5 years after Ping, Apple’s social efforts still miss the mark.
SOUTHFIELD (CBS Detroit) – Eminem took to the digital airwaves Wednesday in a wide-ranging interview on Apple Music’s new worldwide radio channel Beats I. Just five years after it first launched Ping, Apple is closer to providing a social network worth interacting with, but it’s still not hitting the mark.When I visited Microsoft many years ago, an employee cheekily compared designing Microsoft Office to “making a pizza that feeds a billion people.” At Apple, the company has a different saying: “There are 1,000 noes for every yes.” In other words, they vigorously debate a feature before it shows up in a product. The Warren-native was the first interviewed by former BBC Radio host Zane Lowe on Beats I, which is part of Apple’s new music service which launched Tuesday.
But just artists, not your friends—unlike Spotify and Rdio, you can’t build a list of your friends, see what they’re listening to and enjoying, subscribe to each other’s handmade playlists, or collaborate on a shared playlist, say, for an upcoming road trip or party. Twelve years after Steve Jobs unveiled the iTunes Music Store—and famously referred to the subscription model as “the wrong path” for the music industry—the company has unleashed iOS 8.4 and with it, the brand new Apple Music app.
But Apple Music, the company’s reboot of iTunes released Tuesday for Apple devices and personal computers (including Windows), sounds like a pizza straight out of Microsoft’s kitchen. The $9.99-per-month service is trying to beat competitors like Spotify and Google Play Music by cramming in as many features as possible: access to 30 million songs on demand, playlists curated by music experts, algorithmically powered radio stations and a live radio station like the ones you hear on the classic FM dial. Everything from the setup process (I kept hitting “more artists” until I couldn’t anymore) through the entire user interface left me impressed yesterday. Lowe’s interview with Eminem was intertwined with songs from his career along with a discussion about his newest projects, including his role in the boxing movie “Southpaw.” Eminem – who trained with former Kronk Gym trainer Emanuel Steward – was to star in the movie, his first major role since “8 Mile,” but when it came to shoot his schedule, it “didn’t work with it” because he was finishing the “Marshall Mathers LP 2.” While he no longer is starring in the movie, he will have a presence.
Apple Music features a host of different services including a series of genre based music streams, recommendations, a live broadcast channel, and a social media feed called Connect for following musicians. Apple said “yes” to cramming every popular method of consuming music into one app: a streaming service similar to Spotify; radio features that compete with Internet and satellite services like Pandora and Sirius XM; and its old music player for listening to downloaded songs. His song “Phenomenal” is used in a commercial and will be released a “music film” for the song will be released on Apple TV Friday. “If there was no 8 mile there would be no Lose Yourself,” he said. “I needed that movie. Here are five quick tips to make the experience a bit more seamless: Apple Music doesn’t do much to help denote which songs are downloaded to your phone and which are floating in the cloud.
That movie gave … a slight edge of inspirtation that I don’t think I had at that particular time.” It also made him professionally “hungry” again, despite the fact he was a “hamster” running between trailers while filming the movie and recording songs and writing lyrics on his hand because he didn’t have any paper. The Connect tab has a scrolling feed of these updates, and you can like them, comment on them, or share them to…other social networks where you actually have your own voice, like Twitter and Facebook. On the “My Music” tab, you can select the drop-down menu that begins with “Artists” in the middle of the screen and activate the “Music Available Offline” option at the bottom of the menu.
Apple Music comes with a free three-month subscription, but be careful—Apple has already “helpfully” signed you up to begin paying the $9.99 monthly fee via your iTunes account when the trial ends. To make sure you don’t get charged, press the human silhouette icon in the top left corner of Apple Muisc, select “View Apple ID,” then select “Manage” under the Subcriptions header. Still, there’s one fundamental problem with Apple Music that’s crippling its potential for me and keeping it from becoming my one and only music destination — exactly the thing Apple wants it to be. On the Mac, iCloud Family Sharing lets you see songs purchased by other members in Family Purchases (click on your name in top bar of iTunes and you’ll see Family Purchases in the pop-up menu). Select “Apple Music Membership” and then select “Free Trial.” The app should then show you the date your trial is set to end, and it won’t charge you after that time expires.
