Apple Music vs Spotify

Records.

well, yes. I prefer that too, but Spotify obviously has things I don't own and want to check out.

Does apple music have higher bit rate like spotify does for premium users?

No stars, no spotify.

256 kbps v spotify's 320 kbps iirc xp

for a few more months i have a premium account with deezer - came as part of the sonos package.

so, that.

doubt i will renew it though, as i rarely use it.

Haven't heard anything about Apple Music that has persuaded me to try it.

I don't have to pay for Spotify if I don't want to, whereas last I heard I did have to pay for Apple Music. Maybe I'm reaching pre-mature old age, but if I'm paying money for something, I still kinda want a physical product.

if I'm paying money for something, I still kinda want a physical product.

so you don't pay for any kind of tv programming? or for the internet? or to go to a movie?

Do we really need another thread about this ?

I thought wth apple music out a while now it was worth polling to see which service was the most popular on ilx. You needn't click on it if you dont want to.

I haven't posted much, but I'm sort of between jobs and have had a bit of time on my hands so fwiw...

Spotify has age behind it, so I'm sort of baked into it - old, long playlists of stuff, the simple fact of familiarity, good integration across all platforms, collaborative playlists, plenty good enough catalogue, 320kbps streaming. I don't use the radio or curated playlist stuff to know enough about how good they are.

Apple Music, in the month I've been using it has all of this as well, albeit the iPad app is a bit shonky, it also has a far better UI. Lacks collaborative playlists, and the playback is 256kbps but I can live with that. Apple also has far better customisable iD3 tagging, if that's your thing (it's mine).

Apple wins in one crucial aspect: the integration of the user's own catalogue. Spotify is shit for this, as it has no cloud/match service. I wouldn't be surprised it they're working on one.

Google Play Music probably has the best UI of the lot, to be honest, is good across platforms and devices, and you can upload up to 50,000 songs. So in theory it should support decent catalogue integration. I need to sign up for the 'All Access' feature to try it. The catalogue is broadly similar to the others. It's got a weird 1000 song limit for playlists. The tagging is pretty execrable.

What I reckon I'll end up doing is paying for Apple (mainly because of the way it manages my own library) and using Google Play for when I'm out and about (until the mooted Android iTunes, then who knows).

As you can imagine, I'm a hit with the ladies.

Also, the Apple curated playlists are actually pretty decent, if you're into that kind of thing - found some nice kosmische stuff last week, plenty of good ambient/drone playlists, a best of drone jazz thing and a great 'Tortoise influences' playlist.

but arent there loads of playlists on Spotify of that? A lot of users make their playlists public

ok, just tried to add the spotify add-on to my sonos app.
however, it needs a premium account.
well, that's that then.

I can't even fathom using free Spotify. ADS ARE THE DEVIL!

Cosmic Slop - the diff is that Apple serves up their own curated playlists in the "For You" tab, tailored based on your purchase/listen history, and for some reason they feel a little more muso-nerdy, and a little more relevant

I'm very happy with Spotify, and I fucking hate iTunes, so I have no reason to even try Apple Music, not even going to touch it.

I'm perfectly happy with iTunes as a personal library maintenance/playback application, but that function is suddenly a zit on giant, the streaming service. I wish they'd rolled out Apple Music as a separate (but integratable) app. At this point I'm leaning towards dumping AM at the end of the trial period and keeping Spotify.

there is no way I'm touching Apple Music with a ten foot pole

tracer - ahh ok, but every monday Spotify gives you a playlist too - discover weekly. Is it much different to that?

The Apple Music playlists are excellent. I find it an easier and more pleasurable interface for exploring new music than Spotify. I've been a Spotify premium user since 2008 or early 2009.

I still use iTunes and have no problem with it, even though my iMac is an ancient mid-2007 model.

I wish they'd rolled out Apple Music as a separate (but integratable) app.

I may have taken a trial then tho I do like Spotify having been premium for donkeys years.
I hate itunes and use it only for my ipod.

i once installed itunes to get a certain high profile freebie, but when things went wrong, i dug around under the covers and realised just what a mess it was, and so, backed out.
never again.
following the experience, i had a discussion with a proper s/w apple friendly nerd friend of mine re the chaos re file structures under the covers, and his reasoning was that apple/itunes users just give their trust over to the s/w and have little care as to what actually happens underneath the GUI, which may be true, but its something i could never be comfortable with.
also to get back on thread, i have no need to pay for a premium service given that there are huge sections of my cd/digital archive that have yet to be given the attention they so deserve.

but dont you want to hear new music?

umm .. yes.
but not that often i need to have a subscription.
i use youtube/official websites, and if i like, i buy the cd.

i dont understand how anybody can listen to whole albums on youtube. the quality is terrible anyway but on a laptop or phone its far far worse

apple music has been fine for me after the first few days where it didn't sync things very well. I like it just fine. spotify is fine too but crucially, I can get a 'family' account for apple music and my wife and kid can use it for $15 / month which seems like a decent deal, and spotify doesn't. and spotify with ads annoys me.

Winamp

spotify has a family account! i have it, same pricing.

Spottiefy!

Yeah what, we have the Spotify family account and it's $15/month.

wow that's new.

I did have my first annoying possibly Music related issue in a while today: songs, which were on my iphone, not in the cloud, would not play unless I went into airplane mode. I twas like it was constantly trying to make a connection (my connection was lousy). Not sure what was going on but don't like the idea that it might be eating up bandwidth even when the songs are on my phone.

I did have my first annoying possibly Music related issue in a while today: songs, which were on my iphone, not in the cloud, would not play unless I went into airplane mode.

every time i feel ready to try apple music again, someone reports another incredibly dumb issue like this. spotify has an offline mode which works for weeks without phoning home all the time.

The playlists I have transferred to my phone via Apple Music (containing non-cloud music) still don't show up there since the launch of this thing. How is this not fixed yet?

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2015/08/damage-done-how-much-money-i-didnt-spend-in-2014-because-of-spotify/

The thing that makes blog posts like that super fatuous is NO ONE IS STOPPING YOU FROM PURCHASING A NON-STREAMING VERSION OF THE MUSIC YOU LIKE IF THAT'S ACTUALLY IMPORTANT TO YOU. Dude is trying to have his cake and eat it, too; you can't be all "streaming pay rates are criminal, I can't abide that type of thievery to artists OH HEY I SAVED $700 THIS YEAR YAY" without at least acknowledging that your statement of caring about what artists make is a lie you are telling yourself so that you can continue to believe that you uphold the values you think you should have.

