple Music ever since I was able to upload my library using Match, and I feel like its recommendations are getting better and better. Nice to have this in a pinned tab.
dzonga 7y ago
seems they're using Ember.js . Reason I love spotify so much is that it's available on the web, no need to be downloading native apps everywhere. Always bet on the web. also good to see, another web property using Ember. As a react dev, competition is healthy
- vonseel 7y ago
  I’m surprised. I haven’t heard anything about Ember in years. Not since 2013 or so.
  - tuvan 7y ago
    I guess it is still a liked tool, I also read about Riot Games using it for the redone client of League of Legends. https://technology.riotgames.com/news/architecture-league-client-update https://technology.riotgames.com/news/architecture-league-cl...
  - tempsy 7y ago
    Is it really that surprising given React is FB and Angular is Google?
    - penagwin 7y ago
      > React is FB and Angular is Google This doesn't matter in practice - they could have freely used either to design the web client at no cost. If they wanted to take over development and go their own direction they just had to fork them.
      - tempsy 7y ago
        Of course in doesn’t matter in practice. It’s the optics.
        ssalazar 7y ago
        Is there still patent uncertainty around React (or Angular)? Otherwise, Im not sure why anyone outside HN would care about the optics of which front-end library was used.
craze3 7y ago
Wow, us Apple Music users have been waiting for this forever! For anyone who's curious about how this product developed: - April 2016: Apple releases Apple Music API - December 2018: A third-party Apple Music web player is launched on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/playapplemusic-com https://www.producthunt.com/posts/playapplemusic-com (Created by https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=shivdhar https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=shivdhar) - January 2019: Another third-party alternative, Musish, launches on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18940407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18940407 - Now: Apple finally launches their own official player! Makes sense with Spotify being so popular on web...
- eddieh 7y ago
  Hmmm. This ignores Apple acquiring Lala.com in '09.
  - OkGoDoIt 7y ago
    I used to love LaLa. I was so annoyed when Apple killed it. Google Music eventually replaced it for me, but LaLa was truly ahead of its time
- ehsankia 7y ago
  Spotify has had it since 2008 and Google Play Music since 2011. Blows my mind that people have used this for so long without web support... Then again if you're stuck in the garden, you don't have much choice.
  - workaway 7y ago
    Funnily enough, Macs do let you listen to music from your web browser, and don't force you to use iTunes.
- mortenjorck 7y ago
  I'm not where it fits into the timeline, but Apple has actually offered a rather obscure and limited way to use Apple Music in a browser for some time prior to the launch of the full web client. There's no way to browse, or even launch it directly. You have to search, via Google or other, for an album, and follow the link to what always used to be the iTunes Preview page. You can still listen to the thirty-second previews on this page, but there's a sign-in link in the header that will, quite surprisingly, unlock full playback of the album without launching iTunes. It's hardly the full Apple Music experience – all you get is the album you found and some related links at the bottom, with no access to your library or playlists – but it does work. I'm not really sure what purpose this functionality served, other than perhaps as a testbed for the actual web client, but it's still active for the time being.
Quiza12 7y ago
About time!
erikig 7y ago
Finally. Live web clients are great - it makes it easier to reverse engineer, scrape data and build add-ons. Kudos!
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I don’t know…personally, Apple’s native apps are easier for me to reverse engineer than most minified obfuscated JavaScript. Then again, I’m not a web developer.
  - dewey 7y ago
    Usually you only need to look at the requests anyway and there the web client is probably a bit nicer than iTunes with cert pinning if I remember correctly.
aphextron 7y ago
RIP Spotify.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  A mere web client isn’t going to spell the end for Spotify. Why would it?
- pedrocx486 7y ago
  When Apple decides the mobile app for Music is worth their salt, then maybe. But until then Spotify will rule the market.
  - morpheuskafka 7y ago
    The big issue is that it's tied to iOS versions rather that being its own app, as are Pages and GarageBand for example. iOS 13 brings some good improvements, but now we'll have to wait a year for more. Whereas the Spotify team is continuously maintaining and updating the app.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      > The big issue is that it's tied to iOS versions rather that being its own app, as are Pages and GarageBand for example. Pages and GarageBand are released on a schedule that differs from Apple’s operating systems–they’re entirely separate.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Not really. I've never used Apple Music, but as far as I can tell, it has no real free tier (just song previews) and it has a long way to go if it wants to compete with Spotify's playlists. For example, regional playlists. Apple Music just has "Top 100 {country}" which is just radio pop music. Compare that to Spotify's Explore -> {Mexico,Colombia,Arab,etc} -> all the different subgenres. Spotify's free tier is a no-brainer. I've had to listen to so many Spotify ads at parties and get-togethers that it's clear nobody cares about them either. Unless I'm missing something, Apple Music is just offering a three-month free trial. Also, even if Apple Music managed to be a Spotify clone, doesn't it only work on iOS/OSX?