Your Family Sharing members pretty much have unlimited access to Apple Music songs, so making songs you’ve added to My Music available doesn’t seem necessary. (In fact, it seems like a good way to avoid your kid’s dubstep habit from bleeding into your own Apple Music experience.) On a Mac, parents control access to explicit content through iTunes’s Parental Control preferences (iTunes > Preferences > Parental). And it already knows your credit-card number, which might turn out to be Apple’s secret weapon in this game. (The sign-up process is effortless, and the three-month trial doesn’t hurt.) Apple Music has algorithms doing things like creating Genius playlists and artist-based, Pandora-style radio stations. If you aren’t using restrictions at all, you’ll need to enable them and set a passcode that will be required to change them or turn them off again. The new feature provides musicians and curators with a page where they can post videos, photos, and music to their following, and fans can comment beneath.
When Apple introduced the app in June, executives like Jimmy Iovine boasted about the novelty of Apple playlists that were curated by people, “not just algorithms.” (One thing he neglected to mention: So are the playlists of its main competitors, Pandora or Spotify.) Apple’s picks for me brought up playlists like “The Smiths: Ballads” and Wilco’s album “Being There.” Not bad for a first swab of my stuck-in-the-past music palette. In addition to broadcasting radio stations DJ’ed by popular artists, Apple Music employs hundreds of music editors to build playlists, some of which are very specific. The playlists are easy to choose from with big, immersive graphics of album art, labeled with clean captions describing the year when each album was released. If you simply click on the “Beats 1” art at the top of the “Radio” tab, you’ll be presented with a schedule of the upcoming shows over the next several hours. After telling Apple Music a few things about my preferences, it showed me playlists like “Best of 90s Lo Fi,” songs by artists inspired by the electronic musician Autechre, and a playlist of Madonna hits.
Of the many artists I searched for on Apple Music, I found that only a handful of them have Connect accounts including Azealia Banks, FKA Twigs, Pharrell Williams, Brittany Spears, Jenny Lewis, Snoop Dog, Common, and Miley Cyrus. Once everything’s done, you can stream music on your iPhone or iPad without taking up valuable storage, saving that space for more apps or photos and videos. For one, it’s just not very good at the matching process. iTunes will mistakenly swap explicit songs for censored takes or disregard mono recordings in favor of stereo versions.
On the first day, I was auto-following a few dozen artists and bands, but only eight of them currently have content in my Connect feed, and what’s here so far is very underwhelming. The “For You” tab isn’t a static list of recommendations: It evolves as the day goes on, adding new albums based on your listening and surfacing new playlists. Google Music has a similar matching mechanism, but Google mercifully includes a “Fix incorrect match” option that uploads the file from your PC or Mac to ensure you’re hearing the right thing.
Un-Connected Artist pages are humdrum listings of albums, songs, and music videos — stuff you can already get through Spotify or using a cursory Google search. Adding to the confusion, below the Beats 1 station are channels for other online radio stations that are not from Apple staff, like country music and NPR news. Artist pages won’t beg you to FOLLOW anymore either. (Which is nice, considering half the artists you follow probably aren’t using Connect much, if at all.) Pearl Jam shared the trailer for their Pearl Jam: Twenty documentary—which came out in 2011. The weakness of Apple Music is Connect, the social network for musicians, which allows artists to upload media, like postings about their concert dates or album releases. A day after Apple Music’s launch, people are already reporting that iCloud and iTunes have brought chaos to their music collections with incorrect album artwork and duplicated songs.
They don’t mention where I can see it, if I haven’t already. (Pro tip: It used to stream on Netflix, but now it’s DVD only, although you can see a bunch of clips on Hulu, and the whole thing on YouTube at least for now.) There isn’t even a link to buy it on iTunes. But the artists I followed, like Kings of Leon, Belle and Sebastian and Sonic Youth, used Connect as a portal to upload seemingly arbitrary photos and link to places where people could buy their iTunes albums. Even if you’ve already got cover art linked to songs in your library, Apple will frequently ignore the work you’ve put in and just use whatever seems like the best fit from iTunes. I’ll keep Connect around for a little bit to see if it improves—and please do let me know if you see artists who are actually doing a good job with it, because I’d like to follow them! Your mileage here will vary depending on how many artists are participating in Connect—right now, it seems to be a relatively small selection of current, popular artists—but it’s still a good place to find playlists and updates from publishers like Pitchfork, Vice, Rolling Stone, and about a dozen others.
