Yesterday, around the mid-afternoon, I was going to write an entirely different article than the one I’m putting together now. Yesterday, adding albums, individual tracks and following artists in Apple Music, I was ready to declare the new music streaming service the one I’ve always been waiting for. I was ready to give Apple Music the crown.
The longer I used it, though, and was still using it well into the night, I realized that my opinion had changed.
It’s not a huge departure from what I was originally thinking: Specifically, Apple Music is a great effort from the Cupertino-based company, and they obviously put a lot of work into making sure that Music, when it became available to the masses, was ready to go. I haven’t found any game-breaking bugs at this point, even if I have made the Music app on my iPad Air 2 crash more than a handful of times.
In truth, I’m listening to Apple Music right now on my computer, thanks to the recently updated iTunes, and it just gave me another reason to get frustrated. I searched for an artist, found them, clicked into their dedicated page and found an album I wanted to add to a Playlist. Clicking on the link next to the album’s name, three little dots, brings up a pop-up window that tells me I can share the album. And that’s it. I thought that was odd, so I clicked on the album directly, but there wasn’t an option to add it to a Playlist in there, either. Just an option to add it to My Music.
I went back, and, just because I’m a glutton for punishment I clicked on the external link again. Sure enough, there was a ton of new options, including one to add to a Playlist. Unfortunately, this is how I had to do it for several different albums. Click artist —> Click album —> Click back —> Click external link.
That’s a lot of clicking.
I think a lot of the UI elements are going to get fixed eventually, especially as Apple gets feedback from real world users. It’s not the worst UI, even just compared to other streaming services, but there’s certainly a lot of room for improvement. That’ll come eventually.
The biggest issue I have with Apple Music at this point is that, based on the music I listen to, Spotify actually has more albums. I was honestly not expecting this at all. There aren’t a lot of missing songs or artists, but it’s more than a few and if I’m paying the same per month, why wouldn’t I go with the service that offers me more content that I actually listen to, right?
Because, at this point, the library is all that matters to me. I won’t use Connect — I have Twitter and I follow the bands I want more information from there. I won’t use Beats 1 — I haven’t listened to radio in years, and based on my time with it yesterday, that won’t change anytime soon. (I will probably tune into some interviews, though.)
At the end of the day, Apple Music had a few things that annoyed me (thanks for not letting me choose to only download music on a Wi-Fi connection, Apple), but these are things that, more often than not, disappeared just as quickly as they came up. I think a lot of it is stuff I could learn to work with, or not even experience again. However, I really do have to weigh the music I’m missing if I do make the switch.
Right now, I’m not ditching Spotify just yet.
Have you tried out Apple Music yet? If so, what do you think of the service? Is it going to make you leave your current streaming service? Let me know!