8 ms·

The one thing that sours the entire experience for me is that songs take like 5-15s to start playing when selecting one that isn't super popular. This happens

The one thing that sours the entire experience for me is that songs take like 5-15s to start playing when selecting one that isn't super popular. This happens on my ipad, mac, android phone. It feels like some server is spinning up a hard drive to stream it. Apart from that, why the hell is the title and artist only shown in one line that starts scolling instead of showing multiple lines if it doesn't fit, at least in the album view and the player. It's such a pain listening to classical music when the composer and the performer and section are not visible without playing it and waiting for the line to scroll, like wtf.

bowsamic 4y ago
This is why I never used Apple Music. I’m too used to how instant Spotify is
matheusmoreira 4y ago
These streaming platforms are so bad. We had better software in the 90s and 00s. These trillion dollar corporations can't beat literally decades old technology. The only reason these little services even exist in the first place is to satisfy the whims of copyright monopolists. How many more steps backwards must this industry take before they're satisfied?
- josephg 4y ago
  I’ve been seriously considering going back to owning a big library of mp3s. I love Spotify for its suggestions - well, when it’s not just playing the same 8 songs on repeat. And I love having my music available on all my devices. But the experience of playing songs feels like it’s taken a big step backwards into some sort of weird corporate happy land. The fact I we still can’t remove podcasts from Spotify is ridiculous. I tried Apple Music but I bounced almost immediately because of the UI.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    > I’ve been seriously considering going back to owning a big library of mp3s. I never left! Every once in a while I go and try Streaming again to see if they have gotten their shit together, and they still haven't. My hand-curated collection of MP3s, hand-ripped by me using the quality settings I like, carefully stored in a directory structure I understand, with filenames that make sense to me, meticulously tagged with the right metadata, gives me everything I need for music listening, and it doesn't require the Internet or a subscription to play. With hard drive sizes today, the cost of storage for a library of every music I would ever want to listen to is a rounding error. I don't care about discovery and engagement and royalty costs and all those metrics streaming companies optimize for.
    - freedomben 4y ago
      What platform (linux/mac/windows) are you on, and which apps do you use to manage/consume it? Do you use a streamer (like plex, jellyfin, etc) or do you load your whole collection on every device?
      - ryandrake 4y ago
        Debian Linux for networked storage. Kodi as client on home theater system. rsync or iTunes to sync to USB devices or to a 15 year old iPod classic.
  - hirvi74 4y ago
    > I tried Apple Music but I bounced almost immediately because of the UI. I feel like everyone says this, but Apple Music's UI is why I left Spotify.
  - infinityio 4y ago
    Have you tried plex/jelly-amp? Plexamp attempts recommendations and does a good job streaming / keeping media between devices (although for some reason you can't copy the entire library, only playlists/albums/artists?)
- dash2 4y ago
  >These streaming platforms are so bad. We had better software in the 90s and 00s. You are sitting in a chair in the sky. I can play any music I want right now for a £10/month fee. In the 90s I was buying CDs with five good songs and five filler for £15. In the 2000s I was finding stuff that I could pirate, downloading it, and playing it on my beige desktop computer because there was no such thing as a smartphone.
  - madengr 4y ago
