
Apple Music now has 38M paid members - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/13/apple-music-now-has-38-million-paid-members/
======
mung
In Apple's keynotes, they often claim that they "love music". But their app
misses some basics that people who actually love music might like to have: To
be able to sort music by year (and have year of release not be year of
reissue), exclude various greatest hits reissues if you want to 'discover' an
artist's works, and not default to shuffle when you haven't used the app for a
while, because I don't know, maybe I'm old fashioned, but I'd like to listen
to an album in the order that the artist put the songs in.

It would also be great if syncing your own music to a device actually worked
without issues (such as not copying the entire album, which you inevitably
discover later, on the road). I stopped listening to music on the way to work
because of all the roadblocks the app put in the way.

It's utterly beyond me how the largest tech company in the world can't sort
basics of their their UI out, over periods of years.

~~~
fermienrico
I absolutely abhor the Apple Music UI.

Why...WHY is it that people design stuff like this?

> Why are the fonts so large that you can't see list of songs properly? > Why
> do I have to click so many times to be able to view all songs in an album? >
> Within a couple of clicks, I should be able to view a list of songs in my
> playlist and I can sort it the way I want. By year, by genre, by any
> parameter of the song > Same thing for albums list and artists list

Unbelievable - the new UI paradigm with BOLD fonts and large negative space is
eating into the limited valuable real estate on a mobile device.

What goes into these people's minds? Can someone shed some light?

~~~
on_and_off
>What goes into these people's minds? Can someone shed some light?

Maybe I can shed _some_ light.

I worked for one of the big music streaming services for a while.

>limited valuable real estate on a mobile device.

Maximizing data density on a screen is absolutely not a goal on any 'large
audience' app.

Yes, an app with tons of data crammed on a screen would make some folks happy
in the HN/geeky communities (I am not sure that's true actually, but that's
something that I often see power users asking for).

That's not who these apps are targeting though.

The design of these apps is often a mix between opinionated choices (basically
what is trendy right now in the design circles) and what works in user
testing.

Turns out, most of our users are ABSOLUTELY lost when they have to interact
with a mobile app.

Music streaming services have way too many features :

albums playlists radios some kind of AI powered automatically created track
lists (all services give this a different name, but they all have pretty much
the same feature) lyrics, podcasts

On top of that, there is a ton of data for every single track : title album
artist composer !!!! (classical music treatment is usually awful in any
streaming app) . has lyrics ? is downloaded on your device ?

The player adds another layer of complexity : current track queue random mode
repeat mode

Here is the dirty little secret of the music streaming industry : how to
present all this in a way that allows random users (not geeks) to efficiently
interact with the app : nobody knows how to do that :/ .

There is just way too many information to cram on a screen.

To pile on that, usual development cycles are focused on releasing new
features, either to keep up with the competition or because that's how PMs
demonstrate that they are 'improving' the app.

It is orthogonal to actually improving the user experience and we can see
cycles of several years where the UI becomes more and more bloated with random
stuff until designers are able to push a redesign with half of the features.

And soon we start cramming features again until the end of this new cycle.

~~~
fermienrico
I think there is a balance between something that looks like Apple Music and
an excel spreadsheet full of information.

Apple Music is way out of the normal density expected from a quality app.
Apple has a phenomenal understanding of UI and they're one of the best - just
look at the UI of the settings menu on your iPhone. Everything is cleanly laid
out - just the right amount of information density. Apple Music seems like it
was designed by someone like Will-I-Am (sorry :-) ) with absolutely zero
understanding of basic functional UI principles.

If I were to design UI, I'd design it like how aviation does cockpits.
Functional, not "trendy". Everything has a reason - if you can't explain
"WHY", you shouldn't be designing UI. Personal taste, subjective opinions, "I
kinda like it that way" doesn't work in aviation industry. Please don't take
it as I mean Apple to follow the same principles, I am just mentioning the
other end of the spectrum in UI design to provide contrast.

~~~
rootusrootus
At the risk of being downvoted into oblivion for going off on a tangent...
since you mentioned the iPhone settings menu:

Why is it that in some places there is a setting with a off/on toggle on the
right, and in other places there is a setting that takes you to a sub-page
with only a off/on toggle? For a current example, the Handoff menu under
General.

While I agree they generally do a better than average job with UI, I've never
really understood why the settings app has this inconsistency. It's been this
way for many versions.