IronWolve 7y ago
Says my Chrome and Firefox on Linux (ubuntu) not supported. :(
- bwip 7y ago
  Interesting, I'm using Fx 68.0.2 on Solus without any issues.
- frio 7y ago
  I get that semi-regularly; do you have strict content blocking + fingerprinters turned on in Firefox? IIRC that advertises that you're on FF ESR and a few sites deem that too old.
- sirn 7y ago
  It's working fine on my Firefox on KDE Neon (which is just Ubuntu 18.04 plus extra packages) even with strict content blocking and first party isolation on. You need to make sure you have Widevine enabled.
RandallBrown 7y ago
This was the reason I chose Spotify over Apple music all those years ago. Any reason to prefer Apple Music over Spotify? Spotify's recommendations have been absolutely stellar for me over the years and I have a lot of playlists and stuff "locking" me in.
- hellcow 7y ago
  For the privacy-minded, Apple Music doesn't notify Facebook each time you open the app. Spotify does.
  - ValentineC 7y ago
    > For the privacy-minded, Apple Music doesn't notify Facebook each time you open the app. Isn't there a way to disconnect Facebook from one's Spotify account altogether?
    - hellcow 7y ago
      I don't even have a Facebook account. That doesn't stop Facebook's SDK from phoning home every time Spotify is opened.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Is this on the web or on the backend - use an adblocker if not?
  - juniper411 7y ago
    That's only if you login with Facebook to Spotify... Which isn't required.
    - hellcow 7y ago
      No, you are mistaken. I have no Facebook account. Spotify phones home to Facebook the moment the app is opened. This can be confirmed with a no-root firewall like Netguard on Android.
mikewhy 7y ago
It appears even Apple themselves do not bother with using the overflow scrolling CSS that iOS needs.
- derefr 7y ago
  Why would a web client be polished for the one platform that has absolutely no need for it?
- mistersquid 7y ago
  On my iOS device, the link takes me to the Music app. I have to go back to Safari to see the web interface. That said, I don't see the overflow (iPhone XS).
- floatingatoll 7y ago
  On iOS, it redirects to the native iTunes App. Even if you somehow manage to overcome that, its presence clearly indicates that iOS isn’t a supported target - at which point, assuming it’s intentionally broken as you describe for non-beta reasons (this is not necessarily true), using that CSS would potentially be wasteful and break non-iOS users!
  - mikewhy 7y ago
    > its presence clearly indicates that iOS isn’t a supported target. They added an "open in music" button to the hamburger menu, assumed only on iOS. So they obviously did something for iOS users. Also agreed that this is pretty silly, people will of course just use the native app.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- m0dest 7y ago
  Overflow scrolling CSS is deprecated in iOS 13. All scrollable elements now get it by default.
ryanianian 7y ago
Whatever. I was really hoping to see some improvements to the music-organization and display aspects here but it looks like they just re-implemented the weird parts of iTunes using html5. For example: It drives me crazy how Apple Music emphasizes the idea that "Recently Added" is only grouped by albums. I don't add whole albums to my library, I add individual songs. I want to play all the songs I've recently added because hey it's new music I like. Why can't I get an auto-updating playlist of all the songs I've recently added? None of the cloud-based Apple platforms support smart-playlists and the "Recently Added" section only lets you play songs from an individual album from which you may have only added a single song. It's super weird. - Apple music seems to really push you into either whole albums or the overly-generic editor-curated playlists.
- MapleWalnut 7y ago
  You can create a genius (or maybe it’s called smart) playlist in iTunes that is ordered by recently added. It does exactly what you need.
  - ryanianian 7y ago
    Smart playlists are not displayed on cloud-based platforms (e.g. this webapp, sonos integrations, etc). I presume this is because they didn't want to implement the business-logic both on the server and on the native iTunes app.
    - radicaldreamer 7y ago
      I’ve never figured out why some Apple products are immensely well designed and some have basic aspects which don’t make sense and I guess it comes down to the people working on the products using them day to day or some exec who really uses an app day to day championing UX improvements. Music in its current iteration seems driven by Apple’s need to become a services company and the music app which really last spoke to people internally was one in which your own music is portable, not a steaming music service.
- bendavis381 7y ago
flixic 7y ago
Very nice to see them provide a dark CSS theme via prefers-color-scheme, following system preference.
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  Yes, future is now.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I would not be surprised if they have this because it’s used in the Music app.
eof 7y ago
I recently switched to a windows machine from Mac at work, and brought in iTunes to listen to Apple Music. It’s really as bad as I remember. Really great timing on this for me.
