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Apple announces Apple Music radio

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Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#41

Post by reaperducer »

toddmorey wrote: post #37
reaperducer wrote: post #23

Apple today announced two new live global radio offerings ...and that's where you lost me. Global radio doesn't work. Hundreds of companies and thousands of people have tried it, and it's never worked. People are different all over, they're not the same, so they don't all want the same thing. I stopped listening to the BBC World Service when it stopped being about Britain and started being "The world's radio station™…

But I'm not sure that geography is the best way to segment & present music going forward? I live in Texas, but that doesn't mean I'm always in the mood for Texas music. This will be interesting to watch—variations in music scenes around the world have made music rich and diverse, but most artists now (at least attempt to) launch to a global audience. In this new scenario, the diversity I think pulls from being able t…

I live in Texas, but that doesn't mean I'm always in the mood for Texas music.

I'm not sure what "Texas" music is, even though I lived there for many years.

Maybe you're interested in listening to rap music. Rap music on radio stations in Houston isn't the same playlist as rap music on a radio station in New York, or Paris.

Rap is actually a great example of this, because rap is very geographic. Montreal, Paris, and even London have rap music that is vastly different from rap music in New York or Los Angeles or, again, Houston.

What Apple could/should do is make regional flavors of its stations, rather than going for this "global" cliche. Then people from different places could learn about music from other places, even if it's the same genre.

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#42

Post by dpweb »

I don't see celebrity shows as attracting a big audience. I have to like the celebrity, to want to listen. They should try to break new music. Like The Weeknd will preview his new song/album LIVE here, before it goes on the streaming services.

Plus, if you take EDM/dance genre for instance. All the big shows/DJs play the same current hits. There are lots of less known tracks that come out that a DJ/show could break.

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#43

Post by 52-6F-62 »

hankchinaski wrote: post #21

i’ve used apple music for a couple of months and i don’t understand why people use it compared to spotify. the UI is awful and buggy. the UX is horrific.

I use it out of raw simplicity. I have an iPhone already and I've found it pretty brilliantly easy to search up an artist and add it to my library.

I don't often stream, though. I will when I'm working—usually via Apple Music web (I'll give you the web interface there, but it is fairly new) or Youtube (can get annoying).

Apple Music on my phone has been great, though. Probably the thing I like most is that it blends the downloaded albums from the streaming service with my existing library. I don't have enough experience with Spotify to know if that's possible with it as well.

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#44

Post by easton »

jeffhuys wrote: post #36
hankchinaski wrote: post #21

i’ve used apple music for a couple of months and i don’t understand why people use it compared to spotify. the UI is awful and buggy. the UX is horrific.

Spotify is extremely slow and battery-draining on my 6s. I don't want the random videos that play either. I also want the integration between my mac, apple tv, watch and iphone.

For that specific complaint, the videos can be disabled in Settings -> Playback -> Canvas.

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#45

Post by 52-6F-62 »

akshayB wrote: post #5

They need to re-ramp the UI/UX on Apple music app. I have been using it for fairly long time and you can see how other competition like Youtube/Spotify have much nicer recommendations and ease of use. Some sort of streamline and unification needs to happen.

Personally I LOVE the lack of recommendations in my face. I find that one of the most annoying features of YouTube. They just run me in circles when it comes to playlists and I have a hard time training it to let me listen to more than one song of something different.

But I don't let Apple Music run with streams, really. I stick to my own selections. So YMMV

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#46

Post by bredren »

tarentel wrote: post #33
avolcano wrote: post #2

They've been running Beats 1 for the last 5 years (now rebranding to just Apple Music 1). I like the idea of a pop & pop-adjacent radio station with a lot of different shows for different subgenres (it's obviously patterned after BBC Radio 1), but it never seemed to have the "right" mix of variety, and unlike Radio 1 it didn't really have any tentpole stuff to center around (like e.g. Essential Mix), just a lot of ra…

I listened to it a lot when they launched but the problem with it is they really treat their shows as live radio. There's no way to save them or subscribe and get notifications when they're live. There is no way to follow them. Searching for them is weird. Discovery is also awkward. There were and probably still are a lot of good shows but good luck figuring it all out.