Rant over. Though not really a rant anyway, it doesn't make me mad, just
puzzled.

~~~
kccqzy
Probably because those pages with just a single toggle requires more
explanation about what the toggle does, and thus the explanation doesn't
really fit with other settings.

~~~
always_good
Also, just like how it's easier to add a modal than integrate more state into
the underlying view, it's easier to add a new view controller to your xcode
storyboard for an interaction.

For example, as you note, you have space to describe it and add possibly more
UI to the feature. And in a future pass, you can decide to fold it back in to
the existing UI and solidify it there. But that pass isn't necessarily worth
it.

------
rygine
A bit OT, but does anyone have insight into why Spotify has refused to make an
Apple Watch app for offline playback like Apple Music offers? This is
definitely possible as a lone developer was able to do it rather quickly a
while ago (search: Spotty later renamed Snowy). That developer was eventually
hired by Spotify and the project was scrapped. Spotify's new iOS SDK
specifically says it's not to be used to create apps for offline play.

It seems to be a major pain point for Apple Watch users that's easily
addressed. It's really confusing why they haven't done it yet.

~~~
ejstronge
I suspect it's less Spotify's unwillingness but instead structural
difficulties on the Apple Watch platform. Maybe Apple isn't interested in
allowing a competitor...

As a point of evidence, Marco Arment's podcast app had to remove Apple Watch
support after the approach he had used was eliminated[1-2].

1\. [https://marco.org/2017/09/24/what-watch-podcast-apps-
need](https://marco.org/2017/09/24/what-watch-podcast-apps-need)

2\. [https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-
watch](https://marco.org/2017/08/10/removed-send-to-watch)

~~~
121789
That makes complete sense based on my personal use. I have a Music
subscription purely because I can use it with my series 2 watch offline. I use
Spotify the rest of the day. If Spotify had a watch app where I could download
songs offline, I'd drop my Music subscription immediately.

~~~
rodrigodiez
I am curious... what would be the benefit of offline music in a watch? AFAIK
you can play downloaded songs in the smartphone with Spotify while offline

~~~
fetus8
You could go for a run with just your watch and a pair of bluetooth
headphones...

------
sidyapa
I very recently came across Apple music and it has given me the best music
experience on Android, as in my country, India, Spotify is not available yet
and other competing apps are nowhere close to what apple provides. Amazing
music quality, availability of almost every song I listen to, very nice UI and
an equalizer.

Also, one of the reasons is the very cheap subscription for university
students and the 3 months free trial. Unbeatable, yet.

~~~
arihant
Amazon Prime Music is pretty good too, and is free with Prime membership,
which is 3/4 the price you pay for Apple Music alone. I also liked Wynk app in
India.

The only reason I'm not jumping ship to Amazon's offering is Apple's tight
integration with my watch and Apple TV. This will only get stronger with
HomePod.

~~~
nkristoffersen
The audio quality is subpar on amazon music. I could hear it lightly
distorting which is weird. Hopefully just a player bug and not an audio file
issue.

------
smcl
Apple Music is a bit rough around the edges in ways that are shifting me back
towards keeping my collection offline

\- they deleted a bunch of my personal stuff when I subscribed (I’m sure it
was somewhere in the T&Cs but ... come on)

\- albums and songs appear, disappear and generally get shuffled around a LOT

\- they periodically purge my “offline” music on my phone. Usually I only
notice this when I have just crossed the border on an international trip. It’s
not just some unused stuff because I have no space free (I have PLENTY) - it’s
everything

It’s a really frustrating experience, which is Sady increasingly common with
Apple these last few years

~~~
mackrevinack
last year i went through all my playlists on spotify and counted maybe 30
greyed out tracks that were removed at some point in the last 8 years that ive
been using it. not cool

up to that point i was generally happy enough paying for streaming but im
slowly starting to move back to offline storage now and plan on just using
spotify to discover new music every now and again. ive given over 700 to
spotify over the years which seems crazy now and ive recently spent around the
same amount on a synology nas to store my music library, but at least the
tracks i own wont suddenly disappear

~~~
rsync
"ive recently spent around the same amount on a synology nas to store my music
library, but at least the tracks i own wont suddenly disappear"

I would think twice about that.