hsk823 7y ago
So much for https://musi.sh https://musi.sh
- mosselman 7y ago
  I was using this on Ubuntu, works great, but I'd rather use something official.
president 7y ago
As much as I commend them for creating a web client for their music service, the UI looks like it was designed by an amateur. Can't really put my finger on it but it's something to do with the content alignment, the gradients used. I would have expected better from Apple.
lainwashere 7y ago
This is great, no longer trying to get iTunes working in wine on linux, just play the music straight from the browser, and if you want a native app, Windows and MacOS has iTunes, no electron non-sense.
- eddieh 7y ago
  Actually Apple Music in iTunes is just a web view that leaks like crazy, to the point of making iTunes slow to a crawl, if you're quickly navigating through artists and albums. Not much better than Electron IMO. Apple Music in the browser seems like there isn't much hope of a truly native experience now.
  - kevin2r 7y ago
    What about the new Music app coming in MacOS Catalina? Does it implements the views in html5?
    - eddieh 7y ago
      I haven't tried Catalina yet. I really hope it isn't a web view. That would really defeat what I hoped they where doing by splitting iTunes up.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        The Apple Music portion is a web view: wherever it crashes (which is quite often, sadly) it shows the JavaScript backtrace.
        eddieh 7y ago
        Terrible news. :(
    - ashish-gandhi 7y ago
      The Podcasts and TV apps are native Catalyst (iPad apps on macOS) apps. The Music app is still some sort of Frankenstein iTunes thing. The Library section views are native. The Apple Music section is still web. It is still slow compared to Spotify but much better compared to how it is in iTunes.
sys_64738 7y ago
Messages beta should be along shortly! Fingers crossed.
- ulkesh 7y ago
  Even though many providers now have end-to-end encryption with web interfaces for messaging, Apple has maintained that it can't be done securely. We shall see if they have changed their minds.
Mikeb85 7y ago
Apple finally comes out with something Spotify and Google have had for years... Good job.
- thekyle 7y ago
  Well Google is certainly trying their hardest to give Apple the upper hand by discontinuing Google Play Music in favor of YouTube Music. I don't know a single person who actually likes the new YouTube Music. I ended up switching to Spotify as a result.
tptacek 7y ago
Can't link directly to a personal playlist (even if it's "published" to Apple's weird social network) for someone not already logged in (they just get the Apple Music landing page). So close! They're so smart, they'll figure this out some day!
- wyclif 7y ago
  Right, and that's one of the reasons why I use Spotify and won't use Apple Music.
  - wyclif 7y ago
    Actually, this won't even let me sign in with my Apple ID. It accepts my username/password, and prompts me to "Try it now", but when I click that, I get a drop down telling me I need to open the Apple Music client. Bravo, Apple.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      (It’s a beta.)
  - deaddodo 7y ago
    I used to use them when they were MOG. Between becoming Beats (which I stuck to for awhile) and then Apple trying to wall garden them, I just ended up using Google Play Music.
major505 7y ago
wow... that took a long time to happen.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
I’m so sad that most consumers want to pay for things like this or Spotify. I only buy digital albums, almost always from Bandcamp or bespoke band-specific sites, or Amazon if there’s no other choice. Always just a straight download of mp3 or ogg formats, backed up and accessible in cloud storage. I use VLC player on all my devices, and syncing music with the VLC wifi download tool is so extremely easy and simple. I have all the music I could ever possibly want, easily accessible on all devices and easy to sync on all devices, no internet connection needed, no monthly charge or user account, no ads, can transfer it all to any new devices I get with no vendor lock-in. I just can’t believe the populace was suckered into music streaming instead of music owning. So sad.
- eyelidlessness 7y ago
  I also prefer to purchase albums to own in a format of my choosing and you sound like a jerk. Why do you feel the need to crap on things other people enjoy and don’t affect you?
- dmitriid 7y ago
  Because streaming: - is available almost anywhere: your phone, your car, your smart waffle maker. - leads to much better music discovery through curated playlists, “discover weekly”s, radio stations based on songs/artists/genres - you can instantly share your music and music tastes with friends, leading to even more music discovery - many more other minor things (like creating playlists for parties etc.)
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    Streaming isn’t available where there’s no internet connection, unless you just happen to have cached what you’re looking for. Whereas my entire music collection is available any time. I also heavily dispute that Spotify, Apple, etc lead to better search or discovery.
    - dmitriid 7y ago
      > Whereas my entire music collection is available any time. You carry your “easily accessible cloud storage” everywhere with you? > I also heavily dispute that Spotify, Apple, etc lead to better search or discovery. You don’t “dispute”. You “firmly believe”. As others already pointed out: I’d never have discovered as much music within my music tastes as I’ve done with Spotify. There’s no chance in hell I could’ve stumbled on some indie band that is US-only while leaving in Sweden. There are Swedish bands which are suddenly popular in Brasil and they go there on tours, which they never would’ve done without Spotify. Etc. etc.
