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I tried switching to Apple Music because they threw me a good deal and god it was awful compared to Spotify. No way to manage a queue for some reason on the mob

I tried switching to Apple Music because they threw me a good deal and god it was awful compared to Spotify. No way to manage a queue for some reason on the mobile app, you can only play a song next or stop the current song. iTunes on windows is fucking traaaaash I cannot believe they ship it and call it acceptable. Every search and navigation action takes many seconds, and you have to do a lot of navigation. I have symmetrical gigabit internet. Maybe it's better on MacOS, but that's not the desktop I use for music listening. Spotify has their client completely, perfectly nailed. It is fast and works about the same everywhere. Period? That's it, it's not like the bar is even that high lol. I tried Tidal a few months back as well and it just wasn't ready yet. Edit: So I've been told Apple Music does have a queue management UI, my bad, will leave my false rant out of shame. There is also a preview build of an iTunes replacement. I wanted to like Apple Music because it costs the same as Spotify and at least offers lossless playback on some tracks (I like to think I can tell the difference in my studio setup). And they don't give Joe Rogan a bunch of money, not keen on that guy. I'll revisit it in a year :)

samcat116 4y ago
You can 100% edit the queue on the mobile app, its the three line icon in the bottom right of the now playing screen. Theres also a new dedicated Apple Music app for Windows to replace the awful iTunes.
- corytheboyd 4y ago
  Well fuck me for never finding both of those lol. The first thing is my fault for just not discovering that feature, but how the heck was I supposed to know about Apple Music, they told me to download iTunes when I signed up. Sigh.
  - samcat116 4y ago
    Its in Preview as of a few weeks ago, so not really on you at all. Its pretty decent though, but I'd say Spotify still has them beat in terms of UX.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  > Theres also a new dedicated Apple Music app for Windows to replace the awful iTunes. Urgh. At least "awful" iTunes lets me manually move tracks over into the Podcasts section, which is perfect for managing my collection of various radio comedy show. Looking at the precedent on native Macs, post-splitup that'll no longer be possible, so thanks for nothing…
nerdjon 4y ago
I have never understood the complaints about Apple Music, it does what I need it to do. As far as no way to manage a queue, it very much does have this option. If you have multiple songs in your up next there is the "hamburger" button next to each and you can move it around. And then when you add a song you have "play next" and "play last". If you add mutiple "play nexts" they all go into your queue, last in first out. The opposite is true for "play last". As far as the speed goes, I have never experienced that. It searches as you type and it is very quick for me.
- retrac98 4y ago
  I have to close and reopen it at least once a day because it just completely breaks. A few common issues: - Songs won't play. - Buttons become completely unresponsive. - The search won't take any input (can't type in the box) - Songs take 5+ seconds to start playing. - I get a mysterious "you are not authorized to play this song" message. All I want to do is find and play music, and manage playlists. It's utter trash.
  - dmonitor 4y ago
    sounds like you’re using the android app while the person above uses ios?
    - retrac98 4y ago
      No, MacOS
  - jtbayly 4y ago
    "you are not authorized to play this song" I get this probably 25% of the times I try to play any song at all. On my iPhone 14 pro.
everdrive 4y ago
Especially discouraging since iTunes was a great app more than a decade ago.
- corytheboyd 4y ago
  Agreed! Loved using iTunes with my music library back in the pre-streaming days. I'll admit I was also instantly sold on streaming as the replacement to it, though it took a while for Spotify to build up their licensing game (remember when The Beatles didn't exist on streaming services?)
- ghaff 4y ago
  iTunes has never been a great app IMO. I also switched from JRiver Media Center years ago because it became more and more difficult to use it to manage an iPod. Though, to be honest, these days--after I finally got my music library somewhat cleaned up a couple years ago--I mostly just use streaming and don't bother with curating my library much.
- wyre 4y ago
  Maybe greater than it is now but WinAmp, Foobar2K, and VLC were all better than iTunes a decade ago.
likeabbas 4y ago
My only complaint about Spotify is they don't have offer a lossless quality stream. I have a $10k speaker / amp set up that kicks ass, but I can't play tracks from Spotify.
- corytheboyd 4y ago
  Yeah that's really what pushed me enough to switch as well. Not a $10k setup but it gets closer every day haha... Tidal exists but didn't have much of a catalog last I tried it. Apple Music will totally work fine once the desktop app is replaced, so I guess we just wait.
  - likeabbas 4y ago
    I bought my equipment from a music store that was shutting down, so I got my $10k equipment for $4800! I currently use Amazon Music for my high quality streaming but the app is horrible.
    - corytheboyd 4y ago
      Damn that is the deal of a lifetime! I gotta look out more for deals like that
      - likeabbas 4y ago
        It really was the deal of a life time. Owner was retiring. They were only open for a few hours on Saturdays the last few months of operations. The closer you could hold out to buy, the better deal you got. I even talked them down a grand! I hope you get a chance one day
