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Yes this is big, with Apple Music I much less frequently have anything promoted at me unless I’m specifically looking for it. Apple doesn’t twiddle with its UI

Yes this is big, with Apple Music I much less frequently have anything promoted at me unless I’m specifically looking for it. Apple doesn’t twiddle with its UI nearly as much as Spotify does which is nice too. It has its shortcomings, but the consistency means that workarounds stick. Finally, Apple is surprisingly more permissive with Apple Music’s SDK than Spotify is, even allowing full streaming/playback capabilities (a capability Spotify removed from its SDKs several years ago), which means that there are now several alternative front ends for Apple Music available that can play music themselves — alternative Spotify front ends can only ever control the official Spotify app and Spotify Connect devices which is a real shame.

codyb 5y ago
My favorite part of Apple Music has been the ability to share playlists through iMessage to my friends and family although I don't do that enough. Then, I love the Essentials playlists, basically, if you search for any large enough artist they'll have a curated playlist always called Essentials which makes it easy to find. The curation is usually spot on although there's been one or two that felt like misses out of maybe fifteen or twenty that I've tried. Finally, the Apple premium plan for 30 bucks a month, five members, 1TB online storage, Apple Music and TV (couldn't really care less about sharing my workouts or Arcade, but those are there too) is a pretty sweet deal for my family and I. Dunno if Spotify or Tidal have things similar. And there is some funkiness around sharing occasionally as I'm not sure if my dad ever got access to Music, his account may have been in a weird state since he already had a subscription, unsure, will ask later. My dad likes that for his own music that Apple doesn't have, if he imports it to his Music app on his computer, Apple will auto upload to the cloud so he can stream it from other devices. I haven't used this much but it sounds pretty neat.
codetrotter 5y ago
> alternative Spotify front ends can only ever control the official Spotify app and Spotify Connect devices which is a real shame I haven’t used Spotify for a long time since switching from Spotify Premium to Apple Music, but I know of a third party open source library that might be of interest to people who have Spotify Premium and would like to explore alternative frontends: > librespot is an open source client library for Spotify. It enables applications to use Spotify's service to control and play music via various backends, and to act as a Spotify Connect receiver. https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot More details from same GitHub page: > A sample program implementing a headless Spotify Connect receiver is provided. Once you've built librespot, run it using : > target/release/librespot --name DEVICENAME > The above is a minimal example. Here is a more fully fledged one: > target/release/librespot -n "Librespot" -b 320 -c ./cache --enable-volume-normalisation --initial-volume 75 --device-type avr > The above command will create a receiver named Librespot, with bitrate set to 320 kbps, initial volume at 75%, with volume normalisation enabled, and the device displayed in the app as an Audio/Video Receiver. A folder named cache will be created/used in the current directory, and be used to cache audio data and credentials.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  librespot is a great project, but I haven’t used it to resurrect the native Spotify client I had been working on because it’s technically reverse engineered, which means users of my client risk having their accounts banned (however unlikely that may be).
basisword 5y ago
The API/SDK seems pretty good. I found this great seemingly full featured client last week that I've been enjoying: https://github.com/ciderapp/Cider https://github.com/ciderapp/Cider

codyb 5y ago

My favorite part of Apple Music has been the ability to share playlists through iMessage to my friends and family although I don't do that enough. Then, I love the Essentials playlists, basically, if you search for any large enough artist they'll have a curated playlist always called Essentials which makes it easy to find. The curation is usually spot on although there's been one or two that felt like misses out of maybe fifteen or twenty that I've tried. Finally, the Apple premium plan for 30 bucks a month, five members, 1TB online storage, Apple Music and TV (couldn't really care less about sharing my workouts or Arcade, but those are there too) is a pretty sweet deal for my family and I. Dunno if Spotify or Tidal have things similar. And there is some funkiness around sharing occasionally as I'm not sure if my dad ever got access to Music, his account may have been in a weird state since he already had a subscription, unsure, will ask later. My dad likes that for his own music that Apple doesn't have, if he imports it to his Music app on his computer, Apple will auto upload to the cloud so he can stream it from other devices. I haven't used this much but it sounds pretty neat.

codetrotter 5y ago

> alternative Spotify front ends can only ever control the official Spotify app and Spotify Connect devices which is a real shame I haven’t used Spotify for a long time since switching from Spotify Premium to Apple Music, but I know of a third party open source library that might be of interest to people who have Spotify Premium and would like to explore alternative frontends: > librespot is an open source client library for Spotify. It enables applications to use Spotify's service to control and play music via various backends, and to act as a Spotify Connect receiver. https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot More details from same GitHub page: > A sample program implementing a headless Spotify Connect receiver is provided. Once you've built librespot, run it using : > target/release/librespot --name DEVICENAME > The above is a minimal example. Here is a more fully fledged one: > target/release/librespot -n "Librespot" -b 320 -c ./cache --enable-volume-normalisation --initial-volume 75 --device-type avr > The above command will create a receiver named Librespot, with bitrate set to 320 kbps, initial volume at 75%, with volume normalisation enabled, and the device displayed in the app as an Audio/Video Receiver. A folder named cache will be created/used in the current directory, and be used to cache audio data and credentials.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
librespot is a great project, but I haven’t used it to resurrect the native Spotify client I had been working on because it’s technically reverse engineered, which means users of my client risk having their accounts banned (however unlikely that may be).

basisword 5y ago

The API/SDK seems pretty good. I found this great seemingly full featured client last week that I've been enjoying: https://github.com/ciderapp/Cider https://github.com/ciderapp/Cider