I, also, have all of my music on a local fileserver and I would _never_
consider giving iTunes or an iDevice access to that share unless it was
mounted read-only.

When I sync my music library (which is made up of files and directories, _not_
"songs and albums") to my laptop, I rsync it over from the filesystem which is
mounted read-only.

I don't need my mac to "discover" "music files" on the network and start
"helping me" organize them.

~~~
briandear
You must be great fun at parties. You make music sound about as fun as getting
circumcised.

------
ferrel2078
Back in the day I used to look at the Top 10 list on what.cd, download
torrents of interesting music, add them to my seedbox, wait for them to
finish, download the files from the seedbox, import into iTunes, fix up the
tags and artwork if needed, then finally sync to my phone. Then I'd have to do
all that again for my girlfriend and the terrible music she liked.

Now I just have to hit one download button in Music on my phone. I have
unlimited access to--as far as it matters to me--basically the entire iTunes
libary. My wife does too, and she can play it through the Sonos system at the
house. It's great and well worth the $15/month and various UI glitches.

~~~
armandososa
Agreed on most of your points. Except that Spotify has he same functionality
plus awesome curation and discovery. If you're not that into top music, there
are gems to be found

~~~
closetohome
I know it's a silly grudge to hold, but I still avoid Spotify just because the
Free tier was so awful when I first tried it. I suppose it's the classic
debate of time-limited demo versus feature-limited demo -- the former works
much better for me.

~~~
KozmoNau7
The free tier is extremely limited, basically a shuffle-only radio with ads
and a limited amount skips allowed in the app.

The paid version is awesome, though.

------
leoh
I don't understand how Apple isn't facing intense antitrust lawsuits. Compared
to Microsoft in the 90s, Apple is far worse in the ways that it unfairly
competes:

* any competitor has to pay a portion of its revenue for every sale to Apple

* apps cannot use private APIs that would otherwise greatly enhance usability and value

* little to no integration with built in services; for example, I can't tell Siri "play the Beatles on Spotify"

I would refuse to use Apple Music over Spotify because I feel that Apple is
playing dirty. Luckily, I don't even think about using Apple Music because I
feel it's an inferior product.

~~~
inapis
You may not like Apple and some of their practices are inherently abhorrent
but it is no where in the same league as MS of the 90s.

Today, if you want, you can instantly switch away from iOS to a plethora of
options. Apple has the highest revenue and maybe the most influence in the
industry but their numbers are paltry. Android has 80% share globally and 70%
in US. When it came to MS, you didn't really have much of a choice.

Something akin to the MS anti trust case would be Google pushing Chrome
exclusively on Android and shutting out all competitors.

And point two and three are trivial to argue.

2 - increased security is a great counter point. No publicly available apps
could abuse private APIs to mine personal data

3 - No one's stopping you from using spotify. It's just not in the way you
like.

~~~
leoh
But Apple DOES do this. Safari's integration is so tight with iOS that it's
inconvenient to use anything else 100% of the time. They really aren't playing
fair.

------
fossuser
I signed up to play with it on a homepod, I generally still think it's a lot
worse than Spotify (particularly when you consider Spotify's discover weekly
playlist).

I'll likely just end up using the homepod as an overpriced Spotify airplay
speaker.

There was an app to transfer playlists/songs from Spotify to Apple music (for
$10). It did an okay job.

~~~
ehsankia
Why does Google Play Music never come up in any of these discussions? I've
found Google's recommendation engine to be far beyond competitors. They also
allow uploading your own library which no other service out there does. Plus,
you get Youtube Red for free with GPM, which is great value. They have the
same family plan, and 320kbps.

What is it lacking that no one ever considers it?

~~~
TheArcane
> I've found Google's recommendation engine to be far beyond competitors.

I've compared all, and no service comes close to Spotify's discovery engine.

~~~
ehsankia
I've curious, when was that? I know that Google's engine has improved quite a
bit over the years. Considering it's 7 years old, I'm sure it has changed
quite a bit since the early days.

------
ProfessorLayton
The only reason I'm an Apple Music subscriber is because I'm on a family
member's plan. There are so many usability problems with it on iOS that I
would not consider paying for it myself — and iTunes is another level of
terrible.

I often times have trouble getting Apple Music to playback reliably!
[https://imgur.com/a/VrO1Y](https://imgur.com/a/VrO1Y)

Spotify's UX is marginally better than Apple Music, but still not worth paying
for in my opinion. Neither service allows me to block particular songs/artists
from being recommended, which I find incredibly frustrating.