I dunno Dan, I mean life is full of those kinds of economic/moral contradictions. When a product is legally available for less money, very few people will deliberately pay more money for it regardless of their moral convictions (e.g. sweatshop clothing).

Nowhere did I say that one shouldn't make the choice to save money. What I said was "stop pretending like the moral question is more important to you than saving money" (with the I hope unnecessary-to-state caveat that we are talking about luxury items that it is assumed the consumer in question can afford; a person who can afford the cost of a device capable of streaming as well as the sustaining costs of a subscription to an online service and a streaming service can afford an offline device capable of playing CDs)

saving money isn't always a choice, often it is more like a necessity

of course anyone who can afford a computer/smartphone and streaming subscription can afford a CD player and CDs/mp3 player and mp3s; the difference is that one is a fixed cost and one is a potentially infinite cost. buying used can cut down that cost significantly depending on what you buy, but A) that itself is a compromise in terms of money making it to the artists and B) it is still a potentially infinite cost.

We all (I assume) agree that minimum wage should be raised even if it means paying slightly higher prices but I doubt many of us would voluntarily pay a higher "support workers" price where a lower one was offered.

Not to mention how futile it would be to do so as an individual

again, in many cases you are mistaking "would voluntarily pay" with "are able under our budget to pay"

well that's a whole other thing, but "afford" is a slippery concept. When there was no spotify, many of us "afforded" paying more for physical recordings (or else taped/burned them from friends, I guess).

you're either referring to a time when illegal downloading was rampant, or when the economy was not a shambles

not that all of this doesn't have moral ramifications -- of course it does, no one is disputing it. but treating it as a completely free moral choice with no other variables -- the equivalent of one of those "flip the switch and kill one person / leave the switch and kill ten" questions -- gets into dicey territory fast.

Do all of the people who claim they "can't afford" music also never travel, never eat in restaurants, never go out to bars, never see movies, never purchase books, never partake in any form of entertainment that costs money? I'm sure there are some who fit that category, but there are plenty of people with some discretionary spending who make the rational choice that they "can't afford" to purchase music -- as long as there is a cheaper or free alternative. If the alternative wasn't there, they'd pay for it, and some other part of discretionary spending would take the hit.

that naivety is built into the article tho. in any retail system handwringing about distributors driving down the profits of manufacturers is addressing the wrong problem - you're decrying a feature of the economic system that's intrinsic to that economic system

or in brief, lol ethical consumerism

Do all of the people who claim they "can't afford" music also never travel, never eat in restaurants, never go out to bars, never see movies, never purchase books, never partake in any form of entertainment that costs money? I'm sure there are some who fit that category, but there are plenty of people with some discretionary spending who make the rational choice that they "can't afford" to purchase music -- as long as there is a cheaper or free alternative. If the alternative wasn't there, they'd pay for it, and some other part of discretionary spending would take the hit.

― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, August 4, 2015 11:55 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is perilously close to the "if they're really that poor then why do they have cell phones?" argument

of course anyone who can afford a computer/smartphone and streaming subscription can afford a CD player and CDs/mp3 player and mp3s; the difference is that one is a fixed cost and one is a potentially infinite cost.

Define "fixed cost" here; assuming you mean "a predictable amount every month", either method can be put into a bounded budget controlled by the consumer, making either a predictable amount every month. One does give you more music at your disposal than the other; I'm not disputing that. And xposts make me think that we're pretty much on the same page here, I'm just being kind of a dick about it.

We all (I assume) agree that minimum wage should be raised even if it means paying slightly higher prices but I doubt many of us would voluntarily pay a higher "support workers" price where a lower one was offered.

I don't disagree. What I'm saying is that making that choice when it's offered to you and you have the ability to pay the higher price shows what your actual priorities are, and if your self-image as a "good person" involves the other choice, walk the walk or stop lying to yourself.

Do all of the people who claim they "can't afford" music also never travel, never eat in restaurants, never go out to bars, never see movies, never purchase books, never partake in any form of entertainment that costs money? I'm sure there are some who fit that category, but there are plenty of people with some discretionary spending who make the rational choice that they "can't afford" to purchase music -- as long as there is a cheaper or free alternative. If the alternative wasn't there, they'd pay for it, and some other part of discretionary spending would take the hit.

― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, August 4, 2015 11:55 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is perilously close to the "if they're really that poor then why do they have cell phones?" argument

― for sale: baby shoes, never worn your ass (katherine), Tuesday, August 4, 2015 10:57 AM (18 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, it's really not at all

Define "fixed cost" here; assuming you mean "a predictable amount every month", either method can be put into a bounded budget controlled by the consumer, making either a predictable amount every month. One does give you more music at your disposal than the other; I'm not disputing that. And xposts make me think that we're pretty much on the same page here, I'm just being kind of a dick about it.

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Tuesday, August 4, 2015 11:57 AM (3 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that would indeed be the definition of a "fixed cost"

besides, people who use spotify rather than purchase music are not limited to the poor

true, I imagine they also include a lot of middle- and/or working-class people whose budgets more easily allow for $15 a month than $15 a CD

I don't disagree. What I'm saying is that making that choice when it's offered to you and you have the ability to pay the higher price shows what your actual priorities are, and if your self-image as a "good person" involves the other choice, walk the walk or stop lying to yourself.

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Tuesday, August 4, 2015 10:57 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, you drive a car to work? You turned on your air conditioning today? STOP PRETENDING YOU CARE AT ALL WHAT HAPPENS TO THE PLANET!

Except if I don't drive my car to work or turn on my air conditioning, it will do exactly zero to slow the advance of global warming. Only collective action works. Just like my putting an extra few hundred dollars a year, in aggregate, in the pockets of all of the artists I listen to will make almost no difference to their lives.

I mean, if someone is living on minimum wage but has made the choice to be on Apple Music, I'm not churlish enough to be all "you fiend, taking music from the mouths of starving musicians" because that person is doing some budgetary magic of their own to even be in the game (possibly/probably from a losing position). I'm talking about people like me who claim they can't afford to pay for albums, even MP3 albums, but love their favorite artists and lament that the industry is imploding around them; they are lying to everyone, including themselves. If they wanted to, they could afford it; they are choosing not to pay. And what I am saying is "be honest about the ramifications of that choice".

xp: actually I take public transportation to work because I want to limit the driving I do as part of being a responsible citizen in a city that affords me transportation options, but apparently that's meaningless and I should go out and buy 10 Hummers that I just let idle on the side street next to our house

true, I imagine they also include a lot of middle- and/or working-class people whose budgets more easily allow for $15 a month than $15 a CD

― for sale: baby shoes, never worn your ass (katherine), Tuesday, August 4, 2015 11:01 AM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not arguing with this at all! Anyone with a fixed amount of money to spend, which is most of us, is sensitive to what things cost, and is going to be better off financially when they spend less. Still, if there was no Spotify (and no downloading), some of those working/middle class people would decide it's worth spending $15/CD on music (and maybe this would mean slightly less on some other discretionary item), and in aggregate this might amount to more money going to artists. Not that I think going back to that model is on the table.

