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Poll: Should Apple Music be labeled as beta until the ‘nightmare’ issues get resolved?

Apple Music ecosystem

It’s been almost a month since Apple Music first launched, and reception seems to be largely critical despite the music streaming service being completely free to use for the first three months after signing up.

Parts of the service suffered the far-too-common multi-hour outage earlier this week while professional Apple blogger Jim Dalrymple condemned the “nightmare” service after losing purchased music and experiencing complicated UI/UX issues. 9to5Mac’s Jeremy Horwitz wrote a day after the launch that Apple Music’s execution shows the opportunity for Apple to focus on creating intuitive experiences again, and Apple Music listeners haven’t avoided the technical hiccups during the few weeks of use.

With Apple Maps-level horror stories materializing after spending some time with Apple Music, should Apple have simply labeled the service as a beta until the initial three-month trial expired and the service hopefully shapes up?

Labelling Apple Music as beta during its initial launch may have a negative effect on the short-term outlook of the service. With Apple’s reputation for letting nasty bugs sneak into shipping software over the last few years, calling Apple Music a beta may mean that an awful lot of potential subscribers wouldn’t be willing to try the beta version of the service which could dilute the launch. But that’s okay.

What seems to be happening instead is that users are eager to try Apple’s hot new streaming service and running into problems that would be understandable for software clearly described as pre-1.0. The public betas of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 show that there’s an audience of non-developers eager to try Apple’s latest software before it’s totally polished, and give user feedback before it ships.

Seeing the issues people are experiencing with Apple Music, plus the road bumps here and there that I’m experiencing, make me think that calling Apple Music a beta service would have saved Apple a lot of credibility with this launch. It’s easier to explain that software is functional but not 100% polished than it is to communicate the message that it’s safe to come back to Apple Music after a turbulent launch period.

My first shot at streaming Apple Music this morning

My first shot at streaming Apple Music this morning

My own experience has been mostly fine aside from initial Family Sharing issues, but I’m still struggling to keep the same playlists on my iPhone and Macs. All the issues I do experience eventually seem to work themselves out over time and not with troubleshooting. I imagine this turbulent period is only temporary, but there’s no denying that Apple Music isn’t rock solid just yet.

Beats Music had its own issues toward the end of its run, and there’s no path backwards after you migrate, but a beta approach allows users that don’t want to test unbaked products to hold back from migrating until it’s ready.

What do you think? A majority of our readers told us Apple Music will replace Spotify for them, but even more readers said they’re not using Apple Music or won’t switch. Should Apple call its streaming music service what it is and say it’s a beta, or would that soften the hype around Apple Music too much? Let us know in the poll and share your thoughts in the comments.

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Comments

  1. jamessmooth - 9 years ago

    I know this much: if I was paying for it, I’d be pissed.

  2. It should have been labeled as ‘beta’ from the start – too late to go back now though.

  3. Apple Music worked perfectly for me until 2 days ago. Now it prompts me for my iTunes password every time I open the application and tries to download a season of Mad Men I purchased on my Apple TV onto my computer. Subsequently, it will not play any music now. I called Apple support and was put on hold no less than 6 times before I hung up on a 45 minute waste of my life.

    Yet another embarrassing stumble for Apple.

    • lkrupp215 - 9 years ago

      How many “embarrassing stumbles” before Apple goes bankrupt? Give us a number please. When do you plan on leaving the platform? Give us a date please.

  4. mepphoto - 9 years ago

    I must be one of the lucky ones, me and the 9 family members I got ti signup :) It’s been flawless since day 1. Maybe I’m not using it as others are but today i’ve discovered over 27 albums worth of music I didn’t know about, created and managed multiple playlists, downloaded two playlists onto my phone and iMac. I’ve ‘loved’ lots of existing new music which has produced some great playlists and introduced me to more new music.
    The only problems I’ve come across seem to plague journalists and blog commentors, real people seem unaffected ;)

    • Joe - 9 years ago

      This is what tech websites don’t get. We get so obsessed with the people in our “tech bubble” that are having major issues that they don’t put it in context of scale. Are millions of people having these issues? Probably not.

      It’s like when antenna gate happened. It seemed like it was affecting everyone, but only less than half of 1% of people had reported the issue. We see a few articles and apply our experiences to everyone. Work Apple Retail for a month and you will see that the tech community doesn’t represent a large portion of Apple’s audience.

