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Apple Music isn't the best streaming music service — it's just the least annoying (www.androidpolice.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

94 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Apple Music isn't the best streaming music service — it's just the least annoying::Competitors like Spotify and YouTube Music may be your first choice for music on Android, but you might want to reconsider

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[–] kescusay@lemmy.world 54 points 10 months ago (18 children)

Yah no. Apple's insistence on making everything a pain in the ass if you don't own an Apple device makes it a nonstarter, and YouTube Music just works.

My kids have iPads because they're both artists, but I'll be damned if they're getting any money from me for their craptacular - and yes, deeply annoying - music service. Hell, even setting up the iPads was annoying, because I don't have any Apple devices of my own, and family controls require them, even though there's no reason it couldn't be done on a website.

Fuck Apple.

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[–] jacktherippah@lemmy.world 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

My experience with Apple Music has been overwhelmingly positive. Student plan is dirt cheap, barely any more expensive than Spotify and has Hi-Fi included. And the app doesn't connect to a disgusting amount of trackers like Spotify does. I'll stay on AM for the foreseeable future

[–] HollandJim@lemmy.world 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Same. It’s an impossible fight, with all this magical thinking about Apple biasing any discussion. So much blind hate and no way to debate it.

Apple pays much more to artists - period. That’s why I use it.

[–] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 10 points 10 months ago (5 children)

That’s the fediverse for you! I’ve had better software discussion outside of it tbh.

Anyhow, library management on Apple Music is also way less annoying than on Spotify, especially when handling tracks you import from your local library.

[–] HollandJim@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

I’d not just blame the fediverse - I’d call out all social media. Popularity reigns there, not accuracy or facts.

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[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@feddit.ch 32 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I buy DRM free music to own it

[–] Telodzrum@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Neat, I don’t like any music enough to want a permanent copy of it.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 4 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I don't understand how it would be convenient at all to have your whole collection just online, restricted to a single proprietary site/app. I do use musical streaming, but it's for discovering new tracks. All the actual listening happens locally on my computer and player. I cannot afford to actually buy the music, but if I did, I probably would pay for the albums I listen to the most, not the whole library.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@feddit.ch 7 points 10 months ago

I buy around $10-$20 a month. Not much but it adds up my collection fairly quickly

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[–] Moneo@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Good for you. I buy/torrent music sometimes too. Streaming is popular because it's convenient and the convenience is more valuable to many people than the benefits of "owning DRM free music".

Your comment is entirely pointless and pretty fucking pretentious.

[–] thrawn@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

I’ll admit it sounded a little showy to me too, but a lot of the nicher things with their own benefits sound pretentious when just being said in plain wording. I like fountain pens because they’re pleasant to write with but are more expensive and less convenient. Always sounds pretentious just saying I like them and why if I don’t throw in the caveats like I did here.

There’s the chance he is trying to, of course. I try to assume the best these days for my own sake though

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[–] whs@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I looked into that as I listened to my playlist most of the time. And then I realize nano.RIPE after 10 years still unable to be purchased outside iTunes Japan or Japanese speaking websites.

[–] sic_semper_tyrannis@feddit.ch 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You realized what? I don't understand

[–] XTornado@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Uhmm it's pretty clear to me.

He says that after 10 years "nano.RIPE" music still cannot be purchased outside Japan.

I guess his point is that sadly that is not always a solution (outside piracy) as sometimes you cannot actually buy certain music, but I am guessing is actually available to be played on the streaming subscription service.

[–] lud@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Oh, "nano.RIPE" is a name. I thought it was a spelling mistake.

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[–] supersonicstork@sopuli.xyz 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Everyone picks a streaming service for their needs. YT music has a large library bundled with ad free YT, Apple Music is a natural choice if you're in the Apple ecosystem and Spotify exists too.

I recently switched to Tidal from Spotify and haven't looked back. The UI is familiar enough, having lossless is really nice, and not having my phone lag whenever I open my library is great.

