Help me love Apple Music

June 6, 2022 8:26 PM

Some months ago, I decided to stop paying Spotify a monthly fee because of Joe Rogan. I was fairly convinced that Spotify would do something meaningful enough about the situation for me to go back to them. That hasn't exactly happened. So I moved to Apple Music.

I'd used Apple Music a ton before I started in on Spotify. But we're talking super early days Apple Music.

I now listen to Apple Music on my MacBook for work, my PC after work hours and occasionally on my iPhone. Each has a very different experience of Apple Music and the long and short of it is I really can't stand how much clicking I have to do to find something I want to listen to. I really like playlists, either by Apple (or Spotify) or other users. I don't so much like the radio stations because I don't seem to be able to see a list of songs associated with them. I rarely listen to full albums and new music isn't really my jam.

All I really want to do is listen to great playlists for my various likes. I like chill stuff for reading, alt 90s stuff during work, sometimes some electronic music while coding. And I feel like it was just so much easier on Spotify than it is on Apple Music. I feel like I just have to be missing something about how I can save music or find new playlists. I feel like discoverability is trash on Apple Music and the user interface for iTunes/Apple Music still just makes me oh so very sad.

Any thoughts here? Aside from going back to Spotify. Also, I'm in Canada, so if you're going to recommend other options, Pandora is out, though I'm not opposed to another paid music service. (My requirements are no commercials, playlists, ability to play on Mac/PC/iPhone, works in Canada.)

posted by juliebug to Technology (11 answers total)

Tidal
posted by Violet Hour at 8:51 PM on June 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I've not used Spotify before, so I can't really compare, but here's what I do with Apple Music.

1) I go through the various genres and search for playlists. (Browse > (Scroll to bottom) Browse by Category) I'll then add playlists that I like to my library. Now, these playlists are accessible from the Library tab directly.

2) I use a third-party app named Miximum (https://www.macstories.net/reviews/miximum-smart-apple-music-playlists-on-ios/) to create smart playlists. I mostly use this app to combine multiple playlists together into a single playlist, but it does have other sorting and filtering options.

(You might be interested in other third-party apps, such as those reviewed by MacStories at https://www.macstories.net/stories/macstories-starter-pack-taking-apple-music-discovery-into-your-own-hands/.)

Most of Apple Music's playlists are updated weekly, which is good enough for my taste. YMMV, of course. And I definitely agree with you that Apple Music's interface requires too many clicks and taps.
posted by applesurf at 9:23 PM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I find Apple Music to be less clunky on the iPhone versus Mac. But the power for me has been Siri: “Play music I will like” is something I tell it often, and it obliges. I find the New Music Mix, generated weekly, to be pleasantly good at making recommendations for me; the Favorites Mix may be more your speed. And of course I’ve totally loved/disliked tracks from everywhere along the way. I save tons to my library in order to download it; a bit clunky here too, but it works.

There are also really solid non-customized playlists just sitting there waiting; it’s generally at the point where you can tell it to play a genre or playlist, and it will. (Bedtime Beats is a favorite.)
posted by hijinx at 9:29 PM on June 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I subscribe to Apple Music and am in Canada. What I usually do with Apple Music is find an artist, typically by recommendations elsewhere (e.g. womenofnoise.tumblr.com) search for that artist, then create a radio station based on that artist. If you like the result, you can save the link to that radio station in e.g. Notes or as a screen icon, and launch it at will.

The thing I dislike most about Apple Music is that one cannot favourite an artist and be alerted of new releases etc. Otherwise I find the selection and quality to be very good, even in the edge case I tend to listen to: female led noise/experimental/industrial music.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:31 AM on June 7, 2022

I haven't tried Apple Music yet (although I am a Mac user) but on a friend's suggestion, I've been trying out Youtube Music as a Spotify replacement, and it's better than I expected. After trying it on my laptop and phone for a while it forced me into a 2-week free Premium thing (no credit card involved) so I'm testing that out currently. There's no built-in playlist import feature, but there appear to be third-party services that will do it for a small fee.