I would like to reiterate that my actual point here is "do what you want to do but don't lie to yourself and everyone else about what you are doing"

xp: actually I take public transportation to work because I want to limit the driving I do as part of being a responsible citizen in a city that affords me transportation options, but apparently that's meaningless and I should go out and buy 10 Hummers that I just let idle on the side street next to our house

― I Am Curious (Dolezal) (DJP), Tuesday, August 4, 2015 11:05 AM (21 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I take public transit to work too. I also live in a 1300 sf apt though and I do use AC, not cranked, but I use it. I could live with my entire family in a 550 sf studio and avoid AC and dramatically cut my carbon footprint. I could never take an airplane again anywhere and live a perfectly fine life. I could switch to an all-vegan diet. Should I stop thinking of myself as a "good person" because I don't do these things? Do I have no right to argue that there should be collective/regulatory action on global warming because I live an American lifestyle and don't fully "walk the walk"?

What does any of this have to do with apple music vs spotify.

There should be a separate ethics and economics of streaming music thread.

Should I stop thinking of myself as a "good person" because I don't do these things?

Either that or you should change your definition of what a "good person" is.

Also, Jeff is right.

since when did ilm threads stick to the opening point? lol

xp

I know, crazy idea!

there's no such thing as a "good person," people make thousands if not millions of moral decisions per day, if anything thinking of oneself as a "good person" makes one more likely to be complacent about them

lol Ethics and Economics of Streaming sounds like it's be a ___ for non-majors course, only I'm not sure what dept

Jeff killed the thread

the line graphs showing total dollars spent on music over the past 30 years are a horror show for the music industry. what i'm not sure is whether it's the casual fans who are to blame (they didn't buy music anyway, right?), or the hardcore fans like the writer of the article above who have abandoned their expensive habits (are there enough of these people to make a difference?)

i mean, what's easy to forget as someone who Loves Music is that the vast majority of people never bought CDs except as special occasions anyway. like waaay less than 1 a month. so it seems reasonable to suggest that past a certain threshold, streaming subscribers + (diminished) purchasers would on aggregate be spending more on music than just purchasers did before.

spotify

saving money isn't always a choice, often it is more like a necessity

that is of course true. but if that's the case for this particular invisible oranges writer, then his using spotify isn't doing any financial harm to anyone, because he wouldn't have/couldn't have bought all those records anyway.

Stop Thinking of Yourself as a Good Person: The Ethics and Economics of Music Streaming

Still marveling at how big the gulf is between Apple Music's sleek iPhone UI and its molasses-slow iTunes UI

a couple of things have been bugging me about Apple Music lately.

1. Artists with long discographies don't have all their albums pop up under the Albums list. They stop after going back some amount. So if I just want to listen to some Bob Dylan album from the 80s I have to know the name of the album and search for that. Rather than being able to use Apple Music to research someone's career and listen to it, I have to do research in a browser and then search for the specific thing. That's annoying.

2. I can't figure out how to get songs from my CDs onto my iPhone. I want to sync it tony Mac but I have been using it for months and it wants me to set it up as new. So, I guess so much for that idea. This was going to be the big benefit for me. Maybe I should see if I can do this on the Spotify mobile app.

Also, I would like to be able to create and share playlists and have collaborative playlists.

The real benefits of Apple Music seem to be:
1. It's pretty
2. Taylor Swift
That might not be enough in the end.

Benefits of Spotify = No Taylor Swift.

I wonder if having the free option might be the difference in the results?
How many here refuse to pay to stream?

so funny to have had to defend vinyl vs CDs and now to have to defend CDs vs streaming...

the line graphs showing total dollars spent on music over the past 30 years are a horror show for the music industry. what i'm not sure is whether it's the casual fans who are to blame (they didn't buy music anyway, right?), or the hardcore fans like the writer of the article above who have abandoned their expensive habits (are there enough of these people to make a difference?)

At my peak I was spending $3000 and change a year

2. I can't figure out how to get songs from my CDs onto my iPhone.

you're meant to:

1. rip your cd into an itunes desktop app at minimum 96 kbps
2. let icloud music library match it wrong and bugger up all your tags and artwork either match it with a streamable version it already has, or pop all your files into ~the cloud~ for retrieval
3. let your phone download a drm-encumbered version off the cloud

or, just find your cd in the apple music library and stream that.

apple sees downloading as "legacy" and CDs as basically hitting rocks together for fun

otm. the obvious problem with a streaming world is mobile data caps, which apple presumably hopes will just magically expand. even free wifi points won't always let you sit there and stream beats 1 all day. if you're at home and your country is industrialised, fine. if your work is obscenely generous with what you're allowed to do on its internet, fine.

No wonder the telecoms industry is behind streaming. You're still paying for your music and the musicians get the least money unless they're taylor swift or Metallica type superstars

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/05/noel-gallagher-slams-orwellian-apple-music

He added: “It’s not playing the Kinks.

excellent point grandpa

i mean i get that his shtick is captain grumpypants but it's 2015 now. nobody's confiscating his kinks or his personal record collection.

Oh you were talking about Noel Gallagher, not deems.

not that noel isn't captain grumpypants but i think "a world music station is orwellian" and "i ain't listenin, unless they play all the shit i want to hear" are two distinct sentiments. the interviewer may have even asked him "would you listen to it?" after he said the orwell bit.

you're meant to:

1. rip your cd into an itunes desktop app at minimum 96 kbps
2. let icloud music library match it wrong and bugger up all your tags and artwork either match it with a streamable version it already has, or pop all your files into ~the cloud~ for retrieval
3. let your phone download a drm-encumbered version off the cloud

Thanks!