Then there's the other factor of how much each streaming service pays it's artists. To make 1000$ in revenue, this is how many streams an artist needs:

YT Music : 500,000 ($0.002 per stream)

Spotify : 314,465 ($0.00318 per stream)

Apple : 125,000 ($0.008 per stream)

Tidal : 77,882 ($0.01284 per stream)

Granted, musicians almost never make their money from streaming services. However, if an artist were to have that 314k streams on Tidal instead of Spotify, they'd make 4 times as much money.

[–] raptir@lemdro.id 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The number you pulled for YouTube Music is based on free users watching YouTube videos. YouTube Music streams from paying subscribers are 4x that at $0.08 per stream.

The Spotify number is also averaged across free and premium users - I'm not sure the number for premium users only but it is likely closer to what Apple and Tidal pay since those are premium-only.

The other problem though is that none of the services have implemented user-centric payments. So your money on any of the services is going to Taylor Swift, Drake and Bad Bunny no matter who you listen to because everyone gets paid based on their percentage of the total streams.

[–] OscarRobin@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

The artist rates continually decline for every platform. In the not-to-distant future Tidal will be as shit as Spotify is now.

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[–] Zeth0s@lemmy.world 26 points 10 months ago

Why is this ad not removed?

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nah, InnerTune is the best. Has the library of YouTube music, no ads, free, can download songs as actual files (at least in a previous version, which is still available on F-Droid archive)

[–] lemann@lemmy.one 8 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Also worth noting some other nice free music apps also available on F-Droid:

SimpTube (uses YouTube Music)
Musify (uses Spotify)
Spotube (uses Spotify, streams the actual tracks from YouTube Music or via a Piped instance)

[–] Olap@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Not to mention newpipe or of course the many many local storage players, Vinyl my first choice

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[–] PlexSheep@feddit.de 16 points 10 months ago

The best streaming service is my selfhosted Jellyfin. I serve me no ads and I'm 100% sure I don't do any shady business with my data.

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Didn't apple overwrite people's music with different versions of their songs or something?

Regardless, fuck Apple. I'm happy with Jellyfin.

[–] Oisteink@feddit.nl 8 points 10 months ago

Yepp - all my bootleg and vinyl rips was suddenly replaced with other versions. Even some of my ripped albums ended up as songs from different albums.

Only reason I still have the Apple Music app is because when I connect my phone in my car with usb, the stereo will give errors if it’s not there. Also starts auto playing when connected even if tidal is playing while connection is made.

[–] ky56@aussie.zone 6 points 10 months ago

Yep. It has screwed up album art and as a very visual person it has really fucked my ability to browse through my library. Also the older the album/song was added, the more broken tracks there are.

As a result I am now working to switch away from Apple Music and streaming in general. I was perfectly happy paying the student price for Apple Music. However with it increasingly breaking my library and needing me to conduct "library maintenance" to keep up with their licensing issues. Well fuck that.

[–] rolling_resistance@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Does it have a Linux app? no

Does it have a duo plan? no

Does it have a good rating on Google Play? no

Does it have a decent Windows app? last time i checked, itunes looked like an app from 2005

[–] DeadlineX@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Try Cider, it’s a FOSS and it works on any platform including Linux. There are others, but they are mostly just wrappers around the web app, and Cider is not.

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[–] echo64@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

My experience with apple music has mostly been around being incredibly annoyed at the account management and signin process for people who don't have any apple hardware. So I would probably disagree there.

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[–] Amaltheamannen@lemmy.ml 7 points 10 months ago

Everyone I know uses Spotify

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Spotify isn't the least bit annoying for me though? It works brilliantly and does everything I need it to do and more.

It'll be a cold day in hell before I use an Apple product though.

[–] Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Can't turn off album art or colorized elements changing bright colors while driving. (I just want simple buttons to press to change tracks or pause music without distracting album art). This one is legitimately dangerous

1a. The last straw for me was when they deprecated car mode entirely and insisted on even more flashy moving elements in the standard player. It became a safety hazard to use.