      • lkrupp215 - 9 years ago

        It’s a ‘forum views’ and ‘Google hits’ world. Forget reality and actual numbers. Counting complaints is the new statistical analysis gold standard. If it’s on the Internet it must be true.

    • Zac Hall - 9 years ago

      I set Apple Music up with Family Sharing and the issues are definitely happening to the regular people in my family. The difference is non-technical people will just quietly stop using it and not complain.

      • Smigit - 9 years ago

        Obviously non technical people will hit issues too. What it doesn’t show is whether the issues are massively widespread or a case of a small minority making a lot of noise.

        Given this article is asking if Apple should essentially pull the product by putting it back in beta (I’m not sure how you’d even do that given the app replaces the existing music software and has been seeded to tens of millions of customers), then the implications are that the situation is extremely dire, although I’m not sure there’s hard numbers to support that.

    • Troy Hollingsworth - 9 years ago

      same here. Its awesome! Much better than before and me and my family are enjoying it! There are always a few issues but the exaggerations being posted out there are ridiculous

      • Rhynchelma Herion - 9 years ago

        “exaggerations being posted out there are ridiculous” – they’re not exaggerations for too many people. Just because you’re lucky, and judging by other’s experience you are lucky, does not translate to the same for everyone.

    • James Alexander - 9 years ago

      I would bet most people are just fine with Apple Music. The problems I have been reading about are people using iTunes. I have not used iTunes in such a long time so I cannot argue with them. Not sure why people need it since you can do everything from your IOS device. I only use iTunes if I need it to restore or update to the first beta on a device.

    • WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 9 years ago

      Same here. The only issue I’ve run into so far is when it was down the other day and I couldn’t stream a new station I set up. I just meh’d and listened to stuff in my library instead and got on with my day. It’s been flawless beyond that.

      Maybe this hit more people in the US given the time. It was during my commute back from work here in the UK when I ran into the problems which would have been mid way through the day for the East cost.

    • kevicosuave - 9 years ago

      “Maybe I’m not using it as others are”

      This.

      Not everybody is going to be affected by the bugs, but clearly there have been bugs. We’ve seen evidence of serious bugs from outages to quick point releases on the client side, and obvious changes on the back-end. We’ve seen those changes fix all kinds of issues very quickly.

      The fact of the matter is that when you have a large complex system and you only test it internally with few users, you’re going to run into all kinds of problems when you scale up to tens/hundreds of millions of users over night.

      There was no significant downside to Apple offering it as Beta. Many of these bugs would’ve been discovered and fixed with no harm to their public perception. Then when launched live, it would’ve received even more PR.

  5. Joe - 9 years ago

    “A majority of our readers told us Apple Music will replace Spotify for them, but even more readers said they’re not using Apple Music or won’t switch.”

    How can a majority tell you one thing and “even more” readers say something else? That sounds like two majorities….

    • cmonmun - 9 years ago

      Figures made up for effect, but…

      40% say Apple Music will replace Spotify
      30% say not using it
      30% won’t switch.

      • Joe - 9 years ago

        Gotcha. That makes more sense. Thanks.

      • cmonmun - 9 years ago

        I know it’s plurality rather than a majority, but I guess that’s the point they were aiming for

      • Mike Hiteshew - 9 years ago

        What you have defined is a “plurality”, NOT a majority. A majority is a subset greater than 50%. A plurality is the highest subset, which doesn’t have to be over 50%, just like you described. Having 3rd party candidates running in an election allows someone to win the election without getting the majority of the votes.

      • Mike Hiteshew - 9 years ago

        I was typing my reply while you corrected yourself… sorry for the out of phase reply.

      • Tomek O. - 9 years ago

        And one more important thing: Apple Music will never kill similar services. QuickTime is dead, iTunes is dying, and generally all Apple stuff on other platforms and ecosystems was a pain (or at least: useless joke) always. They forced you to think by „things”, not „files and folders”, becouse this is their never ending problem: they don’t know how to make a realy working and intuitive file manager (for example look also at iCloud Drive).

  6. the only annoying bug i’ve had thus far is i like to change albums and songs titles so it doesn’t look dumb with too many capital letters, and sometimes after a few days/weeks, some changed back to original title so i have to do the process all over again

  7. cmonmun - 9 years ago

    The problem with it not handling duplicate, or seemingly duplicate tracks well is a nightmare.