Right now with Apple as the sole curator, selections are a bit boring, but if Apple can attract and support a broad spectrum of music curators then it would have a compelling social platform on its hands — one that would actually enable new music discovery. But back to the main point: many people won’t mind the roll-the-dice nature of iCloud Music Library — especially if you’ve ditched the traditional “music library” and gone all in on streaming services. Connect also does not allow consumers to connect with one another and listen to other playlists, the modern equivalent of sharing a mixtape with your friend, which was popularized by Spotify. My iTunes library is comprised entirely of Apple Lossless tracks, carefully tagged with artist info and high-resolution artwork that looks great on my iPhone. You wouldn’t be the first person to wonder what the difference is between “search” and “browse.” Apple Music’s big advantage is that it will work better on Apple devices.
It’s hugely disappointing because I love Apple’s concept and it’d be great to have all of my music with me at 256 kbps quality while keeping the lossless files safe on my primary computer. What’s most impressive about Apple Music’s curation and recommendations is how compelling they are, considering I just showed up today, pretty much out of nowhere. Spotify normally costs $1 for the first three months and thereafter $10 a month when you sign up through its website, but it charges $13 a month inside Apple’s in-app payments service to make up for the 30 percent cut it gives up to Apple.
A feed of old music videos and some flashy photos doesn’t feel especially revolutionary, however the occasional piece of exclusive content could keep fans coming back for more. A true test for Apple Music will be whether consumers understand how it works and whether they will stick with it long enough to pay for it after the free trial. Even failing that, Apple could still win the day IF it can make itself a desirable platform for music curators and DJ’s to show off their best new playlists. Spotify, which acquired music intelligence startup The Echo Nest last year, peddles its own flavor of artist and song-based radio stations, as well as playlists based on genre, mood, and behavior. Make it easier to fix the occasional screw-ups — or give users the ability to manually upload songs like Google does. (It’s possible to upload 50,000 of your own songs to Google Music for free.) If and when that happens, I’ll happily make Apple Music my go-to music app.
Earlier this month, Spotify one-upped just about everybody in the activity-based playlist game with the launch of Spotify Running, which dynamically adjusts the tempo of a song to match your running speed. Whereas Spotify leverages Facebook to connect listeners to friends, Apple could focus on connecting users with really good curators; people who consistently introduce them to cool new tunes. To get there, it will have to restrain itself from wanting to control every piece of content that gets posted, while also being selective about who its curators are. There are also little things: When I find a track I like in an Apple-curated playlist, there’s no easy way to navigate to the full album, nor can I add it to a new playlist of my own without backing out and creating the playlist from the “My Music” tab. This differs from the DRM-free nature of iTunes Match and is a confounding decision from a company whose co-founder went to war with the music industry over the very principle of DRM.
This feature, which allows you to sync your collection across devices, is apparently also required to add tracks to your collection in the first place (even if you’re only using Apple Music on one device). While it’s convenient to be able to merge your existing tracks with Apple Music’s library, the mechanism used to do this will madden many people: You have to use iTunes. These streaming services are all the same price, with roughly the same size selection (although kudos to Apple for winning over Taylor Swift at the last minute and offering a $15 family plan that covers up to six users). Thanks to its 2011 integration with Facebook and its own relatively widespread adoption, Spotify lets me easily follow my in-real-life friends and watch whenever one of them goes down a 90s nostalgia rabbit hole.
I can also easily share Spotify playlists with friends, since most people my age who I know have a Spotify account (and if not, it’s free to sign up, unlike Apple Music). Spotify may have 75 million listeners (with 20 million of them paying a monthly subscription fee), but Apple has over 800 million credit cards on file.