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Apple Music |OT| Apple Invents Music, Time To Party Like It's 1989!

Ashhong

Member
If anyone likes future bass, trance, and K-pop you can follow me @ashhong

Most of my music is all smart playlists though so I actually might not have much to share

The Spotify/Hulu deal is great. I already have Hulu though with no ads so Im already paying more than double what this offers.

Nonetheless, been happy with apple music which I use outside of work (where I use Spotify because I'm not allowed to install iTunes). The only things I want from Spotify are better Discovery Weekly playlists, the Daily Mixes and where listening past the end of a playlist keeps on going. Though Spotify seems to be more hit or miss lately.

Did you mean the only things you want from Apple Music? Cause I don't think AM listens past the end of a playlist
 

Ashhong

Member
what do you mean here? Is this a spotify thing?

I was trying to understand what he meant. I noticed with Spotify, if you get to the end of a playlist, I THINK it goes to another playlist or similar artist. With AM it just repeats or ends.

Has anybody gotten notifications of new albums from artists they follow? Doesn't seem to work for me..
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
so the great big reorg is coming up..... NOT looking forward to it.

After two years of AM, I am officially killing iTunes Match. What this means is I need to go through my actual music backup (~10,000 songs) and make sure anything/everything is downloaded from iTunes Match..

So the big question will be, what happens to my AM library after Match expires... will I keep all of my albums, or will I have to reimport my library.. grr. specifically what happens to the stuff that was uploaded and not matched.

I'm actually looking forward to a couple of things though.. First, pretty much EVERYTHING through Match is unavailable to my friends. I come across an oldie but goodie, it's Matched, it's on AM.. yet I get no Share... option on it... similarly, if I add a ton of Match matched songs to a playlist, and share the playlist, none of those songs are available/visible to people who add the playlist, even though the songs are matched and available on AM. It won't even show the users the songs grayed out. They literally don't know the songs are on there.

prior to AM, I LOVED match. It was absolutely crucial for years. However Apple's integration of Match with AM was always bare minimum at best, and carried some annoying flaws at worst. The technologies and teams were clearly unrelated.. and Match suffered greatly as a result.

Oh well.. a month and a half before it expires. Time to get to work.

Honestly at this point, though it may be more work than I care to do.. I would rather just have my personal music in AM that is unavailable on AM. There seems to be absolutely no point to having matched music in AM. But that would require serious effort.
 
so the great big reorg is coming up..... NOT looking forward to it.

After two years of AM, I am officially killing iTunes Match. What this means is I need to go through my actual music backup (~10,000 songs) and make sure anything/everything is downloaded from iTunes Match..

So the big question will be, what happens to my AM library after Match expires... will I keep all of my albums, or will I have to reimport my library.. grr. specifically what happens to the stuff that was uploaded and not matched.

I'm actually looking forward to a couple of things though.. First, pretty much EVERYTHING through Match is unavailable to my friends. I come across an oldie but goodie, it's Matched, it's on AM.. yet I get no Share... option on it... similarly, if I add a ton of Match matched songs to a playlist, and share the playlist, none of those songs are available/visible to people who add the playlist, even though the songs are matched and available on AM. It won't even show the users the songs grayed out. They literally don't know the songs are on there.

prior to AM, I LOVED match. It was absolutely crucial for years. However Apple's integration of Match with AM was always bare minimum at best, and carried some annoying flaws at worst. The technologies and teams were clearly unrelated.. and Match suffered greatly as a result.

Oh well.. a month and a half before it expires. Time to get to work.

Honestly at this point, though it may be more work than I care to do.. I would rather just have my personal music in AM that is unavailable on AM. There seems to be absolutely no point to having matched music in AM. But that would require serious effort.

I let Match expire like 9 months into Apple Music’s launch, back when it was more of a mess than it is today and I didn’t have any issues with my library post expiration. I also had backups of my local music on my NAS so if anything got messed up, I could nuke everything and reupload what I needed. Best of luck in the transition, hope it goes smooth.
 

tmdorsey

Member
so the great big reorg is coming up..... NOT looking forward to it.

After two years of AM, I am officially killing iTunes Match. What this means is I need to go through my actual music backup (~10,000 songs) and make sure anything/everything is downloaded from iTunes Match..