    I’ve got a lot of Pixies albums, originals, live, covers, compilations, etc.

    With some tracks, if I select one I’ll hear a different a version of the track – it’s a pain the arse. “Gigantic” is a case in point, where the album version is noticeably different to the single release, and I can’t reliably choose which one I want to listen to!

    Very annoying.

    • AeronPeryton - 9 years ago

      When you upload your music library from iTunes, Apple is actually checking the waveform of the songs against their database. Is it getting two versions of the same song mixed up?

  8. David Call (@DavidCall) - 9 years ago

    I continue to face problems with my music deleting itself from the phone, and the iTunes Match integration is, to say the least, very confusing. Oddly, a hefty chunk of my music that I’d taken both from my Match library and Apple Music disappeared after I switched Apple ID’s (and then switched back), and I couldn’t find them anywhere. When I enabled cellular data in the iTunes section of Settings on my iPhone 6, most (but not all of) the songs that had been saved for offline listening reappeared, but the rest of my Match library continued to not show up, either over cellular or with wifi. I am beyond confused and have no idea to whom at Apple I could report all this. I’ll still likely keep using Apple Music because the convenience is nice, but I’ll almost certainly keep using Spotify for discovery and for listening on my Mac unless the UX and UI are re-thought or substantially tweaked. I’m excited to see where Apple Music goes, but I do wish it had been even more rock-solid and clear when it launched.

  9. It really is a nightmare to deal with. I’ve resorted to streaming everything instead of downloading for offline listening. Downloading is horrible. Most of the time you can’t get all areas of the software to report the same status (what’s downloaded and what’s not), so you spend a lot of time clicking in different areas trying to make sure your choices are actually downloaded. Then, there’s the random times where the download bar flies to 100% but never actually downloads. It’s crazy. Don’t get me started on tracks from albums being replaced with other versions of the song. It’s insane.

  10. Mike Hiteshew - 9 years ago

    Like pretty much EVERY Apple 1.0 offering, it will have rough spots. See iPhoto, iMovie, FCPX, Photos, etc. etc. etc. It’s how it is. Why do you think Apple is offering it as 3 months for free? It’s not just to try and get you to switch from Spotify, Pandora, Amazon, etc. It’s so you won’t feel ripped off while they continue to make improvements. I must be one of the lucky ones – aside from having to log in a couple of times, it’s been flawless for me. Only issue I had is when I installed El Capitan beta on my machine, I had to connect my iMac to Apple Music iCloud Library to get to the playlists and music I had already saved into My Music. I use it easily 8-10 hours a day on 4 different devices (iMac, Dell, iPhone and iPad) and it’s been great. I am discovering music I have never listed to before, and rediscovering old favorites that I had forgotten about. I guess it’s a failure – just like the iPhone, iPad, MBP, Apple Watch, etc.

  11. Nick Jaquay - 9 years ago

    I can’t sympathize with anything in this, so far Apple Music has been absolutely perfect for me and others in my office. And I personally have it running constantly. The views of it over Spotify have been positive. I expect most of us will drop our Spotify subscriptions and migrate to Music.

    • Oh, yeah! In an office (streaming) environment I completely agree. It works great for me too. That said, all of the other little issues like matching the proper (original) track to the album, and all the sorts (album vs. artist vs. songs) showing different things are driving me nuts. Don’t get me wrong. I *want* to love it. It will be awesome when/if the bugs get squashed.

  12. Gary Weisbrodt - 9 years ago

    As a side note, I have finally given up on Safari. Apple needs to pay more attention to it’s offerings. I don’t really care about the music but the discontinuation of Aperture and subsequent replacement with a weaker product sucks big time.

  13. James Alexander - 9 years ago

    I am with the positive crowd. I am even using IOS 9. My wife loves it and she has nothing but great things to say about it. She likes it so much she was trying to sell me on keeping it when we have to start paying for it. I told her you don’t have to sell me I am on board. I agree that most people are probably not having issues and when things are going well most people don’t talk about it. Keep pointing out the issues because I am sure they are working hard on it so when IOS 9 comes out it will be 100 times better.

  14. Rich Davis (@RichDavis9) - 9 years ago

    I think part of the streaming music problem is having a good, reliable internet connection. obviously with lossy, the data being streamed is less than if they were using Lossless, but still, it’s not only an issue on Apple’s side should they have bandwidth issues, it’s also a potential problem if my ISP connection isn’t very good. I’m just holding off with all streaming services at this time and if I was going to sign up to any, I would want Lossless because I use a decent stereo and I want the best sound quality I can get and Lossy just isn’t as good as Lossless.