copperx 7y ago
Has anyone noticed this? On the native apps, when you click on an album, the most popular songs have a star icon next to them. I like that. The third party web apps that consume the Apple Music API don't have the feature, but I thought Apple's official web app would have it, but they don't! I hope they add this feature to the app (and API!).
dewey 7y ago
Now that there’s one more platform where Apple Music is available it would be really great if we could have the playback queue synced between them. I don’t want to recreate my listening queue I every time I’m changing my device.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
baroffoos 7y ago
Requires DRM to be turned on for it to work. No thanks.
- duskwuff 7y ago
  Well, uh, yes. You really expected them to let you download an unencumbered copy of any song in the iTunes catalog?
  - baroffoos 7y ago
    Yes, I expect that a service I paid for does not include untrusted malware. Thankfully there are other streaming services which do not do this.
    - lxgr 7y ago
      Could you name one please? (That has a comparable catalog to Spotify/Apple Music)
      - baroffoos 7y ago
        I used to use soundcloud which has a fairly large catalog of music if you have the paid version. I eventually canceled it because they had an annoying habit of replacing tracks with random remasters so something in your liked list could change to a different version that is much worse. These days I either use bandcamp or torrents.
- m0dest 7y ago
  The million dollar question: Which DRM? The fact that Apple is using third-party DRM in a web app is news. Apple TV / iTunes videos never had a web app, and presumably DRM was a big factor.
baby 7y ago
I’m really sad about the state of international music on youtube. Asian music is completely absent. Worse, all Chinese alternatives are blocked in the US.
Fr0styMatt88 7y ago
It’d be awesome if they did this next with their movie and TV stuff. I have a bunch of stuff purchased on iTunes that I can’t play on my TV (out of HDMI ports and TV stand space and no AirPlay solution for Android that I know of will work due to the DRM). Really cool they’re starting to open this stuff up at least.
t-writescode 7y ago
This is very interesting. I'm using PiHole; and, it seems that when I click that link, I'm sent to the Chinese version of the Apple site and there's no beta. Very strange! I'm experiencing this issue in Firefox, where I have all my regular ad-blocking, and an incognito window in Chrome, where I don't have any of it. Anyone else seeing this?
ktzar 7y ago
So, Apple is launching an offering on par with Google's seven years later. Is that what we call innovation?
- vonseel 7y ago
  People actually use Google Music? Everyone I know who listens to music via Google-owned properties uses Youtube (free). Others use Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora, in that order of popularity.
  - pier25 7y ago
    I do use Google Play Music. I have minor gripes but in general I like it. You can upload your music and sync it in all your devices. Google is going to kill it and transfer its users/content/playlists to Youtube Music. Not sure what I'm going to do after that happens.
- dbbk 7y ago
  Can you point to anyone calling this innovative? It's just nice to have. Your comment is the only one on Hacker News with that word.
nik736 7y ago
Does not work in Safari for me. When playing songs they simply don't start. Weird.
wpdev_63 7y ago
It's funny that the web app performs better than the desktop app.
new_here 7y ago
Interesting to see Apple starting to move into the web app product space (aside from iCloud, of course). Must say though that performance feels a bit sluggish (esp. hover states) on a Macbook Pro (tested in Firefox, Chrome and Safari). Results of a Lighthouse audit (London): https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaf3gmgo0tpanba/Screenshot%202019-09-06%20at%2011.36.25.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaf3gmgo0tpanba/Screenshot%202019-...
- psv1 7y ago
  Are any of the iCloud web apps viable at all? Each time I've tried using them the performance has been terribly slow.
  - olah_1 7y ago
    iCloud web apps have been completely abandoned. A bug with adding contact photos has existed for like 15 years.
- pier25 7y ago
  Not surprising as they are using Ember (one of the slowest front end frameworks), Moment (super heavy date library), and they don't even minify their code... https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musickit-components/core-02a04998.js https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musick...
  - dbbk 7y ago
    > one of the slowest front end frameworks What metric are you referring to here?
    - pier25 7y ago
      The JS frameworks benchmarks. Here are the latest results: https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.html https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.ht... As you can see Ember 3.11.1 doesn't fare too well in either performance, startup metrics, or memory consumption. Glimmer does a bit better but that not much.
jccalhoun 7y ago
Interesting that Beats 1 doesn't seem to be listed in the radio section. They hyped it so much and it has just faded away.
- dbbk 7y ago
  It's a beta, live radio is forthcoming apparently.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