So the big question will be, what happens to my AM library after Match expires... will I keep all of my albums, or will I have to reimport my library.. grr. specifically what happens to the stuff that was uploaded and not matched.

I'm actually looking forward to a couple of things though.. First, pretty much EVERYTHING through Match is unavailable to my friends. I come across an oldie but goodie, it's Matched, it's on AM.. yet I get no Share... option on it... similarly, if I add a ton of Match matched songs to a playlist, and share the playlist, none of those songs are available/visible to people who add the playlist, even though the songs are matched and available on AM. It won't even show the users the songs grayed out. They literally don't know the songs are on there.

prior to AM, I LOVED match. It was absolutely crucial for years. However Apple's integration of Match with AM was always bare minimum at best, and carried some annoying flaws at worst. The technologies and teams were clearly unrelated.. and Match suffered greatly as a result.

Oh well.. a month and a half before it expires. Time to get to work.

Honestly at this point, though it may be more work than I care to do.. I would rather just have my personal music in AM that is unavailable on AM. There seems to be absolutely no point to having matched music in AM. But that would require serious effort.

Yeah, be prepared for the big annoyance of songs not matching correctly when you switch over. It still bugs me to this day that Apple Music isn't using the same matching algorithm that Match uses. I'm tired of hearing sucky live versions of songs that I have the proper studio version of and also getting clean versions of songs that I clearly have the explicit versions.
 
Yeah, be prepared for the big annoyance of songs not matching correctly when you switch over. It still bugs me to this day that Apple Music isn't using the same matching algorithm that Match uses. I'm tired of hearing sucky live versions of songs that I have the proper studio version of and also getting clean versions of songs that I clearly have the explicit versions.

They brought the Match algorithm over to Music.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/ne...match-capabilities-to-apple-music-subscribers
 
so the great big reorg is coming up..... NOT looking forward to it.

After two years of AM, I am officially killing iTunes Match. What this means is I need to go through my actual music backup (~10,000 songs) and make sure anything/everything is downloaded from iTunes Match..

So the big question will be, what happens to my AM library after Match expires... will I keep all of my albums, or will I have to reimport my library.. grr. specifically what happens to the stuff that was uploaded and not matched.

I'm actually looking forward to a couple of things though.. First, pretty much EVERYTHING through Match is unavailable to my friends. I come across an oldie but goodie, it's Matched, it's on AM.. yet I get no Share... option on it... similarly, if I add a ton of Match matched songs to a playlist, and share the playlist, none of those songs are available/visible to people who add the playlist, even though the songs are matched and available on AM. It won't even show the users the songs grayed out. They literally don't know the songs are on there.

prior to AM, I LOVED match. It was absolutely crucial for years. However Apple's integration of Match with AM was always bare minimum at best, and carried some annoying flaws at worst. The technologies and teams were clearly unrelated.. and Match suffered greatly as a result.

Oh well.. a month and a half before it expires. Time to get to work.

Honestly at this point, though it may be more work than I care to do.. I would rather just have my personal music in AM that is unavailable on AM. There seems to be absolutely no point to having matched music in AM. But that would require serious effort.

I had overlap between iTunes Match and Apple Music for a while. After Apple Music started using the same algorithm as iTunes Match I let the latter expire, and literally nothing happened. Since they both contribute to what is known as your iCloud Music Library, and since I still had a service that let me access that library, I actually forgot that it did expire because nothing changed in the slightest
 
what do you mean here? Is this a spotify thing?

I was trying to understand what he meant. I noticed with Spotify, if you get to the end of a playlist, I THINK it goes to another playlist or similar artist. With AM it just repeats or ends.

Has anybody gotten notifications of new albums from artists they follow? Doesn't seem to work for me..

Sorry, yeah I meant after a playlist ends, there's an AutoPlay feature in Spotify where it plays a radio station based on the music you just listened to. It's kind of cool.


I listen to mostly Indie/Alternative/Metal/Pop . My playlists are very much a work in progress.

https://itunes.apple.com/profile/SmackCrackleNPop
 

tmdorsey

Member
You shouldn't have to. If you had bad luck with some tracks you can give it a shot but I don't think it will make a difference

I was thinking more for the cases where Apple Music doesn't have the studio version of a song and because of the old matching algorithm, the live version of the song was matched instead of uploading the studio version I already have if that makes sense.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
so glad to hear your guys success with migrating from Match to Music.. well I will make sure my DRM-free backups are good and safe, and then I'll pretty much be all in on Music. I mean I already am... I just always had that Match safety net to fall back on if I needed to.