Can't combine your own music with cloud music anymore (when Spotify started, you could combine their libraries with your own music if you had something that they didn't)
No normalization adjustments for songs that are too loud or too quiet
No per-device (or at all iirc?) Equalization
Periodic check-in required every (30d last time I used the service) for offline content, meaning if you download stuff to your laptop, don't touch it for a month, and then go on a plane you don't have access to your music.
Constant background app openings. App opens itself constantly to track your location, and broadcast to other devices whether or not you're playing music. Integrated with lots of ad/tracker networks
Quality is terrible. I dunno what it is because apparently I'm not even one of the people that can tell the difference between 128 and 256, but the same song in Plexamp at 320 vs Spotify whatever is night and day, especially on bad car speakers.

I haven't used the service in years and that's just off the top of my head why Spotify is terrible.

[–] xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Some of these are valid, especially #6 and #7

But a lot of them, frankly, just aren't true:

Can't turn off album art or colorized elements changing bright colors while driving

You can turn off the flashy moving stuff entirely with one setting, if you get distracted by a static album art image while driving then you really should be using a hardware device to control playback instead tbh

1a. The last straw for me was when they deprecated car mode entirely

Car mode is still here, and works perfectly well - in fact they've improved the visual clarity recently to make it even clearer

Can't combine your own music

They won't host it for you, but you can absolutely combine the music on your local device with your local library

No normalization adjustments for songs that are too loud or too quiet

There is a setting for exactly this. I personally think there's something to be said for not modifying songs in the background though

No per-device (or at all iirc?) Equalization

Yes there is, afaik it's per-device only

Periodic check-in required

Ehh, this one's kinda fair from a business perspective - it makes sense that the platform would need to verify your subscription occasionally for licensing reasons, but I can see why this would be mildly annoying if you use it very infrequently and are eg on a plane

Constant background app openings

I'm not sure I can say I've seen any issue with this, but if you really don't like it being active in the background, you can just turn off Spotify Connect in the background in settings

Quality is terrible

If the audio quality is audibly bad then it's likely due to not using the very high audio quality setting, or automatic quality adjustment due to network conditions (again, you can turn this off though it may result in buffering)

Honestly, I don't think playing music through the worst speaker you can find is a reasonable way to assess the audio quality - like yeah, no shit it's going to be bad. "Doctor doctor, it hurts when I do this"

Tldr: just look at settings lol

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[–] QuarterSwede@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

#2 would kill it for me. I have plenty of music in AM that isn’t available to stream on any service. A lot of older stuff isn’t available on streaming.

[–] bitwolf@lemmy.one 5 points 10 months ago

Google Play Music died and was resurrected as Plexamp.

[–] OscarRobin@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Apple Music is the best music platform by far due to clean and simple focus and UI, performance, and also lyrics. Unfortunately, it still sucks in all the ways that streaming inherently sucks though, combined with its intention to suck you into the Apple world.

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[–] SnowMeowXP@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

I had a 3 month trial, that I cancelled in two days. Apple music does not play a lot of songs. Why show them to me when I’m not allowed to hear them? Youtube music works really well, and I am using an iphone!

[–] sky@codesink.io 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

I switched to Android a few months ago and expected to want to switch away from Apple Music, but their Android app is excellent. Plus they have lossless quality. Oh, and you can upload your own music to their cloud for streaming anywhere.

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[–] Psiczar@aussie.zone 4 points 10 months ago

I much prefer Spotify, interface is definitely more intuitive than Apple Music.

[–] BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I love how no one still knows about Deezer even though it's been around since 2007. Best bang for the buck.

[–] raptir@lemdro.id 8 points 10 months ago

Eh, I've given Deezer a try and it doesn't offer anything to make it "the best". The family plan costs more than the competition even when paid for annually, and its algorithm for radio features is worse than even Tidal and YTM.

[–] axo@feddit.de 4 points 10 months ago

Used Deezer for two yeers. It sucked ass, cause half the time it didnt work (deleted offline songs, had a too low limit for how many songs could be downloaded, app in offline mode was nearly useless).

In the end I switched to spotify. Only miss the mixing stuff, that was kind of nice.

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