Apple Music is made up of five distinct segments: For You, which surfaces all the music that Apple thinks you will enjoy; New, where you can find all of the recent releases and popular music; Radio, which houses Apple Music’s flagship station Beats 1 among other channels; Connect, a platform where artists can share photos, videos, and behind the scenes clips; and My Music, the spot for all of your locally stored and saved music.
Apple checks all the boxes on the "here’s how to make a streaming music service" checklist. Apple Music is $9.99 a month, or $14.99 for families with up to six users. The music catalog exceeds 30 million songs, matching that of Spotify. You can watch music videos just like you can on Tidal. But Apple Music’s biggest advantage is its For You section, and specifically the discovery engine, which is one of the best you will find in any music streaming service. It’s the first tab in the Music app, and where I’ve spent the majority of my time using the service. But to get the most out of that engine, you have to go through a cumbersome set-up process to fully explain to Apple what types of music and which artists you enjoy.
When you open Apple Music for the first time, it will ask you to pick your favorite genres of music and artists by tapping on some red bubbles (once if you like, twice if you love). Those bubbles have been brought over from Beats Music, which Apple acquired last year. What Apple Music doesn’t tell you is these decisions — along with your existing iTunes library — will shape the For You section and likely determine your experience with Apple Music. So don’t double tap on that U2 bubble that shows up thanks to the album you couldn’t get rid of because you just want to get through the menu, or you will be living with The Edge for a long time.
But once you’ve set it up (and once you start using the service regularly), For You comes to life in a way that no other music service has been able to accomplish. Constantly surfacing new playlists and albums — many of which have been put together by Apple’s teams of music experts instead of an algorithm — For You is Apple at its best. I would say I’ve clicked on about 80 percent of the playlists Apple has found for me, compared to around 25 percent of the playlists brought up by Spotify. (The ones I’ve skipped are mostly the "Intro to Every Artist I Already Like" playlists that Apple keeps dredging up. Does anyone need an intro to Kanye West?)
A number of the playlists seem to have been brought over from Beats Music, which is unsurprising given the fact that one of the few things Beats Music did exceptionally well was playlist curation. As you use Apple Music and click the hearts next to songs, albums, and playlists, Apple will continue to reshape For You to your liking. Playlist series like "Behind The Board," which focuses on the producers behind some of your favorite songs, and "Guest List," a collection of collaborations by some of your favorite artists, are just two of the standouts that you’ll find on the service. Apple Music has also included playlists from music magazines like Pitchfork, Dancing Astronaut, and The Fader in the New section.
Apple Music is currently available on iOS, Mac, and PC, with an Android app arriving later this year. While it’s great that Apple will soon have its music service on every platform of consequence, so far the apps themselves are confusing and hard to navigate. Apple has a lot of work to do to make things easier to find and use — it’s a surprising misstep for a company that prides itself on simplicity.
Apple Music Review from theverge.com.
The Apple Music library is 30 million tracks strong and growing - that's not quite as high as the number of tracks available in iTunes but on a par with Spotify and Google Music which are, lets face it, its biggest rivals.
Any music that you have in your own personal library that perhaps isn't available to stream you can upload to iCloud and have them seamlessly integrated with the other tracks that are natively available. You're currently limited to 25,000 but that will increase to 100,000 when iOS 9 launches.
Unsubscribe to Apple Music:
- Tap "Settings"
- Tap "iTunes & App Store"
- Tap "Apple ID email address"
- Tap "View Apple ID" (you may be prompted to enter your Apple ID password)
- On "Account Settings" screen, scroll down and tap "Manage" below "Subscriptions"
- On the "Apple Music Membership" you can unsubscribe