Well, it looks like my Mac must be too old for this shit, because I can't update iTunes anymore. So, I can't use iCloud Music Library and I can't even begin to do this.

then I looked into doing something similar on Spotify and it was easy peasy. I just made a playlist on my Mac with local files and then downloaded them to my phone with the Mobile app. Unfortunately, those files are not integrated into the search function, but fuck it, it's easier than dealing with Apple Music. I guess I've made my decision. Although, I really don't want to use up that space on my phone for music...

If the locally-originated files are not accessible via the search in spotify mobile, how do you get to them?

I have to play it through the playlist. You set up a playlist with local files on the desktop client, and the on the phone choose to make that playlist available offline on my phone and it downloads all of them.

That's cool - no more iTunes!

Yeah but doesn't the desktop client see your desktop library via iTunes? I mean you can't just direct it to a nested folder structure can you?

I think you can drag the tracks from the finder into a spotify playlist..?

Oh really...? Even if it's on an external hd?

Probably stop working once you remove the drive.

spotify's local-files solution is a nice gesture but seems clunky when really we should just be able to dump those songs somewhere on the phone and play them. it sucks that people are having to do that because they can't get apple music/icloud music library to work properly.

i've just gone back to apple music to see what it's like. it's astounding that after five weeks apple hasn't fixed even the simpler bugs in the 8.4 music app ('add to my music' not taking, having to tap stuff in 'for you' twice sometimes, songs getting stuck on download). in service of this, at home i've created a duplicate itunes library* of 18,000-odd songs that's been syncing to icloud music library for 36 hours and it's only reporting ~15% of unmatched tracks uploaded. my collection isn't that unusual or massive so i've no idea what's going on there. perhaps that's normal idk.

meanwhile i've synced my original/intact itunes library to an older iphone so i can use it as a dumb ipod in case apple music deletes my offline songs/changes everything to bob dylan/falls on its arse in some new and fascinating way.

* i should not have to do this

so i voted for spotify

Has anyone spent 4 hours with Spotify customer service for any issues? Cuz that's been my day with Apple.

what happened?

Ugh, mostly my fault for not understanding all the new technologiez. In the end it SEEMS to have all worked out. We'll see.

Signed up for Apple Music with the wrong Apple ID & couldn't get it to link to my family members, then tried to sign up for a trial with my regular Apple ID & it billed me immediately instead of signing me up for a trial. Time will tell if this has been rectified (apparently the reset can take up to a day).

So far, though, I think the interface kills Spotify's (which I find difficult to navigate).

Most say the opposite

Unless there’s a fucking section that says ‘Noel Gallagher’s music collection’ then I won’t be listening to it.

somewhere, excitable emails are exchanged about curated content

I don't have any of those issues with apple music, autumn; that is weird.

and, an album that i downloaded last night was not there this morning. and, when the music app's access to cellular data is turned off, songs keep pausing.

five weeks since launch. this should all have been fixed.

I think they're more focused on the 3 month mark.

I really see no reason to fix them until a couple of weeks before people decide to pay.

true, unless people crack the shits and give up well before then

xpost
After everyone has given up and gone back to Spotify? I get your point, but these days I feel like Apple releases stuff with bugs, and then basically never fixes them. They have so many customers that either don't experience the bugs, or don't care about them, that they just consider everyone else to be edge cases and ignore them.

You have a non-apple WiFi router?
You have a phone/computer that's more than a couple of years old?
You have a large music collection?
You care about metadata?

Edge cases.

well this is true: "and, when the music app's access to cellular data is turned off, songs keep pausing"

unless the song is rightly saved to play offline.

it was

they can't even get icloud photo library working yet :(

Do Apple really have a history of not fixing things?

with itunes they have a history of making things worse

God, I hate itunes. But i cba trying anything else for my ipod as its too much hassle

just got apple music to listen to dr. dre

man this shit is really fucking confusing w/it's integration w/the already fucked itunes

spotify is so much better than this

yeah its a mess.

Have to hope it gets better. I mean potentially it could be the gamechanger their touting it as but being sensitive to customer feedback and amenable to changing the ways in which people say your product sucks is pretty essential for a streaming service and with everything else they do Apple err on the side of prescriptive.

By some miracle the corrupted drive that my backed up music library was on decided to repair itself, so after 2.5 years in the wilderness I finally got my itunes back (give or take a dodgy itl file, 10,000 duplicates, missing album artwork, tracks and playlists).

Don't think I'll be touching any of the streaming/cloud/match features anytime soon but the idea of being able to marry the library I started building when I was 13 with a streaming service is always gonna be appealing and it never seemed to work out via spotify.

It held me down these past few years but it's always felt supplementary. The shittiness of Apple Music has renewed my appreciation but at this point I'm still looking for reasons to drop it.

For those who never buy CD's/LP's etc what are your reasons for mostly streaming? What made you take that choice, was it simply its cheaper?

Spotify.

convenience in every way xp. haven't paid for music outside of streaming within the last 2-3 years. thousands of CD's collecting dust under my bed.

But at least you will still have them to play if you need them what if the streaming service you use goes busts or bands pull their albums from it?

I subscribe to spotify to check out new releases or albums i can never afford to buy (like all of the blue note catalog; if that was pulled I'd be offski)

nah got em all ripped on hard drives and backed up. have absolutely zero reason to keep them. too lazy to try and sell them is all. Sound quality is my biggest issue but 320 rips are ok by me (with premium membership).

I don't see any point of buying a album I listen to on the streaming sites. It's a waste of my money. I'll end up listening to albums on the very same device I could be streaming it on. It's nice to have the art, and the warm fuzzies of throwing an extra bit of change towards a musician, but not $10+ nice.

Attitudes to music, musicians, labels etc really have changed. I wonder what music will be like in a decade or 2. I really hope its not back to the days of only the rich making it.

Attitudes to music, musicians, labels etc really have changed

I'm 34 and eh not sure i ever gave a thought to any of those things when I was spending loads of cash every year on music. bought all those CDs at the time cos that was the most convenient method to listen to new stuff. now the most convenient is streaming so I'm on board. its even way more convenient than pirating.

Btw my wife uses Google Music & it does everything Apple Music purports to do way better

I wonder what music will be like in a decade or 2. I really hope its not back to the days of only the rich making it.

― Cosmic Slop, Friday, August 7, 2015 10:22 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dunno, man, it feels like it's kinda this way already. It's probably not, but it feels that way.

My attitude to music, musicians and labels hasn't really changed too much. I mean, it has, but only much as would be expected from being a teenager to being an adult. But economics is economics. If people want me to buy their albums don't put em on the streaming sites. I bought 1989 on CD. If I want to hear something enough and I can't stream it, I'll buy it. I'm not going to wring my hands about having access to thousands of albums at the press of a button for 10 bucks a month, that's not my fight.