Actually, Youtube Music's suggestions are why I asked that question about a-ha a couple days ago. I definitely would not have run across that song otherwise.
posted by wintersweet at 6:08 AM on June 7, 2022

I love Apple Music, and while I have lots of playlists form old iTunes days I rarely use them. I usually think of a song I like, and then use the "Create station" feature and let Apple Music do the rest. I am usually pleased with the mixes it creates because they aren't obvious. For example if I play a 60s rock song it doesn't just play classic rock, it somehow finds new music that just fits.

When I am listening and I like a song I either mark it as "love" in the app or I say "Hey Siri, I like this" and Siri notes that. If a song comes up that I don't like I tell Siri. If it is a song I am not in the mood for, I say "skip this song."

After a while Apple learned me and my taste and now I can just say "Hey Siri, play music" and I usually like a bunch of what I am served.

Getting the most out of these services takes some interaction.
posted by terrapin at 8:59 AM on June 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Apple Music's integration with Siri is so good that there's even a tier of service for Apple Music that ONLY lets you use Siri.

I have no experience with services other than Apple Music and Pandora, which I don't use anymore, but I used to be impressed with their music curation. But that was only after months of babysitting a station I had created, giving thumbs up or down on thousands of tracks. The rating of tracks is also key to success with Apple Music, I think. Before Apple Music, I had weeks and weeks of music in my iTunes library, mostly from CDs I burned and only about a quarter at most from iTunes album purchases. I rated tracks and albums, and when Apple Music came along, those iTunes ratings all migrated into my Apple Music library.

Apple-curated playlists I like:
Always Sunday
Beneath The Stars
Chill Mix
Dark Sky
Favorites Mix
Get Up! Mix
Isolation
New Music Mix
Nightcap
The Late Night Menu
Untitled
Vol de Nuit
Wax Eclectic
posted by emelenjr at 11:21 AM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I switched from Spotify to Tidal and have been generally impressed. In my experience, Tidal is like Spotify only slightly better: you still have the combination of pre-existing or automatically generated playlists, but it's easier to find music from different countries, you can block songs or artists that irritate you, and the service pays more to artists you listen to.
posted by yarntheory at 12:44 PM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m in Canada and have also been trying out the various music apps since leaving Spotify. Tidal was fine, although I missed all the user-created playlists from Spotify. I’m currently trying out Deezer, and it is also fine, but the interface is horrible and it also does not have a lot of user playlists.
posted by mustard seeds at 2:30 PM on June 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

> The thing I dislike most about Apple Music is that one cannot favourite an artist and be alerted of new releases etc.

According to this article from 9to5Mac (https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/ios-16-apple-music-features/), the next version of Apple Music this fall will have this exact feature:

iOS 16 also allows you to mark a particular artist as a favorite. “Keep track of the artists you care about most with new music notifications and improved recommendations,” Apple explains.
posted by applesurf at 7:13 PM on June 7, 2022

Response by poster: Hey folks, thanks so much for all the responses! I don't use Siri a ton (apart from quick math requests or asking to turn on/turn off lights), so I had legitimately no idea that Siri could be used to play music and, beyond that, help you mark what you like versus what you don't like. While that won't work for my Windows PC, it'll work for my work laptop and my phone. (And it is beyond embarrassing that I didn't know this. /facepalm)

applesurf - Thank you for this! The navigation is so horrible that I realized when I followed your instructions that I'd probably only seen Browse by Category a couple of times and never remembered where I had clicked on it, so thanks for solving that at the very least! I'll also check out the playlist sites you've recommended. Interestingly, I had to update something on my PC's iTunes so that all libraries would be the same (which answers a question I didn't ask - why the heck can't I access my saved playlists on all my devices?), so that's solved, too.

Thanks to all who recommended other services, too! I'll probably give Apple Music a few more months. If you have any other tips/tricks for Apple Music, feel free to drop them in the thread!
posted by juliebug at 2:46 AM on June 8, 2022