As a bit of a fanboi I was quite prepared to like Apple Music and ditch Spotify, but I have to say that so far I’m underwhelmed. Probably I am a bit dim but I find the interface really confusing and hard to navigate, between my music, streamed music, music available off line, etc etc. So for now I think I’ll stick with Spotify. It has a crap interface as well but at least it’s now a bit more familiar to me!

Awful. And it’s screwed the interface for iTunes on my iPod. A hateful thing.

Agree with the first two posts.

Seems Ok they’ve released an iOS update to fix the offline bug. Has better selection than Spotify, think I’ll stick with it for now.

Haven’t subscribed, why pay (£15pm?? I think) for something I’ve never needed?

Can’t see the point other than it’s a money maker for Apple (and I’m a fanbouy) and whilst I’m on can you get them to stop with all the nonsense trying to push me into subscribing, ta.

Haven’t subscribed, why pay (£15pm?? I think) for something I’ve never needed?

I guess it’s not for you then.

Have no need for any streaming music, I can’t use it at work, and no need any other time. Radio at work, and nearly 200Gb of my own music to play with.

Haven’t subscribed, why pay (£15pm?? I think) for something I’ve never needed?

Have no need for any streaming music

Excellent, thanks for popping-in 😀

I’ve been trying it out, with a view to switching from Spotify. Spotify isn’t great, but I think I prefer it to Apple music. Maybe they’ll evolve the interface a bit over the next few months and it will start to make sense, but right now I think I’m be sticking with Spotify.

I have switched-off the auto re-subscribe. Also: apparently people have been having trouble when their trial ends with previously purchased content deleting itself (and so needing to be re-downloaded), so restoring from a backup may be easier – depending on how may purchases you have in your library.

I get free spotify with vodafone.

it’s alright enough.

If anyone else is an Amazon Prime subscriber, they now have prime music, which has offline n works well.

Pretty much the same here. I really dislike the way the UI has changed and, for some reason, can no longer find the “random” button. I’m now signed out of the online music service and will not use it.

The iPhone interface confuses me and it isn’t easy to find stuff unless you know exactly what you want.

I dislike what appears to be auto-repeat on an album unless I’ve touched the wrong bit (and can’t find the same button again).

The iTunes interface seems OK but when I choose an album sometimes it just doesn’t play and appears to be waiting forever to stream.

Once the free trial finishes I doubt I’ll continue. It’s good for listening to stuff you think you may like though but don’t want to splash out on in case it’s crap.

As others have said I find the interface a touch confusing and I struggle to play a full album in order – although I think I’ve got the hang of that now.

I like what it does but I don’t like how it does it.

I’m on the free trial until mid October so we’ll see how it goes.

can no longer find the “random” button.

As in shuffle all songs? Tap the arrow until it shows songs, tap play then the shuffle icon. Its not very clear at all though.

And yes you will have touched the auto repeat button, its not hard to do that.

I didn’t even bother signing up for the free trial…might still give it a go, but I’m used to (and like) Spotify Premium, so unless Apple can make it a bit more killer, then I’ll stick where I am for now.

I tried it for a week or two, but I’ll be sticking with Spotify.

Didn’t get on with the interface and the off-line music quality was terrible compared to Spotify. And there’s no way to force it to high quality (that I could find).

Still like spotify better. Though Apple Music does work better with my car interface – it doesn’t work with Sonos as yet.

Nothing really drawing me to go longer than the free trial.

In true stw style i’ll suggest an alternative. For me amazon prime music is a no brainer. We’re already tied to prime, so the streaming and downloading music is ace.

Apple Music is piss poor (I feel like a beta tester) and as an iTunes acolyte for donkeys years (even on Windows) I now can’t abide the overblown and confusing front-end that iTunes has morphed into.

The radio shows don’t display the artist and track that’s playing, so I can’t ‘like’ a track that’s playing. What, the actual, ****…are you shitting me, Apple?

In terms of content, I’m not dancing in the aisles over the Taylor Swift deal, but I’m pleased as punch that the Kompakt catalog is on there!

But the real clincher for me in terms of choosing Apple over Spotify, is that Spotify have years of my preferences logged and a whole bunch of playlists that I’ve created. Apple would have to have a really special offer to tempt me…and they don’t.

edit: oh, and a recent iTunes update has wiped all of the cover art that I’ve spent countless hours manually downloading and updating. “**** off Apple, you ****”

I’m an Apple fan, but can’t stand iTunes and love Spotify, so can’t see me changing. Not tried Apple Tunes as it required iTunes, which is just shit.

I don’t subscribe, but i hate the fact it has **** up my itunes on my phone.