- leonidasv 4y ago
  I have a Chi-fi $160 setup and Spotify is noticeably worse. Almost no sound stage, noise floor on old recordings is absurd. "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac and "Listen to the Music" by The Doobie Brothers are two of the most noticeably songs for me. Hi-Fi setups are getting cheaper and cheaper thanks to China, I think most of the "audiophile" thing will soon be mainstream (for example, I've always mocked audiophiles online and now here I am; I always discover some friend that has bought VX earphones; I made my girlfriend listen to some songs on my setup, and now she's considering buying some entry-level equipment too - and she was the kind of person that just used any $5~10 earphones -, etc). Spotify is probably missing a big opportunity here.
S_A_P 4y ago
I don’t use Apple Music on windows so can’t argue with the bad client experience, but Spotify isn’t exactly perfect either. To me the issue with iTunes and Spotify is the fact that to be a viable business the streaming model is going to squeeze all artists into making a between 1-2 grand for a million streams if they are that lucky. Tidal promises more money but once the realize those economics don’t work and get large enough they will follow suit. What has happened is also an unprecedented breach of contract for older artists out there without streaming provisions in their contracts. I only know of a handful of instances where the artists have addressed this but I know of at least 1 example of a major label contract that specifically says “in the case of unforeseen circumstances (streaming, mind beaming, any new unavailable technology) the artist will split the proceeds 50/50. This same artist is not getting 50% of the revenue and is in fact getting the same (awful) deal as everyone else. [0] What Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal have done is create the same hierarchy that existed in the days of physical media where they pour money into the top1% of artists and have effectively made everyone else much worse off. [1] Anyone can make and release music today but it was hardly democratized. They same forces in the record industry have figured out how to screw streaming up in their favor now too. [0]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/black-sheep-files-class-action-203502922.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/black-sheep-files-class-actio... [1] https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU The 200 million subscribers of Spotify are subsidizing things like Joe Rogans 100 million contract and some of the a lister musicians as part of their 360 deal.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > They same forces in the record industry have figured out how to screw streaming up in their favor now too. That force is simply the economics of a winner take all market, especially where the product is a luxury good that people can do without. The record labels do not earn huge profit margins either.
Euphorbium 4y ago
Interoperability between spotify clients is trash, and has been for years. All of them have entirely different functions and controlling one from the other works only like 15% of the time.
thiht 4y ago
Same here, I tried Apple Music for the last 3 months because I got it for free, and it’s soooo bad. Just this afternoon, it crashed like 3 times when changing song. Just that, I skipped a song and it crashed. The UI also becomes irresponsive whenever a song is loading. The other day I tried to add a song to my playlist and it just refused to do it without any error message. I probably lost some songs because of that, believing I added them to my playlist but it failed to add them. Also the recommendations are a joke. Apple Music is utterly incapable of making good recommendations. It also strongly believes that because I’m French, every single playlist should contain 50% of French songs. Spotify’s UI is really not good, but Apple Music is worst in class. I could go on and on for an hour about what’s wrong with Apple Music.
- echelon 4y ago
  The apex tech companies are spinning up a lot of music/movie/game/etc. divisions to capture eyeballs and put up a wedge against entertainment. They're mostly not great. Google Play Music, a product Google killed, was a fantastic music service. It had incredible customization, great discovery, and worked with a wide variety of 3rd party clients. They killed it and replaced it with the utter garbage that is YouTube Music. I still can't fathom why.
lukeschlather 4y ago
I'm sure Spotify is the best of the streaming clients (I use it constantly,) but the playback experience is still worse than any of the mid-2000's players. Even Windows iTunes was better.
- Spivak 4y ago
  What was the difference? I don’t really have any complaints but also never experienced this era.
  - lukeschlather 4y ago
    iTunes (or any other player) could display hundreds or thousands of songs in a single playlist and would happily sort them or filter them instantly based on tags or whatever. Spotify, everything is lazy-loaded and I frequently get random elements just failing to load, or the entire player even crashes (like, at least every other month.) And, I know I say thousands but I get this sort of behavior in Spotify when I've only got like ~50 songs in a playlist. And of course it can only do rudimentary sorting/filtering based on tags.
deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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danielvaughn 4y ago
I have my gripes with Spotify (I hate how they emphasize the cover albums rather than the titles, makes it really difficult to navigate IMO), but yes they are leagues above Apple Music.