I dunno, man, it feels like it's kinda this way already. It's probably not, but it feels that way.

― You’re being too simplistic and you’re insulting my poor heart (Turrican),

I know, it's heading that way and that worries me that we might be past the tipping point.

That is ridiculous. You can make an album for almost nothing these days. Unless by "rich" you mean having a day job.

I really hope its not back to the days of only the rich making it.

when was this?

of all the "artist ponders the effect of streaming" articles, this is my favorite, for acknowledging that music fans were saying GIMME GIMME GIMME long before the internet was around: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/travis-morrison/hey-dude-from-cracker-im_b_1610557.html

i mean maybe you took great pride in being a financial patron of the arts in the 90s but imo "Attitudes to music, musicians, labels etc" haven't changed much at all. and its the labels saying GIMME GIMME GIMME that bear the greater responsibility to think of the ramifications

Entertaining and true...

Will Spotify ever be forced to go premium only?

Apple music.

I used free Spotify since it came to the states back in 2011, but it was never my sole listening service, I love physical products too much. But with the free trial and my addiction to Apple hype I've been using Apple Music and I quite like it and think I'll continue using it (again not replacing the physical CDs I regularly buy,, but more as a supplement for checking new/unsure things out via torrent like I used to).

The main advantages over Spotify for me are the UI (despite bus)) and the curated content. Like others itt I've found 90S% of the "For You" playlists to be very cool. Spotify was never horrible, but it was never a kind of software that really drew me in and made me want to explore like Apple Music does. Spotify sort of feels like a tool--you open it up, search for the songs you feel like checking out, thats it thats all.

Apple has so far been unwilling or unable to rectify my issues (giving me the 3 months free). If they can't resolve it, I'm going to take that as my cue to start transitioning out of their unnecessarily prescriptive universe and going toward Android and PC platforms as my old devices reach the end of their life spans.

One of the big reasons I wanted to go with Apple Music was their higher streaming royalty rates. No artist can make anything like a decent amount of money from Spotify's pittance. But I'm also looking for ways to not go totally broke with my whole family buying digital music.

Google Play also pays higher rates, but we'd need 4 accounts at $40/mo rather than the $15 for Apple or Spotify. Not a killer, but significant nonetheless.

Apple rates are basically the same as Spotify's.

Hm, I thought I'd read that they were more in line with Google Play/Groove.

Wait, if they're paying the same as Spotify, why is T swift on board? More research required.

companies sometimes can just, like, give money to taylor swift sometimes, if they want to, for things

But they won't give me $45. Damn, I gotta write a huge string of hits.

Premium Spotify rates are basically equal to Apple rates (once the user starts paying). TS didn't like the Spotify Free rates (or that they had a free option at all) so she took her music off the whole service.

I bet she will be getting a far superior rate for herself on Apple Music though. The rest is just good advice from her PR.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

heh

Me and my 9 pals.

apple music just deleted a saved playlist while i was listening to it. in the middle of playing a song. these poll results are correct.

Looks like Apple have a lot of work to do

AA, you've had more problems with AM than anyone I know. I'm worried that if you continue to use AM, you will be winked out of existence. Please back yourself up.

I'm going with google play for now. Somewhat comically, the search function is its main drawback right now. It often shows me stuff I didn't ask for (like totally different artists from the one I searched for) and they mysteriously removed all genres. I think they're bringing them back soon though. There's no curation at the moment but after trying to get along with apple for a while now I'd say it's all for the better. Plus, you can upload 50 000 tracks for free. That sure helps.

Somewhat comically, the search function is its main drawback right now.

Lol yeah I use Google Play too and the search function is close to useless. You'd really think that'd be one thing Google wouldn't have a problem with. I've been a bit surprised at the mostly positive comments about it in these threads actually. I'm using the free tier for the ability to store 50,000 of my own tracks in the cloud -- it's nice to be able to stream my library though Sonos without the computer having to be on -- and I'd also expected to use it as a quick way to swap music in and out of my phone without having to sync to iTunes, but in addition to the search issue the UI on the iOS app is just terrible. So painful to scroll through artists in those big bubbles (which I often have to do since search doesn't work). There's no way I'd pay for this with the app in the condition it's in now. Also I can't help feeling that on the occasions I do use the app to play music on my phone it sounds very slightly less clear than other apps -- though that may be a purely psychological response to my annoyance with it.

unbelievable to me how many basic design flaws these services have, considering what's at stake

I was going to give Spotify another chance but you still can't search local files on the desktop. They promised this would be fixed in a future version but it's been 6 months.

spotify's good at encouraging people to vote up suggested improvements into what seems to be a graveyard of suggested improvements. but then i see stuff like discover weekly and fresh finds, and all's forgiven.

AA, you've had more problems with AM than anyone I know. I'm worried that if you continue to use AM, you will be winked out of existence. Please back yourself up.

otm. i'd reset my phone and itunes database if i thought it'd help, but i don't think it'd help.

My problem is that this was a functioning part of the desktop app that I used everyday and they just removed it one day. Now I have to scroll through thousands of songs by title? It's absurd.

Most of their developers probably use the desktop version but how many have local files on their work computers? Just sayin..

I guess most people just don't have their own files anymore.

^^^ I find this insane btw

What is Apple's coverage like for classical music and dance music? Spotify is pretty great for the former and very patchy for the latter - suppose it depends on how many smaller labels Apple have on board?

<3 apple music great service

hey bono

Spotify has been fantastic for finding recordings of a lot of the choral music I've sung over the years, as evidenced by my Unbelievable Choral Works playlist

link pls

Some Dylan songs I couldn't find on Spotify but are on Apple Music:
Positively 4th Street
Can You Please Crawl Out Window?

and seems to be a lot more Dylan. Perhaps this was already discussed on a Dylan thread

apple music seems to enjoy replacing album art with mystery dylan.

seriously apple music is fucking weird who even though this was a good idea

iTunes has always been bad at album art. Granted, it's a tough job, but you'd think they would at least get the artist right.

https://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/6bWnlWmCk45LxCffWeTSpR

Sorry, just saw the request for that spotify playlist. Hope you're still interested, sendalai!

still not having any of these issues Autumn has with apple music.