~~~
abalone
You can "dislike" songs, albums & artists to influence recommendations.

What are the usability problems you're experiencing?

~~~
ProfessorLayton
Apple Music seems to ignore what I dislike, and will recommend it anyway.

As for usability issues in Apple Music:

\- There are 2 ways to "dislike": Star> Play less like this and Heart>
Dislike. What is the difference?

\- Liking/Disliking is always 2 actions.

\- If I'm listening to the Radio, I can only skip forward but not go back?
Why?

\- There are a million pixels on my phone, yet I can only see 3 full playlists
in the initial list view. The "New Playlist" button is displayed like an
actual playlist.

\- The layout is a hodgepodge of poor recommendations and recent activity: \--
The library tab starts with a list, and ends with a grid of albums, most of
which contain _one_ song picked out from that album. The recents in "For you"
scroll horizontally.

\- The radio tab pretty much only consists of what Apple wants to push (Beats
1). There is also no way to delete recently played radio stations

\- When playback stops, there is no difference between a network issue
(Buffering) and a bluetooth connectivity issue. Incredibly frustrating when
driving.

\- The large album art display is nice visually, but it is not worth digging
through a bunch of action menus that were created due to the lack of space.

~~~
lulmerchant
>Apple Music seems to ignore what I dislike, and will recommend it anyway

Before I moved to Apple Music, Spotify had spent the past several years trying
to get me to listen to Fleet Foxes, no matter how many times I asked them to
stop.

Apple's got a lot of UI issues, which shouldn't actually be that hard for them
to fix. Their playlists however are definitely not as good as Spotify's are.

------
greggman
Do any of the music services not suck at suggestions and or auto playlists?

I tried Spotify, Google Music, Amazon, Pandora and all of them drove me batty.

The most common problem is just bad selection. For example I picked "Daily
Lift" on Spotify expecting uplifting songs. First song was about woman finding
out man is cheating on her. Second song is about woman thinking of x while
sleeping with new guy. Neither was remotely uplifting.

Another example, on Google Music I play Prince. Pick "related" and get rap. I
have nothing against rap but it's not even remotely related to Prince except
in maybe some possibbly racist way.

Pandora had the problem on playing the same songs and if you ban the songs you
just end up getting different mixes of the same song.

Yet other issues is "more like this" never works. If I'm playing say a ballad
and I pick "more like this" I expect more ballads but instead all the music
services just give you songs by artists someone judged as popular with people
who like the artist you're currently listing too so you might get dance or
rock or rap or anything and not actually "more like this"

I've cancelled all of them as I didn't find them useful because of those
issues.

~~~
daturkel
To your first issue, there are three ways I can think of that music
recommendations are usually built: \- collaborative filtering: i.e. People who
listened to x tend to listen to y, so if you like x we will recommend y \-
metadata: x and y share multiple genre tags, or have contributed to releases
in common, or release music in the same time period, etc \- audio data: x and
y have similar tempo, prominent instrument timbres, absence or presence of
vocals, time signature, major or minor-ness, key

However, I've never heard of lyrics being used as data or metadata for
determining similarity of tracks.

For one thing, it's not necessarily a common use case. I did college radio and
we would do themed shows where all the songs are about food, for example, but
99% of the time of I listen to a song that happens to mention ice cream, I
don't want/need the next song to mention ice cream.

On top of that, it's not obvious what type of lyrical similarity is desired.
Do you want to match lyrical sentiment? (Happy songs with happy songs, whether
they're about girls or cars or cooking) Or theme (relationship songs, positive
or negative) or words in common or phrases in common.

It's definitely an interesting idea that I'd love to see toyed with, but I'm
not surprised that its not, given how much effort it might be for an unclear
and possibly uncommonly desires result. Not to mention that Spotify usually
doesn't have a canonical source for lyrics of a given track anyway.

------
IBM
Music streaming has relatively low gross margins compared to other tech
businesses (though as they scale up they'll have more leverage with the rights
holders) but a large addressable market to tap. Spotify could be a great
investment if they continue to penetrate that market.

The same is true for Apple but at least for Apple it also has a strategic
purpose in being the connective tissue for a number of hardware products that
are almost certainly a better business (Apple Watch Series 3, HomePod,
AirPods, iPhone, etc).