What would be nice is gaining the ability to then share my songs (especially playlists) after my Match expires.. There are a few good playlists I want to put up on my profile that I created years ago... but they contain almost entirely "matched" songs that won't allow me to share, even though the songs are on Music (literally same song, same album version, etc)
 

holygeesus

Banned
Every six months since this launched, I give this service another try, to see if they have fixed the quirks that made me unsubscribe back in the day, and every single time I cancel my subscription the day after re-subscribing. Don't get me wrong, I want to subscribe to AM as I am deeply entrenched in the Apple ecosystem and am one of those who thinks that AM actually sounds better than Spotify, at least on my set-up.

This time, I notice that compilation albums are *still* shockingly handled. By this, I mean that songs that are definitely available elsewhere on Apple Music are greyed out within the album, as shown in this grab

WNplUtT.png


Now, that track is definitely available elsewhere on Apple Music, so why can't I play it from the album? Spotify has the entire album playable, to counter this. It may seem like a small issue, but if I want to start a compilation and have it play through in entirety, I can't using Apple Music, despite them having rights to the entire album. That is a fail at the very first step in my book.

Am I missing something here, or has this issue not changed since day 1?
 
Every six months since this launched, I give this service another try, to see if they have fixed the quirks that made me unsubscribe back in the day, and every single time I cancel my subscription the day after re-subscribing. Don't get me wrong, I want to subscribe to AM as I am deeply entrenched in the Apple ecosystem and am one of those who thinks that AM actually sounds better than Spotify, at least on my set-up.

This time, I notice that compilation albums are *still* shockingly handled. By this, I mean that songs that are definitely available elsewhere on Apple Music are greyed out within the album, as shown in this grab

WNplUtT.png


Now, that track is definitely available elsewhere on Apple Music, so why can't I play it from the album? Spotify has the entire album playable, to counter this. It may seem like a small issue, but if I want to start a compilation and have it play through in entirety, I can't using Apple Music, despite them having rights to the entire album. That is a fail at the very first step in my book.

Am I missing something here, or has this issue not changed since day 1?

So I can’t speak to that album specifically because I can’t even find that on the US Apple Music. But just because the song is available somewhere else on Apple Music doesn’t mean the rights were given for that album, because it’s handled separately. Apple isn’t the one creating these soundtracks and compilation discs, the labels are. The quintessential example for myself is the Baby Driver soundtrack. Only like four songs out of 30 are available for streaming, even though the songs are available elsewhere (I know because I found a playlist of them), but for whatever reason Sony Music hasn’t made the album available in that form, likely licensing when they contracted for all that music.

So to answer your question I know it’s frustrating, but I do not believe Apple is to blame. It’s the labels and how they decide to license their content.
 

holygeesus

Banned
So I can’t speak to that album specifically because I can’t even find that on the US Apple Music. But just because the song is available somewhere else on Apple Music doesn’t mean the rights were given for that album, because it’s handled separately. Apple isn’t the one creating these soundtracks and compilation discs, the labels are. The quintessential example for myself is the Baby Driver soundtrack. Only like four songs out of 30 are available for streaming, even though the songs are available elsewhere (I know because I found a playlist of them), but for whatever reason Sony Music hasn’t made the album available in that form, likely licensing when they contracted for all that music.

So to answer your question I know it’s frustrating, but I do not believe Apple is to blame. It’s the labels and how they decide to license their content.

I did guess it was a licensing issue, but it still frustrates and happens far more often on Apple Music than Spotify. Maybe It does happen on there and I just don't notice it.
 

Ashhong

Member
What's funny is that when I check that album from the US I see different songs greyed out. It's definitely licensing, not sure why they can't get it worked out. For the most part though when I see a greyed out song on AM, it's also missing on Spotify. What country are you in?
 

holygeesus

Banned
What's funny is that when I check that album from the US I see different songs greyed out. It's definitely licensing, not sure why they can't get it worked out. For the most part though when I see a greyed out song on AM, it's also missing on Spotify. What country are you in?