Autumn, have you double-checked to make sure the "Turn Apple Music Into A Broken Nightmare" toggle is off?

damn toggle keeps turning self back on

last week i thought "hey maybe it's safe to try this thing again" and it had deleted another 60-odd tracks

Turned off the auto-renew and shut it all down. No thanks.

how do you turn off autorenew again? i turned off "show apple music" in prefs

app store -> apple id -> view apple id -> subscriptions -> manage

So Spotify is way better for making my own playlists and seeing shared playlists - albeit with virtually no reasonable access to my own files (this wasn't a problem before the change 6 mos ago). Also, Discover Weekly is good - although more as just a personalized radio station.

However, Apple music's "For You" playlists are *really* good. They're like comps I would have actually bought back in the old days. I've saved a lot of them for future listening. I'm so used to doing my own curation, either through my own files or Spotify, that it's strange to give up control and just play something curated by someone else. I guess it's another case of letting go and just letting Apple take care of things which has been an ultimately freeing experience for other things.

I'll have to decide whether I miss the control, but I think I'm ultimately listening more with Apple Music and feeling like I have new comps I'm looking forward to actually listening to (instead of always feeling like I still have a comp to make myself - which of course I never listen to once I make it).

All that said, I'm still on the fence.

my three months is up. def sticking w spotify

I never tried apple music so cant compare it to Spotify but I'm happy enough with it though I dont really use it a lot anymore. I still get my tenners worth

Going with Apple Music. Spotify lost me when it lost stars. And the inability to load my local files.

let me know what you think in a few months

no way I'm going over till they up the match limit to 100k songs tho.

I'm digging Apple Music so far. Wish it had a standalone desktop client like Spotify's though.

isnt that what iTunes is tho?

itunes sucks

isnt that what iTunes is tho?

It's Apple Music + a million other things (podcasts, ios apps, a file library, etc.). The user experience is much worse than using the Apple Music app itself.

True

Apple Music on an iPhone is a seamless joy to use. But iTunes takes soooooooo long to load on my computer, it's a headache. Spotify was slow, too, though, so it's an easy decision. Sticking with Apple Music as the free trial ends.

my spotify playlists will still exist if I cut back from paid to unpaid, right?

yes

Apple Music on an iPhone is a seamless joy to use.

are we using the same apple music because mine literally steps out of my phone and punches me in the face

AA, you should start an "Apple Music Is Out To Get Me" blog

Somehow this pile of dog feces has gotten worse with 9.0. I have to *continually* check show "only offline music" whenever I make a change to my library. And then there are the times when it just stops responding. And then there are the times when I try download an album that is on pre-order with available singles and just...nothing happens...

Ya'll using windows? Aside from an occasional hiccup streaming tracks it's been pretty stable for while now for me on mac.
I don't think anyone can save incomplete/unreleased albums, just the individual singles as they're released.

so happy to ditch this piece of shit

i'd pay like $2 a month for the "For You" though, maybe

Just tried to cancel Spotify and got a 500 Internal Server Error. Conspiracy.

Worked the second time. See you never, Spotify.

apple music's cancel function worked flawlessly for me

Anyone know when Apple is upping itunes Match to 100,000 songs? Still 25,000 according to this page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146

article on cnet:

Why I ditched Apple Music for Spotify
http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-music-vs-spotify/

We need glenn macintosh to come on this thread to defend Apple Music.

Yeah. Bring it on, alternate-universe me.

her 'short playlists' complaint is a personal taste issue. if you want longer playlists, download more playlists ffs.

her problem with being introduced to her favourite artists is otm though. it's like the service really wants us to know it's a bit average at curation.

community, eh, it's coming. nobody just erects a community that works on day one. they'll get there. feels like a weak criticism tbh.

Does Apple music have artist curated playlists like Spotify? It's the best thing

Like Chelsea Wolfe will have a playlist "what I've been listening to this month" or something

pretty sure that's what the artist-curated radio shows on Beats 1 are supposed to be - each of those radio shows' tracklistings (like St Vincent's, or Drake's) is in effect its own playlist, with "add" buttons next to each song

apple music is slanted towards apple hardware though? if so, for community purposes (ilm playlists) spotify seems a better choice?

oh for sure! you can't even share playlists with others on apple music afaik

saying "don't worry, the community aspects will come" is pretty weak imo - this ain't rehearsal

by that i mean it's not just a matter of going off and ~doing~ a community. it makes sense to get a feel for how people will use a service before trying to cultivate something like that, especially if you're apple and your previous attempts have been sort of hilarious.

iovine (?) indicated in a recent interview that they're going to build the social-type features over time rather than driving headlong into it.

and tbf if they're going to get one thing right it should be the playing music part

I've gone for Spotify in the end. I'd happily pay a few quid a month for the 'For You' playlists, but everything else is a mess. Another big factor is the ongoing non-appearance of the Android app. Is that any closer to reality?

I'm amazed they're even bothering with an Android app. Surely the whole point is to drive sales of iPhones?

itunes store on android without apple music doesn't make any sense if you're betting that the future of music is streaming.

I'm keeping both for the moment - the extravagance of it!

Don't purchase much recorded music any more- do go to shows and occasionally buy CDs directly from the artist, so I am keeping both as well for now.

lol Luna.

I'm skinto this year so needed to make that break - even a tenner a month is going to BURN. My loyalty is to Spotify, so that's where the cash is going. For now.

Possibly a deal breaker for Apple Music - if you cancel or let your paid membership lapse, then " If you lapse on your membership, you have a limited time before you would lose access to your music." This is unlike spotify where if you stop paying, you still have your playlists etc.

Extortion! Fuck apple music!

Just got a clarification that it's 90 days after cancellation.

"If you stop paying for this storage space, we will throw your stuff out and give the space to someone else" is not extortion

This isn't really about the storage space, this is about building up playlists, saving playlists, sharing playlists etc that all goes away if you don't pay. I think they should maintain the playlists but have the unavailable songs greyed out - would encourage people to resubscribe and they wouldn't lose any work they've put into it.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/10/20/apple_music_has_6_5_million_subscribers_does_that_make_it_a_failure.html

Google is about to announce ad free Youtube "Red" which will include Google Play Music.