    I wish Apple would offer both Lossy and Lossless (even at a slight monthly premium) and I can always ensure that the connection is good so i don’t have any problems streaming since I’m paying for the service, but right now, I just don’t think everything is reliable enough, and it’s not JUST on Apple’s side, but potentially with my ISP.

    • WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 9 years ago

      Save for offline if you want the better quality version. They do it this way because 99% of people won’t care about that but they will care about not being able to check Facebook because they went over their monthly data limit because they were downloading higher quality music files despite not being able to hear a difference because they were using the crappy earbuds they get with their device (or some cheapo after market ones). EarPods are good for the price, but they’re not great.

    • Agreed, the difference between the best streaming quality and lossless is dramatic if you have good equipment. When at home I play from iTunes out USB through a DAC and RCA’s to my equipment. My lossless files play along with the stuff that streams. Not a bad deal.

  15. rogifan - 9 years ago

    Yes yes yes!

  16. Draver (@draver85) - 9 years ago

    Reading the comments always give a good laugh.

    You claim that the “tech bubble” will complain and non tech people will just stop using it. However it seems that the “tech bubble” is full of people that expects a new software product to have no problems at all. Go out to ANY new service and see if there are not at least one hiccups somewhere for someone.

    Apple Music has worked perfect for me so far and is really nice after I spent time learning how to use it. Stop being so lazy and play with it for a bit.

    With Apple so heavily invested in iCloud maybe music is deleting itself from the phone is because you selected to use iCloud Music? Not sure though just a question as no music has been deleted from my phone.

    • In my case, the music that is getting deleted is the music that I’ve tagged for offline availability. I downloaded 3,000 songs from Apple Music, and twice it has decided to delete without warning.

      • Draver (@draver85) - 9 years ago

        I will try this tonight to see if I get the same result. Does it delete all together and you have to refind the music or just show the iCloud download button?

      • The music stays in the library, but all downloaded files to the device are wiped out. It’s only happened twice (twice too many), so I can’t predict if/when it will happen to you. One time it definitely happened was when the iCloud Music Libary folder was turned off, and when turned back on it asked to replace or merge. Either one was a bad choice. Another time, when switching the folder off/on, nothing happened, and all music files stayed.

    • David Call (@DavidCall) - 9 years ago

      Mine’s “deleting” when I switch Apple ID’s and then switch back. Also, I pay for iTunes Match, so I should be able to see all music in my Match database, but the only thing Settings lists is “iCloud Music Library” which may or may not be Match, I’m not sure. What I do know is that despite paying for Match, as of a few days ago, I can only see most of my “saved for offline” songs (with icon showing saved to phone) by allowing cellular data, which doesn’t make sense since I shouldn’t need an Internet connection of any type to see my downloaded songs, paid for or otherwise. And apart from what I had previously downloaded to my iPhone, zero other Match results show up whether I’m in wifi or not. It’s very, very confusing. Where are my songs? Why can’t I download them?

      Before Apple Music, songs were also just deleting themselves randomly. I would have downloaded a purchase or something from iTunes Match, and then at some point it just wouldn’t be in my library anymore (on my iPhone). It’s not the worst thing ever, it’s not a nightmare, but when you want to hear a song you’ve downloaded and you can’t because the phone deleted it, it is pretty frustrating.

      • Draver (@draver85) - 9 years ago

        I completely agree it is frustrating. These are the comments I like to see, people actually talking about what the problem is instead of saying something sucks and nothing more.

        I believe, could be completely wrong, that when you switch Apple ID’s it is suppose to not allow you access because it’s not the account that is not the it was purchased with. Also, I’ve read that if you select music for offline play, and do not have a sub it will not allow access to music. This may be causing an unintended issue.

        I think, again could be wrong, that iCloud Music is suppose to be having Match database moved over. There was a report I saw about how to make sure your Match music showed up. I will try to find that and post it here. I think the Internet connection is required to verify you are the one that purchased or saved the music and you have an active account. Otherwise you could download tons of music, cancel your sub and have thousands of songs for one month fee or even free right now. I do not follow the part about the zero other Match results show up where you are on wifi or not?