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    > I can play any music I want right now for a £10/month fee. Any music? Nope. Maybe the popular stuff that plays on the radio.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Oh please. And in the "old days" you couldn't buy just any random indie music in a record store either. Yes, "any" music is obviously an exaggeration for a mainstream music streaming service. I'm guessing I own a few things that aren't on Apple Music or Spotify. But the vast vast majority of music most people in the West listen to is on the streaming services. It certainly isn't just Top 40.
    - MontyCarloHall 4y ago
      I personally don’t find that to be true. Time for some objective anecdata. There is a site [0] that ranks how “mainstream” one’s listening habits are based on their last.fm profile. Punching in my username, I get ranked as 12% mainstream (i.e., only 12% of last.fm users listen to music more obscure than mine). Keep in mind, this is relative to last.fm users, whose musical tastes are probably more obscure than the general population. Approximately 95% of my lossless library is on Spotify or Apple Music. So I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job maintaining a comprehensive catalog. [0] https://mainstream.ghan.nl/ https://mainstream.ghan.nl/
      - 4y ago
- npteljes 4y ago
  We need to distinguish ability and willingness. And nobody will ever be satisfied, it's a constant struggle for control, from all sides. For what they cost, I think the streaming services in general offer a good deal. Not that I'm overly satisfied with any of them.
- SheinhardtWigCo 4y ago
  Why compete on merit when you have an insurmountable marketing/advertising advantage? A feature of the modern smartphone ownership experience is being bombarded with ads for clones of existing businesses, the best of which are almost as good as those pre-existing offerings. The Music, TV, News, and Books icons on the home screen are really just ads. Each of these "apps" contains a prominent ad, followed by a torrent of push notification ads. In a way, the home screen is a re-imagining of AOL from the 90s: a crippled proprietary take on the web, spoon-fed to a captive audience, lacking the egalitarianism that allows companies like Spotify and Netflix to thrive.
jolux 4y ago
Huh, I’ve never experienced that 15s delay, and I definitely listen to some obscure stuff.
Gigachad 4y ago
I was astounded at how bad Apple Music is. I’m not talking about missing features or lack of polish, but that I’d click play on a song and a different song on the list would start playing. And this bug persisted for months on the web version before I left. The mobile app was just so lacking as well. Not at all what I expect from apple. Honestly the only reason Spotify still exists is because Apple and Google are doing such a dismal job.
- hirvi74 4y ago
  > Not at all what I expect from apple. It what happens when you use Leetcode proficiency to find your developers.
- freedomben 4y ago
  Youtube Music (Google Music successor) is shaping up really well. It was buggy for a while (and in fact that exact bug of clicking on a song and a different song playing was on youtube music), but either I've got major Stockholm Syndrome or it's gotten really polished. All that said though, G killed the public API for music which is a horrible tragedy to me. I may yet still go back to spotify just for the API.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smugma 4y ago
Apple has acknowledged the challenges of searching for and browsing classical music. They acquired Primephonic to address this, but no results yet. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-classical-music-streaming-service-primephonic/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-classi...
sebastien_bois 4y ago
>songs take like 5-15s to start playing when selecting one that isn't super popular. It feels like some server is spinning up a hard drive to stream it. If it's really that long, it sounds like it's literally spinning up an actual vinyl record.
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  Was thinking a tape robot, but that’s cool too.
FunnyBadger 4y ago
This is why I only buy music and always download it to local storage. I DO NOT TRUST APPLE anymore.