I was listening when Beats 1 came on air, the song they played just prior to the start was Music For Airports by Brian Eno. That influenced me to include it in our Burning Man art this past year. [1]

I've subscribed to Apple Music since the start, but apart from a massive catalog, I can't help but feel that it is a neglected product.

Apple put Jimmy Iovine in charge of that business, presumably because the company needed industry legitimacy and the connections he had.

However, I do not think Iovine or his lieutenants were music "fans", which are people who for personal reasons intentionally seek out new artists, listen to them and share their picks with friends.

I think this lack of familiarity with the customer and how to connect with them through mobile software products led to the state it is in now.

What is strange to me is that Apple Music as an application has not improved. The views do not pre-cache, so they are the slowest loading of any app on my iPhone. Apple Music often fails to perform searches properly.

Despite the volume of data Apple had from my music preferences _before_ Apple Music existed, the recommendation engine is still no good, and the music curation lacks any semblance of personality.

When I ask Siri to play a song, it sometimes feels like Apple Music tries to play a version of the song that has a lower licensing fee than the one I'm actually after. This is total conjecture, but I would not be surprised.

That Spotify has done as well as it has is more a credit to the failure of Apple Music to materialize into something at all representing the vast beauty and detail of music.

I occasionally have tuned into Beats 1, especially if there was an artist interview I wanted to hear. But I really did not like the vibe of Zane Lowe. I felt like he was always fawning over the artists and he interrupts them while they're talking.

Hopefully, these minor radio changes are indicative of a larger changes coming to the Apple Music product as a whole.

[1] https://skylarkcollective.com/blog/

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#47

Post by acolumb »

reaperducer wrote: post #23

Apple today announced two new live global radio offerings ...and that's where you lost me. Global radio doesn't work. Hundreds of companies and thousands of people have tried it, and it's never worked. People are different all over, they're not the same, so they don't all want the same thing. I stopped listening to the BBC World Service when it stopped being about Britain and started being "The world's radio station™…

With the advent of Tunein and similar services, our family has taken WXRT with us everywhere since moving out of Chicago.

We appreciate their culture and it gives us a sense of home no matter where we are.

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#48

Post by avolcano »

gdilla wrote: post #14

If you haven't listened to Soulection (radio show every saturday on beats 1 and archived on soundcloud), stop what you're doing and add that to your life.

Thanks for this rec! I see it's also actually archived on Apple Music as well, which is nice. Really wish Beats 1 surfaced their non-celeb-hosted shows like... literally anywhere in the Browse interface.

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#49

Post by dewey »

joecool1029 wrote: post #39

Shoutcast has been a thing for near a quarter of a century. I don't see how this compares favorably at all. I have been streaming Shoutcast stations on phones since the late 2000's back on featurephones. iOS I'm currently using 'radio.net' for a Shoutcast client, Android I use Radiodroid. Tons of stations across pretty much any genre. Lots of FM stations that simulcast on here as well. Is there something I'm missing…

That's not really what the product is about. They already had Beats 1 Radio before which is just like a regular radio station but with well known hosts they hired.

Some shows that were on-air are usually available as on-demand after the show.

If you are not looking for the exclusive shows or you want to avoid switching to a different apps it's probably not a product for you.

Re: Apple announces Apple Music radio

#50

Post by hehsjsbb »

SirHound wrote: post #19

I really don't understand what they've done with the Beats brand. They've released a handful of headphones (that in my experience have suffered an array of technical faults compared to reports from Airpods users) and Beats 1. Now they're killing off the latter. It clearly fits into the Music product better but even after the corporate takeover there was something cool about "Beats" as a brand. It even sounded good in…

Beats One was supposed to be a differentiator for Beats before it was acquired (I worked on it). The point was that it would be unique content you couldn't get from a commodity streaming service, and the hosts would bring an existing fanbase.

My impression is post-acquisiton Apple figured their brand would be sufficient to differentiate them, so they kind of stopped caring about the very high-touch work involved in curated radio. I think at this point it makes sense to view Apple Music as "commodity music streaming but it's apple, so it's preloaded, etc."

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