        May want to check Apple forums or call them since this was happening before Apple Music also.

  17. pinesrob - 9 years ago

    iCloud Library started replacing High quality MP3 for the Low quality Hollow sounding Apple Music Files…Most People won’t notice so they won’t care……If your serious about the Sound Quality of your music All Streaming services suck through headphones…But they sound great on the desktop

  18. lkrupp215 - 9 years ago

    Time for a “This is Tim” moment and apology.

  19. jigsaw4life - 9 years ago

    Works great! I’m loving it. It’s easy, smooth and runs great on multiple devices. I Have iOS 9 Public Beta and iOS 8.4. I’ve been able to find about 85-90% of what I look up and have had no problem storing for offline use. Using it via wifi or cell service has worked great, given the signal was at least a bar. Keep pushing it but I think people have their panties in a bunch. The new service launched over several os’s and IMO it’s a god launch this being said. Wait until iOS 9 officially releases and it will be even better. On a side note iOS 9 beta is working great.

  20. toukale - 9 years ago

    This is the usual, “Oh My God The Sky Is Falling” stuff we get with everything Apple. Not saying there are not issues with the service, there are, no service is perfect. But the level of outcry is getting ridiculous, at this point, but i am use to it by now. If there is anything I learn is that every new service will have problems at launched, until it gets ironed out. This is no different. The best example so far is Apple maps, I remember very well the outcry, people still crap on it, but get what? more than 75% of ios users are using. Google maps (which by all account have better data) dropped from 100% to 20% use on ios. What does that tell us, a service is never as bad or as good as people on the web would like you to believe. It’s the internet, everyone’s a critic and needs to be heard.

    • I agree most products or services have some kinks at the beginning. But when the kinks replace half of your “rare” version of songs for the Album version giving you 4 of the same files? Come on Isn’t the music par supposed to work at least?. And even icloud confuses it’s own tracks I clicked to download an Unplugged album Alanis Morrisette and it downloaded half of the unplugged versions and half of the Album versions. having problems is normal but having issues on the MUSIC part is a TERRIBLE mistake. And at a demo period I am actually considering not paying if it will suck this bad. We are not talking some missing features or a bug here or there We are talking about a Flaw at the very core of the reason this exists “make your listening experience hassle free” All I’m saying Is This SHOULD have been labeled “Beta” and not free trial because it doesn’t work and APPLE has been doing this recently launching things that don’t work and correcting them with user feedback is dangerously close to Microsoft Territory.

  21. The streaming is OK but the app is full of bugs. I get a couple of crashes every day and sometimes I tap on a song and it starts playing another one! This is by far the worst app they released on iOS in my opinion, I don’t understand how such bugs passed their quality tests.

  22. PMZanetti - 9 years ago

    What issues? Its free for 3 months, and works fine for me anyhow.

  23. It should be labeled as junk. Apple’s software quality control has really suffered the past three years.

  24. Krel Shults - 9 years ago

    I’ve not had any trouble with the service at all. I have both iTunes Match and Apple Music. So far I love the service and have used it extensively since introduction on multiple devices using the family plan. My 7000+ songs are safe. I’m concerned that only a few people having difficult are vocal enough that it’s projecting the wrong impression. What I’ve not seen anyone report is the actual percentage of people affected by reported difficulties. 9to5 please do a simple pole asking how of the people using Apple Music are you having no, minor, or serious difficulties. Until someone presents verifiable evidence issues are widespread it’s wide it’s just conjecture.

    • David Call (@DavidCall) - 9 years ago

      Where do you access your iTunes Match library on your iPhone? It seemed like enabling iCloud Music Library did the trick for awhile, but now when I enable it my Match results are all gone. Is there some other setting I’m missing to see them?

  25. caydjj - 9 years ago

    I don’t understand the big deal with this. I’ve been signed up since day 1 and have not had any real issues so far. The only issue I’ve had is some album art being changed with music not on iTunes. I’ve downloaded over 700 new songs, complete, albums and had no real issues. It’s never been down for me, and I don’t understand all the negativity from all these critics

    • Rhynchelma Herion - 9 years ago

      it’s simple, really. You have not had problems, they and many others have. Hence your positiveness and their negativity. Maybe if you had not bee as lucky then you too would have been less happy.

    • Tomek O. - 9 years ago

      Start syncing at least one Mac with 2 (or more) iOS devices. You will understand the horror quickly.