325 points by aplusplus 7y ago

bwip 7y ago

Ah, nice! I was an early Beats Music subscriber and really lamented the eventual loss of the web interface.

hprotagonist 7y ago

Nice! Now, how about some cross-platform iCloud Drive love? huh?

minimaxir 7y ago
You can access iCloud Drive on the web at iCloud.com
- hprotagonist 7y ago
  i want something a lot more like dropbox or gdrive which have native applications, preferably with command line interfaces.
  - minimaxir 7y ago
    iCloud for Windows includes Drive: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283 If you are talking about Linux then you should be more explicit about that.

trillic 7y ago

Uses 50MB less memory as the sole tab in Firefox than iTunes does on my Mac. Easy decision to switch for normal playback purposes.

bb123 7y ago
Is 50MB that important? I would just use whatever provides you with the best experience (whichever that may be).
- vonseel 7y ago
  He is either on a low powered device or overly focused on details. In my experience I have never needed to look at RAM usage on my 2017 16GB MBP, but sometimes I do check CPU usage just to see how hard that intense process is hitting the computer and when it finishes.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Yes because I have a whole bunch of apps running at once over multiple screens and the extra 50MB per app adds up fast.
AceJohnny2 7y ago
> Uses 50MB less memory as the sole tab in Firefox than iTunes does on my Mac. Well that's because iTunes also includes Calendar, and Mail, and Safari... ;) https://youtu.be/psL_5RIBqnY?t=6254 https://youtu.be/psL_5RIBqnY?t=6254
- saagarjha 7y ago
  I wonder if it’s possible to trick iTunes into browsing the web. It is a web view, after all (or at least the store portion is).
- toxik 7y ago
  Didn't know Apple ever actually made jokes at their own expense. :-)

chrischen 7y ago

I’m curious what framework Apple uses for web now. Last I checked (a week ago) icloud.com is still implemented with SproutCore.

kevin2r 7y ago
Looks like Ember for the most part. Look at the code, it's not minified, yet...
- The_rationalist 7y ago
  It would be nice to save the code and upload it to github.com, is there a tool to make this automatically?
  - wrboyce 7y ago
    wget can do this, the --mirror option is probably a good start along with --page-requisite.
- pier25 7y ago
  Indeed: https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musickit-components/core-02a04998.js https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musick...
- nullvoxpopuli 7y ago
  That's weird. Ember minifies by default
jpgvm 7y ago
This is implemented using Ember which is the spiritual successor to SproutCore
spankalee 7y ago
Looks like a combination of Ember and web components.

RootReducer 7y ago

Very cool! I've loved Apple Music ever since I was able to upload my library using Match, and I feel like its recommendations are getting better and better. Nice to have this in a pinned tab.

dzonga 7y ago

seems they're using Ember.js . Reason I love spotify so much is that it's available on the web, no need to be downloading native apps everywhere. Always bet on the web. also good to see, another web property using Ember. As a react dev, competition is healthy

vonseel 7y ago
I’m surprised. I haven’t heard anything about Ember in years. Not since 2013 or so.
- tuvan 7y ago
  I guess it is still a liked tool, I also read about Riot Games using it for the redone client of League of Legends. https://technology.riotgames.com/news/architecture-league-client-update https://technology.riotgames.com/news/architecture-league-cl...
- tempsy 7y ago
  Is it really that surprising given React is FB and Angular is Google?
  - penagwin 7y ago
    > React is FB and Angular is Google This doesn't matter in practice - they could have freely used either to design the web client at no cost. If they wanted to take over development and go their own direction they just had to fork them.
    - tempsy 7y ago
      Of course in doesn’t matter in practice. It’s the optics.
      - ssalazar 7y ago
        Is there still patent uncertainty around React (or Angular)? Otherwise, Im not sure why anyone outside HN would care about the optics of which front-end library was used.

craze3 7y ago

Wow, us Apple Music users have been waiting for this forever! For anyone who's curious about how this product developed: - April 2016: Apple releases Apple Music API - December 2018: A third-party Apple Music web player is launched on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/playapplemusic-com https://www.producthunt.com/posts/playapplemusic-com (Created by https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=shivdhar https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=shivdhar) - January 2019: Another third-party alternative, Musish, launches on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18940407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18940407 - Now: Apple finally launches their own official player! Makes sense with Spotify being so popular on web...

eddieh 7y ago
Hmmm. This ignores Apple acquiring Lala.com in '09.
- OkGoDoIt 7y ago
  I used to love LaLa. I was so annoyed when Apple killed it. Google Music eventually replaced it for me, but LaLa was truly ahead of its time
ehsankia 7y ago
Spotify has had it since 2008 and Google Play Music since 2011. Blows my mind that people have used this for so long without web support... Then again if you're stuck in the garden, you don't have much choice.
- workaway 7y ago
  Funnily enough, Macs do let you listen to music from your web browser, and don't force you to use iTunes.
mortenjorck 7y ago
I'm not where it fits into the timeline, but Apple has actually offered a rather obscure and limited way to use Apple Music in a browser for some time prior to the launch of the full web client. There's no way to browse, or even launch it directly. You have to search, via Google or other, for an album, and follow the link to what always used to be the iTunes Preview page. You can still listen to the thirty-second previews on this page, but there's a sign-in link in the header that will, quite surprisingly, unlock full playback of the album without launching iTunes. It's hardly the full Apple Music experience – all you get is the album you found and some related links at the bottom, with no access to your library or playlists – but it does work. I'm not really sure what purpose this functionality served, other than perhaps as a testbed for the actual web client, but it's still active for the time being.