samcat116 4y ago

You can 100% edit the queue on the mobile app, its the three line icon in the bottom right of the now playing screen. Theres also a new dedicated Apple Music app for Windows to replace the awful iTunes.

corytheboyd 4y ago
Well fuck me for never finding both of those lol. The first thing is my fault for just not discovering that feature, but how the heck was I supposed to know about Apple Music, they told me to download iTunes when I signed up. Sigh.
- samcat116 4y ago
  Its in Preview as of a few weeks ago, so not really on you at all. Its pretty decent though, but I'd say Spotify still has them beat in terms of UX.
iggldiggl 4y ago
> Theres also a new dedicated Apple Music app for Windows to replace the awful iTunes. Urgh. At least "awful" iTunes lets me manually move tracks over into the Podcasts section, which is perfect for managing my collection of various radio comedy show. Looking at the precedent on native Macs, post-splitup that'll no longer be possible, so thanks for nothing…

nerdjon 4y ago

I have never understood the complaints about Apple Music, it does what I need it to do. As far as no way to manage a queue, it very much does have this option. If you have multiple songs in your up next there is the "hamburger" button next to each and you can move it around. And then when you add a song you have "play next" and "play last". If you add mutiple "play nexts" they all go into your queue, last in first out. The opposite is true for "play last". As far as the speed goes, I have never experienced that. It searches as you type and it is very quick for me.

retrac98 4y ago
I have to close and reopen it at least once a day because it just completely breaks. A few common issues: - Songs won't play. - Buttons become completely unresponsive. - The search won't take any input (can't type in the box) - Songs take 5+ seconds to start playing. - I get a mysterious "you are not authorized to play this song" message. All I want to do is find and play music, and manage playlists. It's utter trash.
- dmonitor 4y ago
  sounds like you’re using the android app while the person above uses ios?
  - retrac98 4y ago
    No, MacOS
- jtbayly 4y ago
  "you are not authorized to play this song" I get this probably 25% of the times I try to play any song at all. On my iPhone 14 pro.

everdrive 4y ago

Especially discouraging since iTunes was a great app more than a decade ago.

corytheboyd 4y ago
Agreed! Loved using iTunes with my music library back in the pre-streaming days. I'll admit I was also instantly sold on streaming as the replacement to it, though it took a while for Spotify to build up their licensing game (remember when The Beatles didn't exist on streaming services?)
ghaff 4y ago
iTunes has never been a great app IMO. I also switched from JRiver Media Center years ago because it became more and more difficult to use it to manage an iPod. Though, to be honest, these days--after I finally got my music library somewhat cleaned up a couple years ago--I mostly just use streaming and don't bother with curating my library much.
wyre 4y ago
Maybe greater than it is now but WinAmp, Foobar2K, and VLC were all better than iTunes a decade ago.

likeabbas 4y ago

My only complaint about Spotify is they don't have offer a lossless quality stream. I have a $10k speaker / amp set up that kicks ass, but I can't play tracks from Spotify.

corytheboyd 4y ago
Yeah that's really what pushed me enough to switch as well. Not a $10k setup but it gets closer every day haha... Tidal exists but didn't have much of a catalog last I tried it. Apple Music will totally work fine once the desktop app is replaced, so I guess we just wait.
- likeabbas 4y ago
  I bought my equipment from a music store that was shutting down, so I got my $10k equipment for $4800! I currently use Amazon Music for my high quality streaming but the app is horrible.
  - corytheboyd 4y ago
    Damn that is the deal of a lifetime! I gotta look out more for deals like that
    - likeabbas 4y ago
      It really was the deal of a life time. Owner was retiring. They were only open for a few hours on Saturdays the last few months of operations. The closer you could hold out to buy, the better deal you got. I even talked them down a grand! I hope you get a chance one day
leonidasv 4y ago
I have a Chi-fi $160 setup and Spotify is noticeably worse. Almost no sound stage, noise floor on old recordings is absurd. "The Chain" by Fleetwood Mac and "Listen to the Music" by The Doobie Brothers are two of the most noticeably songs for me. Hi-Fi setups are getting cheaper and cheaper thanks to China, I think most of the "audiophile" thing will soon be mainstream (for example, I've always mocked audiophiles online and now here I am; I always discover some friend that has bought VX earphones; I made my girlfriend listen to some songs on my setup, and now she's considering buying some entry-level equipment too - and she was the kind of person that just used any $5~10 earphones -, etc). Spotify is probably missing a big opportunity here.