~~~
Stanleyc23
At what point does Spotify hit a breaking point with leverage against the
major labels? Even their current scale, the surviving music industry oligopoly
could probably still crush Spotify if it tried to do jumpstart a private
label. In this current ecosystem, they seem to be in this awkward codependent
relationship. Maybe the only way to gain real leverage is to develop an
ecosystem without any labels at all.

~~~
IBM
Spotify and the music publishers are mutually dependent. They could crush them
but they'd be torpedoing their own revenue.

>Even their current scale, the surviving music industry oligopoly could
probably still crush Spotify if it tried to do jumpstart a private label.

Rather than pulling their catalogs from Spotify, it'd be smarter for them to
cut better deals with Spotify's competitors so they can undercut Spotify. If
the publishers have multiple, more or less equally sized number of buyers,
that'd be the ideal scenario for them.

~~~
jamesshamenski
The labels have ownership in Spotify [1]. If any disruption comes from the
aggregation of their own content, the labels will profit.

The labels will not pull the plug on Spotify as it represents too great a
portion of future industry revenues.

You are correct about dealing with Spotify's competitors. Tidal and other
streaming services are the labels best shot at reducing the leverage of any
one player (Spotify or Apple).

[1] [http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-
owner...](http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner-of-
spotify)

~~~
IBM
I don't think having minority stakes in Spotify makes up for the alternative
scenario where Spotify becomes the dominant music streamer and devalues their
current music assets.

------
sul4bh
I tried to switch to Spotify but came back to Apple Music after 1 day of using
it.

I really liked the Spotify UI and their album list makes sense. But it does
not offer any significantly different feature than made me chose it over Siri
integration with Apple Music. Siri is frustrating at times but I can’t imagine
not using it when I am in my car.

~~~
mackrevinack
their "discover weekly" playlist is great but im not sure how well they work
for new users. ive been using spotify for around 8 years so by the time they
released discover weekly they probably had a good profile on me and it
definitely showed. there have been times where maybe 15 or 20 out of the 30
tracks in the playlist have been ones that i liked and 5 or so out of that 20
have become favourites. thats been the general pattern for me anyway on a good
week, others it might be less.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Discover Weekly was already pretty awesome for me after a month or so.

------
jakobegger
Are there any good 3rd party apps for browsing Apple Music? I've been trying
Apple Music for a couple of months, and I really like the fact that I can
access this giant catalog, but I think the UI for browsing / discovery is not
very good.

Any recommendations?

~~~
halflings
If there's one company I don't see releasing a public API to freely browse
their catalog, it would be Apple (or Amazon).

~~~
jakobegger
There's MusicKit, which is exactly that:
[https://developer.apple.com/musickit/](https://developer.apple.com/musickit/)

~~~
halflings
Thanks for keeping me honest! Seems like this gives some decent access to
Apple's library.

------
yolobey
I was really happy when Apple Music launched, because I had a huge library on
iTunes that I had been keeping meticulously for about half a decade then, and
I was a spotify user - I thought I could consolidate the two.

Well Apple Music responded to my enthusiasm by trashing my music library,
mislabeling everything automatically and losing half of the library. I don't
know if they fixed that, but that managed to turn me to a permanent spotify
user.

Spotify too is making me unhappy these days though, because for some time now
they are heavily emphasizing geography in discover weekly playlists, which
isn't what I want as an expat. It's always a bunch of songs in the same style,
listened to nowhere else but where I am now, and pressing the dislike button
doesn't help. I guess I should get a VPN/use a payment method from my home
country/switch to an alternative.

~~~
lgbr
I find I can just go into the settings and change my country, and Spotify will
happily accept this. My GeoIP nor my credit card's country seems to have had
an effect on the content in my library.

This is one of the joys of Spotify compared to other services I use, where it
just accepts that I want the experience of the country I select, and not
something arbitrary like an IP or a credit card (like Netflix, Steam).

~~~
maigret
It's not possible through all types of accounts though:
[https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/How-can-I-change-
my-c...](https://support.spotify.com/uk/article/How-can-I-change-my-country-
setting/)

"Premium [...] Note: For licensing reasons, you need to update your payment
method to one that's been issued in your new country."

------
zaidf
Has anyone here tried canceling their Apple Music subscription? When doing it
from the iPhone, it takes 6+ taps, and involves traversing through 4-6
different screens, including multiple super slow loading webviews.

------
sorenjan
How can it be allowed to ship Apple's own music service with every iPhone? Why
isn't that deemed anti competitive?