Quiza12 7y ago

About time!

erikig 7y ago

Finally. Live web clients are great - it makes it easier to reverse engineer, scrape data and build add-ons. Kudos!

saagarjha 7y ago
I don’t know…personally, Apple’s native apps are easier for me to reverse engineer than most minified obfuscated JavaScript. Then again, I’m not a web developer.
- dewey 7y ago
  Usually you only need to look at the requests anyway and there the web client is probably a bit nicer than iTunes with cert pinning if I remember correctly.

aphextron 7y ago

RIP Spotify.

skinnymuch 7y ago
A mere web client isn’t going to spell the end for Spotify. Why would it?
pedrocx486 7y ago
When Apple decides the mobile app for Music is worth their salt, then maybe. But until then Spotify will rule the market.
- morpheuskafka 7y ago
  The big issue is that it's tied to iOS versions rather that being its own app, as are Pages and GarageBand for example. iOS 13 brings some good improvements, but now we'll have to wait a year for more. Whereas the Spotify team is continuously maintaining and updating the app.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    > The big issue is that it's tied to iOS versions rather that being its own app, as are Pages and GarageBand for example. Pages and GarageBand are released on a schedule that differs from Apple’s operating systems–they’re entirely separate.
hombre_fatal 7y ago
Not really. I've never used Apple Music, but as far as I can tell, it has no real free tier (just song previews) and it has a long way to go if it wants to compete with Spotify's playlists. For example, regional playlists. Apple Music just has "Top 100 {country}" which is just radio pop music. Compare that to Spotify's Explore -> {Mexico,Colombia,Arab,etc} -> all the different subgenres. Spotify's free tier is a no-brainer. I've had to listen to so many Spotify ads at parties and get-togethers that it's clear nobody cares about them either. Unless I'm missing something, Apple Music is just offering a three-month free trial. Also, even if Apple Music managed to be a Spotify clone, doesn't it only work on iOS/OSX?

IronWolve 7y ago

Says my Chrome and Firefox on Linux (ubuntu) not supported. :(

bwip 7y ago
Interesting, I'm using Fx 68.0.2 on Solus without any issues.
frio 7y ago
I get that semi-regularly; do you have strict content blocking + fingerprinters turned on in Firefox? IIRC that advertises that you're on FF ESR and a few sites deem that too old.
sirn 7y ago
It's working fine on my Firefox on KDE Neon (which is just Ubuntu 18.04 plus extra packages) even with strict content blocking and first party isolation on. You need to make sure you have Widevine enabled.

RandallBrown 7y ago

This was the reason I chose Spotify over Apple music all those years ago. Any reason to prefer Apple Music over Spotify? Spotify's recommendations have been absolutely stellar for me over the years and I have a lot of playlists and stuff "locking" me in.

hellcow 7y ago
For the privacy-minded, Apple Music doesn't notify Facebook each time you open the app. Spotify does.
- ValentineC 7y ago
  > For the privacy-minded, Apple Music doesn't notify Facebook each time you open the app. Isn't there a way to disconnect Facebook from one's Spotify account altogether?
  - hellcow 7y ago
    I don't even have a Facebook account. That doesn't stop Facebook's SDK from phoning home every time Spotify is opened.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Is this on the web or on the backend - use an adblocker if not?
- juniper411 7y ago
  That's only if you login with Facebook to Spotify... Which isn't required.
  - hellcow 7y ago
    No, you are mistaken. I have no Facebook account. Spotify phones home to Facebook the moment the app is opened. This can be confirmed with a no-root firewall like Netguard on Android.

mikewhy 7y ago

It appears even Apple themselves do not bother with using the overflow scrolling CSS that iOS needs.

derefr 7y ago
Why would a web client be polished for the one platform that has absolutely no need for it?
mistersquid 7y ago
On my iOS device, the link takes me to the Music app. I have to go back to Safari to see the web interface. That said, I don't see the overflow (iPhone XS).
floatingatoll 7y ago
On iOS, it redirects to the native iTunes App. Even if you somehow manage to overcome that, its presence clearly indicates that iOS isn’t a supported target - at which point, assuming it’s intentionally broken as you describe for non-beta reasons (this is not necessarily true), using that CSS would potentially be wasteful and break non-iOS users!
- mikewhy 7y ago
  > its presence clearly indicates that iOS isn’t a supported target. They added an "open in music" button to the hamburger menu, assumed only on iOS. So they obviously did something for iOS users. Also agreed that this is pretty silly, people will of course just use the native app.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
m0dest 7y ago
Overflow scrolling CSS is deprecated in iOS 13. All scrollable elements now get it by default.

ryanianian 7y ago

Whatever. I was really hoping to see some improvements to the music-organization and display aspects here but it looks like they just re-implemented the weird parts of iTunes using html5. For example: It drives me crazy how Apple Music emphasizes the idea that "Recently Added" is only grouped by albums. I don't add whole albums to my library, I add individual songs. I want to play all the songs I've recently added because hey it's new music I like. Why can't I get an auto-updating playlist of all the songs I've recently added? None of the cloud-based Apple platforms support smart-playlists and the "Recently Added" section only lets you play songs from an individual album from which you may have only added a single song. It's super weird. - Apple music seems to really push you into either whole albums or the overly-generic editor-curated playlists.

MapleWalnut 7y ago
You can create a genius (or maybe it’s called smart) playlist in iTunes that is ordered by recently added. It does exactly what you need.
- ryanianian 7y ago
  Smart playlists are not displayed on cloud-based platforms (e.g. this webapp, sonos integrations, etc). I presume this is because they didn't want to implement the business-logic both on the server and on the native iTunes app.
  - radicaldreamer 7y ago
    I’ve never figured out why some Apple products are immensely well designed and some have basic aspects which don’t make sense and I guess it comes down to the people working on the products using them day to day or some exec who really uses an app day to day championing UX improvements. Music in its current iteration seems driven by Apple’s need to become a services company and the music app which really last spoke to people internally was one in which your own music is portable, not a steaming music service.
bendavis381 7y ago

flixic 7y ago

Very nice to see them provide a dark CSS theme via prefers-color-scheme, following system preference.

