Just got a new phone contract which comes with 6 months’ free Apple Music. After which it’s a tenner a month.

Being a tight fisted Yorkshireman, is it worth a tenner a month?

I think so.

Got it on a free 6months at the moment and using it a lot. It’s good but I reckon Spotify might be better at coming up with suggestions?

What I can’t see for definite though, is if the data you use for Apple Music is covered by the £10/month? Think it might be, but could be spendy otherwise

What I can’t see for definite though, is if the data you use for Apple Music is covered by the £10/month? Think it might be, but could be spendy otherwise

Of course it’s not you’re paying a subscription to stream music you pay your mobile provider for the data.

I have the family deal my wife and 2 kids use it as well as me, works very well and you can download tracks to save on your data.

I got it for free for 6 months with EE and it doesn’t use your data allowance at all. I’m just not using it much though so I don’t think I’ll continue with it. I listen to radio more or iPlayer radio.

I’ve used it since it was launched and hadn’t used anything else. So thought I’d cancel my subscription and try another couple. Got Deezer premium free for 3 months, and currently on Spotify premium free for a month. When it ends I’ll be going back to Apple Music, it’s just betterer.

You can pay 12 months subs in a oner and get 2 months free so £100 as opposed to £120 over the year.

I use streaming services 5 days a week twice a day for about an hour each time and it doesn’t seem to use much data.

Of course it’s not you’re paying a subscription to stream music you pay your mobile provider for the data.

With EE you pay EE to subscribe to Apple Music and then you don’t have to pay for the data. I suppose if you subscribed directly with Apple then you’d have to use your own data allowance.

Drac – Moderator
Of course it’s not

With EE you pay EE to subscribe to Apple Music and then you don’t have to pay for the data. I suppose if you subscribed directly with Apple then you’d have to use your own data allowance.

pwned.

Robdob, are you doing that at the moment? I’m still in the free period but will continue on if it does work that way

Have it here. Family plan and using all 5 slots. Eldest and missus use it a lot so worth it just for them.

Did have google music on previous android phone and at the time although I could have additional users we shared the same account and the same songs. Could never see a way to separate at the time, not to say it’s still the same but the Apple Music certainly separates everyone’s libraries.

Yeah, EE give you the data for Apple Music for free.

I like Apple Music, I was already paying £23 a year for iTunes Match and it does that stuff too so all my own music and playlists are there on a phone that wouldn’t hold it all. You get (refreshed weekly) playlists of favourites and new music that are great when I just want to stick something on.

All the “album exclusive” silliness seems to have died out now so it’s more down to price, (mostly minor) feature differences and how well it works with streaming devices like Sonos that you might have.

Robdob, are you doing that at the moment? I’m still in the free period but will continue on if it does work that way

Yes I’m in free period.

Takes 2 seconds to check on Google and EE website to check the data issue – http://ee.co.uk/why-ee/apple-music

Yep, it’s great if you listen to music.

It’s not too data hungry surprisingly, I tend to build playlists and then download them at home on wifi – the quality is supposedly slightly improved but perception is well within placebo effect levels to my ears.

It seems to run a healthy cache anyway, if you listen to something once is hangs about for ages on your storage – not sure if that’s an issue, some fool bought me a 128GB iPhone of which I use about 30GB.

Upgraded to family since my wife got car-play, she loves it, the only down side is having to listen to Ariana Grande latest leavings around the house from the Son’s mobile.

You might still qualify for the standard 3 month trial period after your 6?

Just watch out that when you sign up and set it up that if you have music stored on your phone it will want to put this in the cloud so you wont be able to access it offline unless you go back through it and tell it to make the music available offline, it will then overtime forgot this and remove it from your phone…

Pretty sure the EE free data usage is only for 6 months as I already have an apple music family account, but they offered me 6 months free data usage when using apple music. If you are worried about data usage you can either download the music to your device when on wifi or change the streaming settings so it doesn’t use so much.
We all use it at home, 4 of us on Apple devices and my wife on android, so for £14.99 it seems good value for me.

I’m using the free six months at the moment but not really on my phone, I use it at home with my Sonos system. I’ll probably keep it on when the trail has finished. Apparently they only have half the number of tracks that Spotify have but I’ve yet to be disappointed.

I wanted to support spotify rather than apple showing up late to the party, and using their weight to steal the market.

But got AM free with EE for 6mths, and as above, its just better….
In typical apple way, don’t do anything that others haven’t done before, but waltz in and do it better, better integrated into their eco system, a better user experiance.

I will be continuing with AM once the free sub has ended (YMMV)

I’m on the 6 month free trial and use it daily.

I don’t like the interface.

The thing I like least is the quality is low compared to Spotify. To be fair I think it sounds lower quality than CD

TBH I only really listen to music in the car and I tend to stick to CDs for that. My phone does connect but I have to push the volume to max on the phone before playing to get the same level coming out of the car as said CDs

Think i’ll give it a try while it’s free then make a decision based on the results

What phone do you have ?

iPhone sets the volume dependant on the app

So for iTunes mine is always on full, for the reason you say above where as TuneIn radio app is only halfway for playing through Bluetooth speakers in the home, I never need to adjust the volume up or down

Apple Music is good. I used to be a Spotify user, but found it quite buggy, so when Apple Music came out I gave it a go. The main things I prefer with Apple Music are:

– I have a big library on iTunes, built up over the years from ripped CDs, vinyl etc. I like the fact this is seamlessly merged with Apple’s library. When I was on Spotify I had two music apps to use depending on whether it was “my” music or the streamed stuff.

– I have other Apple stuff which has Apple Music native to it e.g. the Music app on Apple TV. I use that a lot.

– Siri works natively with Apple Music: “Siri, play Ariana Grande” 😉

Neither iTunes nor the iOS Music app are especially good to be honest. On my iPhone 6 it’s all a bit slow searching for songs (hence why I use Siri).

In summary, it’s good, it’s better than Spotify (and Deezer) for various reasons that may or may not be relevant to you, but it’s not perfect.

I like it but the one thing I don’t like is it will not play niceley with a chromecast audio so I can’t stream from laptop/phone/iPad and send digital data via optical to my standalone DAC (I want to bypass the inbuilt DAC and not have to leave the laptop next to the hi-fi)
There is a workaround to stream stored music but I want to stream Apple playlists as I don’t actually store many MP3’s on my devices.

I went from Spotify to Apple Music when I got my apple watch

I listen to it when I cycle commute – I can dictate what I want to my watch. Playlist, music, apple radio station, next song etc. It’s great

I didn’t find it life changing compared with Spotify, just better integrated