~~~
frenchie4111
They don't require you to use Apple Music. If shipping with a default was
anti-competitive wouldn't default installs of Safari, Chrome or Google Music
also be anti-competitive?

~~~
tomc1985
But man they try awefully hard to _compel_ you

I am sick of seeing my 15-plus-year music collection relegated to the
"Downloaded Music" ghetto of my iphone. Apple's shitty cloud service is not
nearly as high quality or cared for as lovingly as mine and I am sicking of
seeing it front and center

Play Music does the same thing with the online storage locker... but at least
they're hosting my music for free (and streaming me transcodes :/) and letting
me download it again

~~~
eridius
Wouldn't your music also show up in the rest of your library? The "Downloaded
Music" section is just music that's already on your phone and therefore you
can listen to without an internet connection. But everything in there should
also be present in the other sections of your library.

~~~
tomc1985
It gets mixed in with that free U2 album and all the various Starbucks codes I
redeemed 10 years ago :/

~~~
abalone
Well you imported those Starbucks songs yourself so you can't really blame
Apple for that. Try the "Delete from Library" option -- it works great.

~~~
tomc1985
Perhaps but I never explicitly requested or copied that music to my phone, yet
it appears there anyway.

------
rangibaby
I have used Apple music since it came out. Here are some problems that have
been fixed over time:

\- The de-duping was way too aggressive at first but there were workarounds
and its working the way I like it now.

\- Another annoying thing it did was when someone deleted their album from
Apple music it would find the "same" tracks in compilations etc and pollute my
library with them. Now it just says "can't play that anymore" which is what it
should have done from the beginning.

\- ANOTHER annoying thing it did was the "token" used to play music used to
expire way too quickly. I usually listen to music on my iPod touch and it
would want my password for my iTunes account at least once a day or it would
refuse to play music, which was a major drag when away from Wi-Fi. It seems to
be more sane now which is nice.

Overall I'm happy with Apple music. It is nice when discovering a new artist,
I can listen to one of their albums without downloading their entire
discography at once then doing the dance and magical incantations required by
iTunes to get it onto my iPod without doing nasty things like deleting ALL of
the other music from it.

------
cgb223
FWIW the only reason I subscribed to Apple Music this year is because my car
has CarPlay and the Spotify CarPlay app doesn’t (or can’t, I’m unclear)
support Siri commands.

Weirdly, Apple Music sounds better on my cars speakers than Spotify, despite
Spotify having a better Sample rate.

Maybe Apple Music has better proprietary access to my cars speakers.

I’d love it if someone with relevsnt experience could explain why that might
be

~~~
expiredtofu
Spotify uses ogg vorbis apparently, so that might be why it sounds different.

~~~
ilovecars2
I notice that Spotify on iOS is much quieter than Apple Music. Perhaps codec
related too?

------
newscracker
Off topic, but I would try Apple Music if Apple were to simplify and allow
people to use (iTunes/App Store/Music) accounts from at least two different
countries and switch between them or use them simultaneously (with billing and
payment information from each of those). I wouldn't want to jump through hoops
and difficult-to-understand processes to take advantage of pricing differences
as well as app and content availability across regions. Content restrictions
are not entirely under the control of Apple, but usage of its own accounts
system is. In a globalized world, this is an area Apple could make things
simpler (if it wanted to).

------
ksec
On the Subject of Music.

Does anyone want or like, an iTunes Music Store, where you can gift / transfer
Music you bought to others also on the same services, but you lost that pieces
of Music from your library. Any music you bought within the store you can
Stream it for free. The Music will never be "lost" because of some agreement
renewal. You own the right to that pieces of music.

The one thing I hate about streaming, is that some music disappear overnight.
Not to be returned until whatever deals they can sort out with labels. And it
make the matter worst because once they sort it out, the same songs wont
appear in my library again. I have to add it again.

------
sidcool
I like Google music better. Have been a subscriber and it works well for me.
It lacks some Apple music features like good radio stations. But the
experience is nice overall. Also Google music is cheaper in my country by 20%.