S_A_P 4y ago

I don’t use Apple Music on windows so can’t argue with the bad client experience, but Spotify isn’t exactly perfect either. To me the issue with iTunes and Spotify is the fact that to be a viable business the streaming model is going to squeeze all artists into making a between 1-2 grand for a million streams if they are that lucky. Tidal promises more money but once the realize those economics don’t work and get large enough they will follow suit. What has happened is also an unprecedented breach of contract for older artists out there without streaming provisions in their contracts. I only know of a handful of instances where the artists have addressed this but I know of at least 1 example of a major label contract that specifically says “in the case of unforeseen circumstances (streaming, mind beaming, any new unavailable technology) the artist will split the proceeds 50/50. This same artist is not getting 50% of the revenue and is in fact getting the same (awful) deal as everyone else. [0] What Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal have done is create the same hierarchy that existed in the days of physical media where they pour money into the top1% of artists and have effectively made everyone else much worse off. [1] Anyone can make and release music today but it was hardly democratized. They same forces in the record industry have figured out how to screw streaming up in their favor now too. [0]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/black-sheep-files-class-action-203502922.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/black-sheep-files-class-actio... [1] https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU https://youtu.be/gDfNRWsMRsU The 200 million subscribers of Spotify are subsidizing things like Joe Rogans 100 million contract and some of the a lister musicians as part of their 360 deal.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
> They same forces in the record industry have figured out how to screw streaming up in their favor now too. That force is simply the economics of a winner take all market, especially where the product is a luxury good that people can do without. The record labels do not earn huge profit margins either.

Euphorbium 4y ago

Interoperability between spotify clients is trash, and has been for years. All of them have entirely different functions and controlling one from the other works only like 15% of the time.

thiht 4y ago

Same here, I tried Apple Music for the last 3 months because I got it for free, and it’s soooo bad. Just this afternoon, it crashed like 3 times when changing song. Just that, I skipped a song and it crashed. The UI also becomes irresponsive whenever a song is loading. The other day I tried to add a song to my playlist and it just refused to do it without any error message. I probably lost some songs because of that, believing I added them to my playlist but it failed to add them. Also the recommendations are a joke. Apple Music is utterly incapable of making good recommendations. It also strongly believes that because I’m French, every single playlist should contain 50% of French songs. Spotify’s UI is really not good, but Apple Music is worst in class. I could go on and on for an hour about what’s wrong with Apple Music.

echelon 4y ago
The apex tech companies are spinning up a lot of music/movie/game/etc. divisions to capture eyeballs and put up a wedge against entertainment. They're mostly not great. Google Play Music, a product Google killed, was a fantastic music service. It had incredible customization, great discovery, and worked with a wide variety of 3rd party clients. They killed it and replaced it with the utter garbage that is YouTube Music. I still can't fathom why.

lukeschlather 4y ago

I'm sure Spotify is the best of the streaming clients (I use it constantly,) but the playback experience is still worse than any of the mid-2000's players. Even Windows iTunes was better.

Spivak 4y ago
What was the difference? I don’t really have any complaints but also never experienced this era.
- lukeschlather 4y ago
  iTunes (or any other player) could display hundreds or thousands of songs in a single playlist and would happily sort them or filter them instantly based on tags or whatever. Spotify, everything is lazy-loaded and I frequently get random elements just failing to load, or the entire player even crashes (like, at least every other month.) And, I know I say thousands but I get this sort of behavior in Spotify when I've only got like ~50 songs in a playlist. And of course it can only do rudimentary sorting/filtering based on tags.

deleted 4y ago

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deleted 4y ago
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danielvaughn 4y ago

I have my gripes with Spotify (I hate how they emphasize the cover albums rather than the titles, makes it really difficult to navigate IMO), but yes they are leagues above Apple Music.