      • caydjj - 7 years ago

        That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I sync my MacBook with my iPhone and iPad, had little to no issues

  26. jrv6 - 9 years ago

    The best minds of the industry are being wasted on the “cloud”. While it is true that that storage and computing power of mobile devices can’t handle voice recognition and the full range of location-based services (finding restaurants), phones and laptops are perfectly capable of storing music and photos locally (at worst we could carry around a little wireless hard drive [new iPOD classic?]). In fact, local storage is much better for this type of data (for privacy and bandwidth reasons). It would be better to build a rock-solid system for storing and enjoying local media files and then to layer-on access to streamed content (with good local storage options), rather than trying to blend everything together. I live in a semi-rural area with an abysmal DSL connection. It is impossible for me to listen to a “blended” playlist without experiencing frequent lags and freezes.

  27. b9bot - 9 years ago

    Works great for me. Can’t wait for the 100,000 iTunes Match in the fall.

  28. 1nf3cted - 9 years ago

    My experience with Apple Music has been positive overall. I’ve only come across a couple of issues, the most annoying of which is that, when downloading an album for offline use, the track titles are named improperly — by an artist who offers instrumentals and remixes for the songs on their album, the instrumental versions are supposed to be noted with [Instrumental] after the track name, but instead only labels it as the track name. Thus, it looks like the instrumental version is a duplicate of the original, when it’s not.
    I’ve also had some issues removing music for offline play in bulk. However, I am running the iOS 9 beta, so they may be contributing to the deletion issue, as I’ve had similar issues in the older music app running iOS 7/8 betas.

    Aside from that, my experience has been good. For most music I’ve downloaded, it’s worked well. Streaming works well, and, after “loving” a bunch of songs and artists, the “For You” curation tab seems to actually be finding artists that are worth checking out… Especially considering I have a rather unique taste in music.

    To conclude — yes, it could work better, but it seems to function about as well as I’d expect a brand new, major service to work. I find it usable, without an over-abundance of gripes. I’d say it worked as well as Spotify did for me, if not better.
    I’ll be continuing to use Apple Music, as I am happy with it.

  29. Brad Price (@bradpdx) - 9 years ago

    Count me as one of the happy datapoints. Activated the Family Plan on day one, already had iTunes Match. My library is only 24,000 tracks, and everything really did “just work” almost immediately, syncing across my own 2 Macs, iPhone & iPad. No track or metadata losses, and I’ve discovered quite a bit of music with the service. Works fine on my family’s iPhones and Macs as well. I’ve been able to mix Apple Music tracks, Apple Store tracks, ripped tracks and personal recordings with no issues at all. Poof!

    I’m sure the folks with problems really have them, but how many are there? Without real statistics, it’s impossible to tell just how big those problems are – the internet noise machine is of little value here. The question of it being “beta” or not hinges upon that data, and we don’t have it.

  30. volcanogenesis - 9 years ago

    At the time I write this, 60% of responders have either a negative or indifferent opinion of Apple Music. This is not Engadget or The Verge but 9to5Mac where the majority of us are biased and pro-Apple. Let’s not act like its not a real problem. After spending two weeks with Apple’s free trial, I ultimately gave up and opted to continue paying for Spotify. Tons of glitches rendered the service practically unusable for me, not to mention Spotify’s clean, minimalist interface beats Apple at its own game. I think most long time Apple users agree, the company’s software has taken a dive in the past couple of years. As a shareholder and a fan, I’d like to see them get their act together. Blind fanboyism is not going to help.

    • Draver (@draver85) - 9 years ago

      What are the “tons of glitches”?

    • WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 9 years ago

      Are you one of those people who goes to tech support forums and use it as evidence that everyone is having issues because each post is a complaint of some kind?

      • volcanogenesis - 9 years ago

        Did you not look at the results of the poll as I mentioned? 60% negative or not using the service at all. There’s some evidence for you. If you have a counter to that argument, give me some numbers not anecdotal experience.