I’ve been running the Apple Music trial for a few weeks. When I first turned it on it tried to upload all of my music (several hundred gigs worth) with no intervention. I think it might have included some personal music I’ve recorded myself but there’s no feedback so it could have done anything.

What’s left is a mess of an interface that appears to be trying to conflate cloud music with the local library which leads to playlists being either “on the cloud” or not at random (and it seems to get quite antsy if you add a file to a local Playlist that Apple Music doesn’t recognize). Once you’ve got to that point you pretty much have to leave the “cloud music” setting on for all the iDevices otherwise the old playlists that used to be there, and which have now been “cloudifyied”, are no longer available offline. The only way to make Apple Music usable is to accept that everything is going to online, even the files that used to be local and minding there own business. Basically it’s a mess.

I’ve been using iTunes for about twelve years so I’m pretty used to it screwing up artwork, etc. to the point where I have a separate copy of my source files which I use for Media Monkey etc.

i’m getting on fine with the trial though i got a bit confused with it stopping and changing available tracks when i turned on airplane mode or lost a wifi signal on my iPhone. was paranoid about raping my 4g allowance but have turned off all the data prefs and have ‘made available offline’ ticked the tracks i want mobile when on wifi but it wasn’t clear how that all worked but seem to have that sorted. i bet a lot of people use up their data by accident but i know that happened with spotify too.
i like the playlists and mix/tape suggestions.
wish it had a higher bit-rate option for listening with separate DAC and british made hi-fi 😉

It’s been working here well. No issues with the UI etc.

Spotify P is at 320k I think whereas Apple is only 256.

I like the idea of a family sub for £15 so may renew.

i bet a lot of people use up their data by accident but i know that happened with spotify too

I had an itunes match subscription for the last few years so always played music using my data allowance anyway. I never get anywhere near using all my data allowance and recently switched from ‘all you can eat’ data to 2gb a month.

First few weeks of using my music and I’ve used 1.7gb. Not sure what it’s doing differently to itunes match, it was always set up the same as my music.

You know all those folks who are trialing it, for free?

Think you’ll be able to go back to std iTunes if you decide NOT to continue (and then pay for it)??

Think again..

Worried yet ?

Muha ha, mUUuuuuuHaaa haaa 👿

No, I’ll just go back to itunes match.

Is it available on Android? Serious question, apple surely can’t hope to compete with the likes of spotify, deezer, rdio etc unless it’s available to the majority of phones out there

Think you’ll be able to go back to std iTunes if you decide NOT to continue (and then pay for it)??

Think again..

Worried yet ?

not really as i have a back-up of my iTunes library pre-apple music. i’ll just point iTunes to that.

Is it available on Android?

Not yet, but it will be.

I’ve been using it for a few weeks and its ok. not great but its ok. I’ve pretty much worked out how to use it which took a similar time to when i tried spotify. theUI can be a bit of a fan but I’m used to it now so not having any problems. i may well even pay for it.

Think again..
Worried yet ?
Muha ha, mUUuuuuuHaaa haaa

No not at all. Why would I be?

I’ve never used any music streaming service before, but as all my kit is Apple I thought I’d give it a go.
I have no problem at all using it, other than it seems to not be remembering if I’ve ‘favourited’ a track on one of my other devices…. not sure about that though, I might be wrong.
Last week we drove 100 miles to Dorset and must have been in some dodgy reception areas and it never paused or dropped out, so that seems to work well enough to replace radio in the car.
I’ve also found some artists I like who I’d never heard of before. So far, since I signed up for the trail, I’ve not used anything else to play music, so I’ll probably carry on when I have to pay for it.

I really like it, although it’s my first real crack at Streaming so it hard to compare to Spotify – other than once a friend described Spotify as the best thing ever, asked me to name some songs I liked to search for and up popped 2 dozen cover versions mixed in with the original / popular version – does it still do that?

Anyway, I thought Beats 1 would be the big thing for me, but I’ve hardly listened to it, I do listen to some odd stuff though! A whole lap at Afan listening to ‘The Best of Neal Diamond’ and seen to shower ever morning listening to the ‘on the floor’ station – wall to wall disco classics!! I’ve got a couple of weeks left of my fee trial, but will probably keep it – I just need to spend the time to make more stuff available off-line as its a pain to try to stream out in the woods and I like music when I ride alone.

Drac – Moderator

Think again..
Worried yet ?
Muha ha, mUUuuuuuHaaa haaa
No not at all. Why would I be?

Ok, since when has rolling anything Apple back been easy?

But you know that. 🙄

Ok, since when has rolling anything Apple back been easy? But you know that.

It doesn’t need to role back. I’m running the same version now as I did before I signed up to the trial, so if I don’t continue all it means is I can’t stream.

Cool 8)

Software update 8.4.1 for iOS “fixes bugs in Apple Music”

Available now..