bowsamic 4y ago

This is why I never used Apple Music. I’m too used to how instant Spotify is

matheusmoreira 4y ago

These streaming platforms are so bad. We had better software in the 90s and 00s. These trillion dollar corporations can't beat literally decades old technology. The only reason these little services even exist in the first place is to satisfy the whims of copyright monopolists. How many more steps backwards must this industry take before they're satisfied?

josephg 4y ago
I’ve been seriously considering going back to owning a big library of mp3s. I love Spotify for its suggestions - well, when it’s not just playing the same 8 songs on repeat. And I love having my music available on all my devices. But the experience of playing songs feels like it’s taken a big step backwards into some sort of weird corporate happy land. The fact I we still can’t remove podcasts from Spotify is ridiculous. I tried Apple Music but I bounced almost immediately because of the UI.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  > I’ve been seriously considering going back to owning a big library of mp3s. I never left! Every once in a while I go and try Streaming again to see if they have gotten their shit together, and they still haven't. My hand-curated collection of MP3s, hand-ripped by me using the quality settings I like, carefully stored in a directory structure I understand, with filenames that make sense to me, meticulously tagged with the right metadata, gives me everything I need for music listening, and it doesn't require the Internet or a subscription to play. With hard drive sizes today, the cost of storage for a library of every music I would ever want to listen to is a rounding error. I don't care about discovery and engagement and royalty costs and all those metrics streaming companies optimize for.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    What platform (linux/mac/windows) are you on, and which apps do you use to manage/consume it? Do you use a streamer (like plex, jellyfin, etc) or do you load your whole collection on every device?
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      Debian Linux for networked storage. Kodi as client on home theater system. rsync or iTunes to sync to USB devices or to a 15 year old iPod classic.
- hirvi74 4y ago
  > I tried Apple Music but I bounced almost immediately because of the UI. I feel like everyone says this, but Apple Music's UI is why I left Spotify.
- infinityio 4y ago
  Have you tried plex/jelly-amp? Plexamp attempts recommendations and does a good job streaming / keeping media between devices (although for some reason you can't copy the entire library, only playlists/albums/artists?)
dash2 4y ago
>These streaming platforms are so bad. We had better software in the 90s and 00s. You are sitting in a chair in the sky. I can play any music I want right now for a £10/month fee. In the 90s I was buying CDs with five good songs and five filler for £15. In the 2000s I was finding stuff that I could pirate, downloading it, and playing it on my beige desktop computer because there was no such thing as a smartphone.
- madengr 4y ago
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  > I can play any music I want right now for a £10/month fee. Any music? Nope. Maybe the popular stuff that plays on the radio.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Oh please. And in the "old days" you couldn't buy just any random indie music in a record store either. Yes, "any" music is obviously an exaggeration for a mainstream music streaming service. I'm guessing I own a few things that aren't on Apple Music or Spotify. But the vast vast majority of music most people in the West listen to is on the streaming services. It certainly isn't just Top 40.
  - MontyCarloHall 4y ago
    I personally don’t find that to be true. Time for some objective anecdata. There is a site [0] that ranks how “mainstream” one’s listening habits are based on their last.fm profile. Punching in my username, I get ranked as 12% mainstream (i.e., only 12% of last.fm users listen to music more obscure than mine). Keep in mind, this is relative to last.fm users, whose musical tastes are probably more obscure than the general population. Approximately 95% of my lossless library is on Spotify or Apple Music. So I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job maintaining a comprehensive catalog. [0] https://mainstream.ghan.nl/ https://mainstream.ghan.nl/
    - 4y ago
npteljes 4y ago
We need to distinguish ability and willingness. And nobody will ever be satisfied, it's a constant struggle for control, from all sides. For what they cost, I think the streaming services in general offer a good deal. Not that I'm overly satisfied with any of them.
SheinhardtWigCo 4y ago
Why compete on merit when you have an insurmountable marketing/advertising advantage? A feature of the modern smartphone ownership experience is being bombarded with ads for clones of existing businesses, the best of which are almost as good as those pre-existing offerings. The Music, TV, News, and Books icons on the home screen are really just ads. Each of these "apps" contains a prominent ad, followed by a torrent of push notification ads. In a way, the home screen is a re-imagining of AOL from the 90s: a crippled proprietary take on the web, spoon-fed to a captive audience, lacking the egalitarianism that allows companies like Spotify and Netflix to thrive.

jolux 4y ago

Huh, I’ve never experienced that 15s delay, and I definitely listen to some obscure stuff.

Gigachad 4y ago

I was astounded at how bad Apple Music is. I’m not talking about missing features or lack of polish, but that I’d click play on a song and a different song on the list would start playing. And this bug persisted for months on the web version before I left. The mobile app was just so lacking as well. Not at all what I expect from apple. Honestly the only reason Spotify still exists is because Apple and Google are doing such a dismal job.

hirvi74 4y ago
> Not at all what I expect from apple. It what happens when you use Leetcode proficiency to find your developers.
freedomben 4y ago
Youtube Music (Google Music successor) is shaping up really well. It was buggy for a while (and in fact that exact bug of clicking on a song and a different song playing was on youtube music), but either I've got major Stockholm Syndrome or it's gotten really polished. All that said though, G killed the public API for music which is a horrible tragedy to me. I may yet still go back to spotify just for the API.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

smugma 4y ago

Apple has acknowledged the challenges of searching for and browsing classical music. They acquired Primephonic to address this, but no results yet. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-classical-music-streaming-service-primephonic/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/08/apple-acquires-classi...

sebastien_bois 4y ago

>songs take like 5-15s to start playing when selecting one that isn't super popular. It feels like some server is spinning up a hard drive to stream it. If it's really that long, it sounds like it's literally spinning up an actual vinyl record.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
Was thinking a tape robot, but that’s cool too.

FunnyBadger 4y ago

This is why I only buy music and always download it to local storage. I DO NOT TRUST APPLE anymore.