The_rationalist 7y ago
Yes, future is now.
saagarjha 7y ago
I would not be surprised if they have this because it’s used in the Music app.

eof 7y ago

I recently switched to a windows machine from Mac at work, and brought in iTunes to listen to Apple Music. It’s really as bad as I remember. Really great timing on this for me.

hsk823 7y ago

So much for https://musi.sh https://musi.sh

mosselman 7y ago
I was using this on Ubuntu, works great, but I'd rather use something official.

president 7y ago

As much as I commend them for creating a web client for their music service, the UI looks like it was designed by an amateur. Can't really put my finger on it but it's something to do with the content alignment, the gradients used. I would have expected better from Apple.

lainwashere 7y ago

This is great, no longer trying to get iTunes working in wine on linux, just play the music straight from the browser, and if you want a native app, Windows and MacOS has iTunes, no electron non-sense.

eddieh 7y ago
Actually Apple Music in iTunes is just a web view that leaks like crazy, to the point of making iTunes slow to a crawl, if you're quickly navigating through artists and albums. Not much better than Electron IMO. Apple Music in the browser seems like there isn't much hope of a truly native experience now.
- kevin2r 7y ago
  What about the new Music app coming in MacOS Catalina? Does it implements the views in html5?
  - eddieh 7y ago
    I haven't tried Catalina yet. I really hope it isn't a web view. That would really defeat what I hoped they where doing by splitting iTunes up.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      The Apple Music portion is a web view: wherever it crashes (which is quite often, sadly) it shows the JavaScript backtrace.
      - eddieh 7y ago
        Terrible news. :(
  - ashish-gandhi 7y ago
    The Podcasts and TV apps are native Catalyst (iPad apps on macOS) apps. The Music app is still some sort of Frankenstein iTunes thing. The Library section views are native. The Apple Music section is still web. It is still slow compared to Spotify but much better compared to how it is in iTunes.

sys_64738 7y ago

Messages beta should be along shortly! Fingers crossed.

ulkesh 7y ago
Even though many providers now have end-to-end encryption with web interfaces for messaging, Apple has maintained that it can't be done securely. We shall see if they have changed their minds.

Mikeb85 7y ago

Apple finally comes out with something Spotify and Google have had for years... Good job.

thekyle 7y ago
Well Google is certainly trying their hardest to give Apple the upper hand by discontinuing Google Play Music in favor of YouTube Music. I don't know a single person who actually likes the new YouTube Music. I ended up switching to Spotify as a result.

tptacek 7y ago

Can't link directly to a personal playlist (even if it's "published" to Apple's weird social network) for someone not already logged in (they just get the Apple Music landing page). So close! They're so smart, they'll figure this out some day!

wyclif 7y ago
Right, and that's one of the reasons why I use Spotify and won't use Apple Music.
- wyclif 7y ago
  Actually, this won't even let me sign in with my Apple ID. It accepts my username/password, and prompts me to "Try it now", but when I click that, I get a drop down telling me I need to open the Apple Music client. Bravo, Apple.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    (It’s a beta.)
- deaddodo 7y ago
  I used to use them when they were MOG. Between becoming Beats (which I stuck to for awhile) and then Apple trying to wall garden them, I just ended up using Google Play Music.

major505 7y ago

wow... that took a long time to happen.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

I’m so sad that most consumers want to pay for things like this or Spotify. I only buy digital albums, almost always from Bandcamp or bespoke band-specific sites, or Amazon if there’s no other choice. Always just a straight download of mp3 or ogg formats, backed up and accessible in cloud storage. I use VLC player on all my devices, and syncing music with the VLC wifi download tool is so extremely easy and simple. I have all the music I could ever possibly want, easily accessible on all devices and easy to sync on all devices, no internet connection needed, no monthly charge or user account, no ads, can transfer it all to any new devices I get with no vendor lock-in. I just can’t believe the populace was suckered into music streaming instead of music owning. So sad.

eyelidlessness 7y ago
I also prefer to purchase albums to own in a format of my choosing and you sound like a jerk. Why do you feel the need to crap on things other people enjoy and don’t affect you?
dmitriid 7y ago
Because streaming: - is available almost anywhere: your phone, your car, your smart waffle maker. - leads to much better music discovery through curated playlists, “discover weekly”s, radio stations based on songs/artists/genres - you can instantly share your music and music tastes with friends, leading to even more music discovery - many more other minor things (like creating playlists for parties etc.)
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  Streaming isn’t available where there’s no internet connection, unless you just happen to have cached what you’re looking for. Whereas my entire music collection is available any time. I also heavily dispute that Spotify, Apple, etc lead to better search or discovery.
  - dmitriid 7y ago
    > Whereas my entire music collection is available any time. You carry your “easily accessible cloud storage” everywhere with you? > I also heavily dispute that Spotify, Apple, etc lead to better search or discovery. You don’t “dispute”. You “firmly believe”. As others already pointed out: I’d never have discovered as much music within my music tastes as I’ve done with Spotify. There’s no chance in hell I could’ve stumbled on some indie band that is US-only while leaving in Sweden. There are Swedish bands which are suddenly popular in Brasil and they go there on tours, which they never would’ve done without Spotify. Etc. etc.