    • mepphoto - 9 years ago

      Not sure it is blind fanboy, my opinion was first hand evidence from the people I have set it up for. I’m not saying that’s indicative but “in the wild” I’ve only heard love for it.
      I also have to caveat my opinion, I think it works great but I WONT be paying for it when the trial finishes as I’m still not sold on renting my music for the rest of my life! I will go back to buying albums :)

      So I’m an  fan and I believe it’s a good service but I won’t be one of its customers but not because of the service but because of the idea :)

      • volcanogenesis - 9 years ago

        Great response mepphoto. My fanboy comment is directed at those who refuse to see objectively what the numbers are telling us. I love Apple as well, I want them to succeed wherever they can. If you look at the numbers, 30% are saying they had a positive experience. In Apple’s world, 30% equates to millions of people. There will be millions of positive opinions out there. However, there is no denying the massive amount of negative reception the service has received as well. If we are going to call our favorite company the high end luxury tech brand, let’s hold them to that standard.

  31. Apple Music has won me over. Ive tried the rest extensively. I can finally shuffle all my old faves and all the new stuff I don’t own and I can do it without using data with a push of a button to talk to my boy Siri. The for you section is highly relevant and has made adding stuff so much easier as it triggers my brain. I also REALLY dig the up next feature no one else offers. I can quickly tweak whats coming. I remember Spotify promised that feature and never delivered. Maybe they have by now buts its too late Im in.

  32. claytonkimball - 9 years ago

    Something seems fundamentally wrong when Apple lately can’t seem to pull off any digital service that competitors have handled reliably for years. Surely they have the money to hire talented people.

  33. CrypieHef (@CrypieHef) - 9 years ago

    Thank god the first 3 months are free. It always drops off or shows playing through Bluetooth but it’s “mute”. Have to hit pause and replay multiple times sometimes. I can see it being a killer music service but it’s too buggy right now for me to recommend it to my friends. Oddly, most of the bugs seemed to crop up after a week or so after it went live. The first week it worked 80% great for me. No “mute” issues, No connection issues etc. I think that maybe they are having a load problem due to the popularity of people trying it out. If that’s the case, it’s not a beta app but an underdeveloped backend.

  34. Works well for me. I just don’t get some guys who always complain about something. I can not imagine what disastrous things they do with their devices.

  35. Better yet, pull it and re-release it when it’s ready with a new 3 month trial. I am disgusted at this product. I have turned on iCloud Music Library three times and three times I have had to restore my iTunes library.

  36. dberti22 - 9 years ago

    The only thing that I hate is how complicated it is to just play my most recently added tracks continuously. Once I play a song, it doesn’t go on to the next one it just stops. I have a smart playlist that is organized by recently added but when I go to it in Apple music, I can only view it alphabetically. Anyone know of a way to listen to my recently added in a continuous line besides using up next every time I listen to songs?

  37. I’m using Apple Music while I making this comment. I’m trying to make it fail but I can’t even on iOS 9 beta lol using a family account here no problems at all :) . Let’s hope it gets better still

  38. Aydin (@AydinJ) - 9 years ago

    For the first time I hated apple

  39. Smigit - 9 years ago

    Absolutely not. The beta label would be a sign of Apple removing responsibility for the service by advertising it as incomplete software after already going through a very public rollout which pushed it (or offered to) to ALL of their customers and replaced the existing Music app in the process on iOS devices. This isn’t like Siri’s launch where one could ignore the feature given consumers have been pushed into the new apps and existing services have been replaced.

    Also what would a beta label achieve? Does it mean things begin working for those having issues? No, it won’t. Customers can’t downgrade, so the only thing that’s change is the services label, when what people want is a solution. It’d just be a slap in the face.

    That said, I haven’t experienced any of these issues myself and quite like the service actually. Apart from service downtime, I suspect it works for most customers.

  40. Hi guys – I am in this situation: I have lots of my own ALAC music on iTunes on OS X. I used to sync a playlist with my iPhone and it was all fine. Now I want to use Apple Music, too.
    I was afraid to turn iCloud Music Library on OS X so I didn’t. But! I want to have iCloud Music Library ON on iOS. Turns out that now I can’t sync my ‘offline’, ‘local’, however you call them now, playlists.

    I just want my own music and Apple Music living in a perfect harmony together. How can I configure this?

    In case I can’t have of what I described above: my only option is to turn ON iCloud Music Library on my both devices and let my offline library from OS X upload to the cloud?

  41. Tomek O. - 9 years ago

    Hahahahahah! Beta?! It should be labeled (as important warning) that it is ALPHA version, kind of concept service and app TO RISKFUL TESTS ONLY!