UK. It is all present and correct on Spotify. I reluctantly re-subscribed to them already. Compilations just seem more complete on there. There are some on Apple Music here that legit only have one or two tracks available on them - why even offer the album in that case?
 
I am interested in following others to discover new music. My playlists suck right now but I want to start updating.

So help me find you by adding me 😬

@PackerinMN
 
That moment I saw PackerinMN listened to a playlist of mine I got nervous. Made me think of how many songs i’m missing and if I should work on the order. Lol
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
UK. It is all present and correct on Spotify. I reluctantly re-subscribed to them already. Compilations just seem more complete on there. There are some on Apple Music here that legit only have one or two tracks available on them - why even offer the album in that case?
Yeah, I respect how difficult licensing has to be but I think Apple needs to reevaluate all of its iTunes licensing strategies. Even for movies there are times where I search for a movie specifically by name and it doesn’t come back on iTunes. Literally doesn’t exist even though I know I’ve seen it on there before. Then a day or two later it comes back. Huntsman Winters War was the most recent example. Albums are obviously more frequent where songs will be unavailable on an album one day and then days later it’s available again. It’s frustrating as a consumer, and hopefully they’re able to find a way to make it better. With that being said, having licensing with hundreds of companies for millions of songs has to be a nightmare. And the more you consolidate, the bigger problems can be.. like the continual “these 12 channels are going to be pulled from Dish at midnight”. Look at when an artist leaves Spotify or Apple.. then imagine each of those instances being 12 major artists.

Still there has to be something that can be done to give us a more seamless experience.
 

Makoto

Member
This service gets buggy af sometimes but the ability to upload my own collection of foreign music plus being able to pay the $99 year subscription with a $100 iTunes card discounted at $85 is hard to pass up.
 
Y’all just need to utilize Smart Playlists. These things are so damn useful

I tried! Had a playlist that captured every song that I’ve hearted and listened to more than a certain number of times in recent history. There was some reason it wasn’t working for me, however. Either the plays weren’t updating quick enough to make it useful or for some reason different devices were counting plays differently and thus has a different number of songs
 
Y’all just need to utilize Smart Playlists. These things are so damn useful

This is true. I never really used them but finally started to a couple months ago.

My criteria is simple where I just have a pile of hearted songs or anything above 4 stars.

Friend has the same criteria but another layer where it populates it with same songs but stuff he hasn’t listened in x amount of weeks so it feels fresher than something tha isn’t as dynamic.
 
This is true. I never really used them but finally started to a couple months ago.

My criteria is simple where I just have a pile of hearted songs or anything above 4 stars.

Friend has the same criteria but another layer where it populates it with same songs but stuff he hasn’t listened in x amount of weeks so it feels fresher than something tha isn’t as dynamic.

Hey that's a great idea from your friend!

But it seems I have the same problem. The same playlist has 308 songs on my Mac and 300 songs on my iPhone. Don't know why every single one of my smart playlists comes up with different amounts across devices.

Well, except the playlist that contains literally every song in my library
 

Ashhong

Member
Can’t you only make them through desktop?

Also they are kinda complicated to use.

Yea unfortunately only on desktop. It’s ridiculously simple though. You come up with the rules, as many or little as you want.

You want songs of a certain genre, added to your library in 2017, and “liked”? Done. Automatically.
 

Ashhong

Member
I tried! Had a playlist that captured every song that I’ve hearted and listened to more than a certain number of times in recent history. There was some reason it wasn’t working for me, however. Either the plays weren’t updating quick enough to make it useful or for some reason different devices were counting plays differently and thus has a different number of songs

Yea sounds like an issue with the number of plays

I used to use these all the time, but haven't in a while.. what are some of the criteria you use?

I like to add full albums to my library but I only want to keep a few songs on rotation. So I’ll do like an EDM playlist. Genre contains edm, or dance, or electronic, etc; added to the library; “Liked”

Just a really quick way to make a playlist of only songs I love and would want to listen to again and again. And all I have to do to add it is press the plus button then heart it. But the options are unlimited which is really cool I think

Edit: oops double post
 
I've got a Halloween Party playlist that went over very well last year on my account:

Halloween Mix

It's not really specifically about Halloween but it has songs like "Boris the Spider," "Gouge Away," and "Death of a Party," so it's still on theme, methinks.
 
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