'redtube' is already a thing i'm p sure

http://thenextweb.com/google/2015/10/21/heres-why-youtube-red-named-its-product-that/

tl;dr they know about redtube and they're like eh

“As we talked to users and fans in our studies, the term ‘red’ is often associated with YouTube. It has a lot of meaning in terms of love and the red carpet.”

this guy's salary is probably more than my house

so it's not an homage to taylor swift?

lol xp

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/27/apple-music-subscribers-siri-questions

not even "this is what wikipedia says", just "fuck off"

bizarre of Apple to suggest that they 'own' the charts?

you too can buy an app to fix this http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/20/music-tracker-apple-music-library-monitoring/

that is funny (and sad) but can i just for posterity quote this plz

As an example, Dodson cites a recent change to a studio recording of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," which was silently swapped over to a live version on Apple Music. Music Tracker noted the change and Dodson was able to find a replacement studio recording on another album.

http://f.cl.ly/items/3I3R0D1L2A0I3e3E421V/IMG_3934.jpg

ok fuck you i'll go to macy's instead!

http://f.cl.ly/items/3P0c3O1n25321C1H3c36/IMG_3928.jpg

So for $10 a month I get no commercials on Youtube plus virtually the same music library as the other services. That said, google play music is not very much "fun" compared to spotify's social-ness and Apple's curation.

http://9to5mac.com/2016/04/18/songshift-import-spotify-playlists-apple-music/

Works the best of any playlist converter I've tried. So much faster.

jeff, are you having trouble with apple music? still reports of offline music & playlists deleting and favourites vanishing in ios 9.3.1, and i can't get a grip on how many people are affected.

Not much trouble. There have been great improvements with the reliability of offline music and playlists. I haven't had any more issues of songs not downloading or playlists deleting. The matching still sucks though, with live versions of songs replacing album versions sometimes. IDK if that will ever get better. Overall I'm happy. Only thing I miss about spotify is the social/collaboration.

excellent, apart from the icml matching, which apple's going to need to let us override at some point.

i've bitten the bullet and set it all up again, updating here with success/failure.

what's better about it than Spotify?

I can heart music. Spotify took away my stars. That's the number one issue with me. When Spotify did that it completely fucked with the way I listen to music.

I use it because it loads almost instantly on my 2007 iMac, and I like the playlists. Spotify takes a few minutes to fully load up these days.

The recommended playlists are very good, as well.

Oops...the repetition of senility sets in.

what's better about it than Spotify?

the curation aspect is not better imo but different: shorter playlists, more specific recommendations. also apple music doesn't limit what you can save offline, but spotify's limit is ~3,333 songs per device across three devices.

given that they're already collecting metadata about what we like and listen to heaps, i want one of these services to go "based on these songs from the '70s/80s that you like, here's a load of music from the past 12–18 months that's basically the same sort of thing". but i mean explicitly as a labelled service, not just in a black-box discover weekly/"14 tracks inspired by brian eno" kind of way, and not just "you like old duran duran so here's some new duran duran", and not just "well you like tormato so here's some flower kings".

Man, I love the convenience of Apple Music, especially on my phone. "Siri, play this album," and bam, it's playing while I'm driving. But the sound is a bummer... it really sounds flat to me. Not sure if Spotify's sound is any better? But I hate the Spotify interface so much maybe it's worth the tradeoff.

Tidal has the best sound even w normal settings, unfortunately.

If they had had some sort of notification system like spotify's I'd be tempted to switch back, actually.

zero problems with apple music for some time now, quite reliable and worth it IMO. some catalogue shortcomings but mainly for obscure stuff

youtube red just launched in australia so i'm back on google play music. still no eq on ios (why ffs) but it's reliable, the catalogue is solid and it's better than apple music at handling uploads.

now that spple music is working for me 95% of the time and a major rebuild is (apparently) underway, i'm ready to ditch spotify entirely. i can't justify paying for the same content three times, and there's no sign of spotify killing its 3,333-song offline limit (and i've still got that shitty hamburger menu for some reason). recently i've stopped using it altogether.

imo spotify needs to do something big to keep/entice users, because as it stands the curation aspect alone is not enough to justify, and the competition is catching up very quickly.

agreed. the app experience is so slow and unsatisfying on both mobile and desktop. it's hard to remember now but spotify's quantum leap when it launched was the instantaneousness of its streaming. it literally seemed like magic. they don't have a monopoly on that anymore, and their catalogue is the same as everybody else's.. is discover weekly + mood-based playlists + few and far-between exclusives enough? not when every time i open the app i want to hurl the phone out the window.

It's more about the constant notifications for new releases, the easy sharing of playlists and the ability to see what my friends and colleagues are or have been listening to or playlisting for me. Making a real best of Vybz Kartel playlist (literally hundreds of tracks!) takes time, but among Spotify's millions of users, SOMEONE has in fact made that list, because they're a fan, and stuff like that is infinitely more valuable to me than another curated P4k list that worries way too much about being cool.

that is true.

Slight tangent, and I'm probably being dense, but is there a definitive way to search Spotify playlists? I've not found a satisfying method and I'm sure I'm missing decent stuff. I always end up using Google.

agreed. the app experience is so slow and unsatisfying on both mobile and desktop.

i can't speak for the mobile redesign (i still don't have it), but with the burger menu it's torture trying to get from one part of the app to another. half the time swiping back adds a song to my queue and i have to go out and back in and delete it. the mac client is better but i still need to open it twice before it'll work.

other than that spotify is as reliable as they come, it's just superfluous for me now.

the instantaneousness of its streaming. it literally seemed like magic. they don't have a monopoly on that anymore, and their catalogue is the same as everybody else's..

yeah, so curation is the differentiator, but if enough people don't care enough to keep it around just for that, spotfy's going to be in trouble. i hope its recent acquisitions shake things up a bit before apple's and google's services really mature.

burger menu is gone now you should update

i've updated everything and still have the burger menu

Is there any way of updating spotify from within the app? Or do you have to go to their site to look for a new version?

it's ios, i get what i'm given

This is the most poorly argued article I have read in a very long time:

https://medium.com/cuepoint/streaming-exclusives-are-over-904ed4a93286#.rzumcct4c

"Stream exclusives are unpopular, according to one online poll, so they are done forever, and that's great news," basically. There's literally no evidence of that. There were more exclusives than ever in 2016, and Apple has made it clear these are part of Apple Music's business model going forward. I can't even guess how something like this got published.

anyone else been experiencing an increase in weird performance annoyances with Spotify lately? my new beef is trying to open up my podcasts or other downloaded stuff when i'm not on wifi, just getting the spinning green thing that's waiting for internet. i know i don't have internet, that's why i downloaded some podcasts, just let me skip to the 'downloaded episodes' screen please!

in general maybe podcast functionality just hasn't been fully baked in yet... there's no way to add an RSS link thing (needed for patreon exclusive content), and the desktop podcast interface is totally different than the mobile one, offering no lineup of new episodes for shows you're following.