~~~
lars_francke
Google Music doesn't have a desktop client (I know there's a third party one
but it can't work around the limitations, e.g. offline sync etc.)

------
JohnJamesRambo
Do they have good machine learning like Discover Weekly on Spotify yet? I
tried Apple Music and discovered I can't live without those features on
Spotify. I hurriedly scurried back.

~~~
pducks32
I find a lot of great music from Beats 1. That’s a different discovery
mechanism that really badly takes some getting used to but I really love it.
Curated Playlists in many ways feel over saturated at the moment, and grow
stale. (Their design doesn’t help at showing you recently updated playlists).
The 3 ML generated playlists are hit and miss. Favorites is fantastic, New
Music is usually pretty good but suffers badly from time interval confirmation
bias. Chill, it’s hard to say bc I don’t find the use case (“Chill”) to be
what I want when I chill.

------
i386
With a slowing upgrade cycle for iPhone, I predict that the phone hardware,
cell connection, Music & iCloud subscription will be sold as a bundle in the
not too distant future. The hardware has started to go that way with iPhone
Upgrade Program and Apple's push for e-sim. Also, Telstra (Australian telco)
is including Apple Music with its iPhone plans - I assume thats becoming
common place in the US too?

Such packaging for luxury products and services becomes necessary when they
become commoditised.

------
baby
I just subscribed the other day (because Spotify was telling me that I was not
allowed to use Spotify in a different country for more than 14 days, looks
like I'm not allowed to move).

One question: what happens to the musics that I added to my library if I
unsubscribe? (I'm also subscribed to iTunes match to store my own music in
their cloud.)

~~~
KozmoNau7
The country limitation only applies to free Spotify accounts, and you can
change your home country in your profile settings, if you move to another
country for a longer period of time:
[https://support.spotify.com/dk/article/How-can-I-change-
my-c...](https://support.spotify.com/dk/article/How-can-I-change-my-country-
setting/)

With a paid subscription, there's no limit to playback in other countries.

~~~
baby
I couldn't even login in my account because of that popup so I didn't try
further.

------
tyingq
I would guess that Alexa, Google Home, etc are eating into their growth. For
casual users, those provide enough that you might abandon iTunes.

At least for me, I listen to music at home and not much anywhere else. My car
radio is on NPR, and I don't use portable players, including my phone.

~~~
dragonwriter
> For casual users, those provide enough that you might abandon iTunes.

I abandoned iTunes for Google Play Music (for my ripped-from-purchased CDs
library and new purchases) long before Alexa or Home (and even before GPM All
Access) existed; unless you are already heavily invested in the Apple hardware
ecosystem, iTunes was never really all that compelling after the period of
iPod as dominant music player (when being an iPod user without any other Apple
investment was enough to make iTuned compelling.)

~~~
tyingq
Ahh, so there are more serious music afficiciandos abandoning iTunes also.

------
godzillabrennus
Apple Music has a UI so difficult to learn that I had to Google to find where
they put the repeat button.

Pair up Apple's newfound disdain for usability with their lack of QA and you
have Microsoft 2.0 on your hands. A giant company that no one really loves
anymore.

------
jaxondu
Not sure if it's coincidental, I was offered two weeks back to try Apple Music
again with one free month. I tried out when it was first launch and never
subscribe to it. So my trial must have helped out with a +1 in the number.

~~~
jeffcore
Not that it matters, but I wonder how many people tried the trial and forgot
to cancel their subscription. I had went running back to Spotify before my
trial period had ended, but didn't remember to cancel my subscription until
about six months later.

~~~
crispyporkbites
ever wonder why recurring subscriptions are the default Saas payment method?
this is why

------
r_singh
It worth noting that Apple Music is ridiculously cheap in India (<$2/month for
Family Subscription which includes 6 people) which is also responsible for
contributing towards the above subscriber number of 38M.

------
ivanstame
And I still can't use it in my country...

------
growthkarl
That’s really surprising. Wonder who these people are considering every
competitor to it does a 10x better job.

------
ryan-allen
I was accidentally one of them by my carrier including it in my phone plan
'for free for 6 months', when it started billing I cancelled it immediately. I
also did not use it even once.

I'll stick with Spotify and Tidal, as I trust them not to somehow screw me
over in the future by, say, removing the play and pause button for aesthetic
reasons.