    • Tomek O. - 9 years ago

      People with one iOS device only should not say, that it works well, fine, OK etc., and that they do not understand why other people have problems. Just sync devices to start the horror (f**k up in fact).

  42. bc2009a - 9 years ago

    They should have launched a “preview” version of Apple Music with iOS 8.4 and left out the ability to download tracks and add them to “My Music”. They also should have left out the integration with iCloud Music Library for now.

    Just launch Beats 1, new iTunes Radio stations (or whatever they call them now), “For You” section, “New” and “Connect”. Then they should have made the “Make Available Offline” and “iCloud Music Library” features into features of iOS 9 Beta.

    All of the problems with Apple Music revolve around two things:
    – Make Available Offline
    – iCloud Music Library (especially for iTunes Match subscribers)

    Those things needed some serious vetting because those are the things that mess with your music library.

    The rollout on iWork was smart enough to leave the iWork ’09 apps in place. The rollout of iCloud Photo Library was did with several months of beta testing. Apple Music’s features that affected your music library should have been handled the same way.

    All that said, I still hate that the new music app doesn’t let me choose which button tabs sit at the bottom of the screen on iOS. I used to be able to pull out Albums and Artists as primary buttons. Now I can get “Playlists” there if I fiddle with restrictions to remove “Connect”, but that’s it.

    The fact that “My Music” is a single tab whereas it used to be nearly the entire app is frustrating. In that tab for “My Music” I get a sub-tab for Playlists versus Library….. and then within the Library I get a dropdown to change to Genres or Albums or Artists. The UI here is a total mess. They just shoved everything that used to be the entire app into a single tab. It would be like taking all my features from the old app and making me hit the “More…” button every time to get at the things I wanted.

    Personally, I would hide the “New” tab (no need for it) and likely the “Connect” tab — or at least tuck those away under “More…” if I had the old interface.

    One more thing…. I’ve tried out Beats 1, and I don’t need or want it. But I have to scroll past Beats 1 every time I want to get to the radio stations that I actually listen to. I would love an option to hide Beats 1. Beats 1 claims they play great music from any genre, but that’s not true. It only plays songs from a small set of genres and so much of it sounds like noise to me. I would be thrilled if I could hide Beats 1. Maybe I will like “Beats 2” when it launches with some different genres getting representation.

  43. Sean Cairne - 9 years ago

    It has totally messed up my library. I would pay to have it go away and just give me back my music.

  44. lennykravic - 9 years ago

    Last week all my offline music dissapeared from my iPhone. So I launched Rdio which I still have subscription. Will try Apple Music but if it’ll happen again I’m not going to use it.

  45. It’s trash for anybody who has a large music library. If you’re a casual music listener who maybe has 100 to 200 songs, iTunes Match may have actually improved your collection. But for audiophiles with 20GB+ of music, all meticulously curated, Apple Music will inevitably destroy all that hard work.

  46. Peter Panagiotou - 9 years ago

    As long as it’s free, it kind of is beta. I’ve been using it daily at work for a week or 2, and other than a couple of times i when the radio stopped working it’s been flawless.
    Jim Dalrymple was foolish enough to not back up his music, which makes me ask is he really an authority on these matters? I have iTunes match[$25 a year] and icloud music[$3.99 a month], and have not had any issues at all. I’ve lost nothing, seen nothing stange, and have very much been enjoying all aspects of Apple Music, except the “connected” function which i easily disabled. Granted, i probably don’t have the massive library Jim Dalrymple has, but i’ve got about 57-60GB of music, which is as much or more than the average person.

  47. cleesmith2 - 9 years ago

    They could have avoided a lot of negative press by calling it Beta or Early Release. It’s good for a version 1.0 product.

  48. Yeah, it’s awful in most regards. The only feature I really wanted, is the only one that’s missing: The Beat’s Playlist sentence! The one positive is that it appears to allow for travel – I went from Canada to the US and back with no issues of the library deleting or anything.

    I’d be really ticked if I was paying for it. I don’t plan on paying for it come October. I want them to make it better first.

    It’s really hard to get back to content in Connect. I can’t find song’s I’ve ‘hearted’ which should all be put in a playlist. The recently added menu is weird. I can’t always get to an artist, album or connect page from a song. There are too many inconsistencies to call it easy to use. I hope they push back any TV offerings, until this is fixed.

  49. Alex (@alexbran1) - 9 years ago

    I haven’t had any issues.

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.