I don't use spotify for podcasts, but I've noticed that putting spotify in offline mode makes downloaded playlists load a lot faster.

Same. Sometimes it goes unresponsive when I switch on/offline.. have to kill the app and start it again, and it's quick

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-and-amazon-sue-songwriters-in-appeal-against-royalty-rise-in-the-united-states/

A recent Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) ruling brought great news for songwriters in the US – with royalty rates for streaming and other mechanical uses set to rise 44% in the market.

Spotify and Amazon have now officially come out in opposition to the ruling, in what the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) has called a “shameful” move which equates to “suing songwriters”.

On January 27, 2018 MBW reported on the CRB’s landmark decision, which stated that royalty rates paid to songwriters in the US from on-demand subscription streaming would rise by 44% over the next five years. That decision was ratified last month (February 5), when the CRB published the final rates and terms for songwriters.

Streaming companies were given 30 days to lodge official opposition to the ruling if they wished. The likes of Apple Music declined to do so – but it’s a different case for Spotify and Amazon, which have now both filed a notice of appeal. Pandora and Google have also asked the CRB to review its decision.

In a statement today (March 7), the NMPA said that a “huge victory for songwriters is now in jeopardy” due to the streaming services’ filings.

I'm just guessing but I suspect Apple Music isn't a massive moneymaker anyway and Apple is sitting on a pile of cash as big as the sun so who cares? but for Spotify it's a potentially existential issue (despite Gimlet acquisition & podcasting etc)? and Amazon are suing because really what else would you expect Amazon to do?

wow I missed Spotify buying Gimlet! I suspect that's going to compound this existential issue.

well i think the idea is to mitigate it or hedge against it. podcast listeners stay on their platform longer, and crucially a podcast listen doesn't require any royalties to be paid to anyone, so if they can just tip the numbers a little towards speech content all their spreadsheets look better. but having to pay out massively more in royalties could erase all those "gains"

That must be the hope, long term. 340 mil sounds nuts. Maybe they will start producing some cheaper stuff than Gimlet's usual "prestige" programmes

here's a new annoying wrinkle with spotify: got an email telling me my student subscription will expire soon unless i reverify. click here to be taken to a page to "reverify now!" okay sure. except the page i'm taken to has no links anywhere to let me reverify anything, it just blathers about the benefits of the student program. "did you find what you're looking for?" "no, sure didn't, which is annoying since ya'll sent me here" - but the "did you find..." form explicitly tells you they don't respond individually to queries, so.... (shrug emoji)

would it kill either of these services to identify reissues as such? DG has reprinted the "Under Stalin's Shadow" Shostakovich set from Andris Nelsons & the BSO, or maybe it just came to Spotify this year (the cover art on Spotify is different from the cover art on DG's site), but the year of its issue is "2019" -- this makes a difference, imo. Not usually super trainspotterish about stuff like this but it's nice to know, among "new releases," what's new & what reissued

I know, my "new releases" lists are always a disappointment - they're 75% reissues.

Release dates come from the labels, not us (Spotify). We would much prefer they were correct, but the labels don't always share this imperative...

a lot of reissue albums do carry the original release year on the artist's discography. Spotify never "corrects" those that don't?

I feel like I've had them show up on Release Radar either way. Not sure now.

All that really bugs me with the radar playlist is not knowing if the artist has a new album or just a single, without clicking through on the "album" title.

ah Fridays

We do sometimes fix dates on high-profile releases, but the scale of the issue is...large.

So I've just been given access to Youtube Music from my Google Music account. It's still dead from a social standpoint, but does have a *killer* feature - it treats youtube music videos as song files you can add to your library and playlists. This is amazing for obscure tracks, mixes etc.

With Apple Music's spatial/lossless audio supposedly coming this month, has anyone noticed signs that it's already started? A lot of my newer music files no longer show bitrates, which indicates they may have already been converted over to the new format. All of the songs I added from January 2019 and earlier, however, haven't been touched.

I'm thinking about signing up for Apple Music, but I don't want to mess up my current iTunes library of files that I've ripped and downloaded over many years. It's proven difficult to find a straight answer to these questions online... maybe very few people care about these things...

(I would be using it on PC + iPhone)

-If I subscribe to Apple Music, is there still a way for me to view just my local library, or is it always mixed in with my streaming library?

-Can I assign my own iTunes metadata (genre especially) to streaming albums? One item on the growing list of reasons why I don't like Spotify is that it is impossible to organize albums unless you make playlists out of them and manually move them around.

-Can I use iCloud to upload all my local files so that they are available to stream and/or download to my phone?

Bottom line is I'm scared to fuck up my current iTunes setup because I've worked hard on it - ripping, tagging, retagging downloads, etc.

I don't want to add to the confusion by speculating. But, yes, you can upload to the cloud and stream. I use this a lot as I listen to a lot of... obscurities.

Bottom line is I'm scared to fuck up my current iTunes setup because I've worked hard on it - ripping, tagging, retagging downloads, etc.

-If I subscribe to Apple Music, is there still a way for me to view just my local library, or is it always mixed in with my streaming library?

I was worried about this too, but took the chance and started the free trial of Apple Music earlier in the week. My library seems to be fine, segregated from the streaming service.

-Can I assign my own iTunes metadata (genre especially) to streaming albums?

I don't think so, but that seems a good thing to me -- any integration of Library and Streaming would give Apple an inroad to fuck up your files.

The Search function seems weird and fucked up. I was doing some basic searches to get a feel for the interface and immediately ran into problems. If you go to the Beatles artist page, scroll down to Albums and click "Show All," you don't get all of them. The only versions of Let It Be showing are ...Naked and the 2021 mix. You have to do a search for "Beatles Let It Be" before you can see the original 1970 album and the 57-track Super Deluxe version. None of the Super Deluxe versions are visible in Beatles > Albums > Show All.

I switched from paid Spotify to Apple Music a long time ago, but sometimes I'd still open up Spotify for particular music discovery: search for a particular song -> browse playlists that include that song. For whatever reason, Apple Music's search results never provided anything useful for playlists beyond the Apple-branded playlists.

It seems like Spotify might've recently updated their search results for the playlist section to prioritize playlist titles (and maybe just not include tracklists in search result criteria, which seems crazy?). Is there a way to do this in Spotify or Apple Music that I'm missing? Or is there another big music streaming service that would allow me to search and browse playlists via search for a particular song (or songs)?