copperx 7y ago

Has anyone noticed this? On the native apps, when you click on an album, the most popular songs have a star icon next to them. I like that. The third party web apps that consume the Apple Music API don't have the feature, but I thought Apple's official web app would have it, but they don't! I hope they add this feature to the app (and API!).

dewey 7y ago

Now that there’s one more platform where Apple Music is available it would be really great if we could have the playback queue synced between them. I don’t want to recreate my listening queue I every time I’m changing my device.

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baroffoos 7y ago

Requires DRM to be turned on for it to work. No thanks.

duskwuff 7y ago
Well, uh, yes. You really expected them to let you download an unencumbered copy of any song in the iTunes catalog?
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Yes, I expect that a service I paid for does not include untrusted malware. Thankfully there are other streaming services which do not do this.
  - lxgr 7y ago
    Could you name one please? (That has a comparable catalog to Spotify/Apple Music)
    - baroffoos 7y ago
      I used to use soundcloud which has a fairly large catalog of music if you have the paid version. I eventually canceled it because they had an annoying habit of replacing tracks with random remasters so something in your liked list could change to a different version that is much worse. These days I either use bandcamp or torrents.
m0dest 7y ago
The million dollar question: Which DRM? The fact that Apple is using third-party DRM in a web app is news. Apple TV / iTunes videos never had a web app, and presumably DRM was a big factor.

baby 7y ago

I’m really sad about the state of international music on youtube. Asian music is completely absent. Worse, all Chinese alternatives are blocked in the US.

Fr0styMatt88 7y ago

It’d be awesome if they did this next with their movie and TV stuff. I have a bunch of stuff purchased on iTunes that I can’t play on my TV (out of HDMI ports and TV stand space and no AirPlay solution for Android that I know of will work due to the DRM). Really cool they’re starting to open this stuff up at least.

t-writescode 7y ago

This is very interesting. I'm using PiHole; and, it seems that when I click that link, I'm sent to the Chinese version of the Apple site and there's no beta. Very strange! I'm experiencing this issue in Firefox, where I have all my regular ad-blocking, and an incognito window in Chrome, where I don't have any of it. Anyone else seeing this?

ktzar 7y ago

So, Apple is launching an offering on par with Google's seven years later. Is that what we call innovation?

vonseel 7y ago
People actually use Google Music? Everyone I know who listens to music via Google-owned properties uses Youtube (free). Others use Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora, in that order of popularity.
- pier25 7y ago
  I do use Google Play Music. I have minor gripes but in general I like it. You can upload your music and sync it in all your devices. Google is going to kill it and transfer its users/content/playlists to Youtube Music. Not sure what I'm going to do after that happens.
dbbk 7y ago
Can you point to anyone calling this innovative? It's just nice to have. Your comment is the only one on Hacker News with that word.

nik736 7y ago

Does not work in Safari for me. When playing songs they simply don't start. Weird.

wpdev_63 7y ago

It's funny that the web app performs better than the desktop app.

new_here 7y ago

Interesting to see Apple starting to move into the web app product space (aside from iCloud, of course). Must say though that performance feels a bit sluggish (esp. hover states) on a Macbook Pro (tested in Firefox, Chrome and Safari). Results of a Lighthouse audit (London): https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaf3gmgo0tpanba/Screenshot%202019-09-06%20at%2011.36.25.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/jaf3gmgo0tpanba/Screenshot%202019-...

psv1 7y ago
Are any of the iCloud web apps viable at all? Each time I've tried using them the performance has been terribly slow.
- olah_1 7y ago
  iCloud web apps have been completely abandoned. A bug with adding contact photos has existed for like 15 years.
pier25 7y ago
Not surprising as they are using Ember (one of the slowest front end frameworks), Moment (super heavy date library), and they don't even minify their code... https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musickit-components/core-02a04998.js https://js-cdn.music.apple.com/musickit/v2/components/musick...
- dbbk 7y ago
  > one of the slowest front end frameworks What metric are you referring to here?
  - pier25 7y ago
    The JS frameworks benchmarks. Here are the latest results: https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.html https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-benchmark/current.ht... As you can see Ember 3.11.1 doesn't fare too well in either performance, startup metrics, or memory consumption. Glimmer does a bit better but that not much.

jccalhoun 7y ago

Interesting that Beats 1 doesn't seem to be listed in the radio section. They hyped it so much and it has just faded away.

dbbk 7y ago
It's a beta, live radio is forthcoming apparently.

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