Apple knows more about my music tastes than anyone else in the world. Thanks to iTunes Match, it knows every artist, album and track I own. And through my use of Apple Music, it knows exactly who and what I listen to on a daily basis.
It’s great at using this data to create personalized playlists for me. ‘For You’ is fantastic, in my experience. My Favourites Mix is an incredibly reliable – if somewhat repetitive – way to play music I love. My Chill Mix is another great way to know I’m going to like almost everything it plays …
My New Music list is a really good way to discover new artists. The daily playlists have a high hit rate. The recommended albums and Artist Spotlights, too, are well-curated.
In most respects, Apple Music has made great use of the knowledge is has about my musical tastes. But there’s one area in which it falls hopelessly short: artist alerts.
If I have a dozen albums by a particular artist, and listen to them every week, you’d think Apple could figure out that I’ll want to know the moment they release something new. But no.
I have no faith in Apple Music to ever recommend good music…
Every @JohnMayer album is in my library. We play his music constantly — and have for years. And when a new single drops, it’s NOWHERE in my recommendation list. 🙄
— Shawn Blanc (@shawnblanc) May 10, 2018
Similarly, if I’ve favorited every album an artist has ever released, then it’s at least likely that I’ll want to know if they schedule a concert in London. But does Apple Music alert me to this? Nope.
What’s more frustrating is that the app claims to do this:
In reality, not so much.
You can also subscribe to a weekly Apple Music email. This, at least, must surely be personalized? No: it’s just a generic one full of artists that bear no relation to my own tastes.
It seems utterly crazy that Apple is in a better position than any other company on the planet to offer personalized music alerts, and yet fails to do so. So, Apple, thanks for the playlist recommendations; I love them. But please, please, please use all that data to deliver personalized alerts too.
Is this something you’d like to see? As always, please take our poll and share your thoughts in the comments. In the meantime, I’ll be trying Record Bird, recommended by a couple of people. If you have other recommendations, please drop those in the comments too. Disqus can be a bit aggressive in spam-trapping links, so it’s best just to post the name of the service – thanks!
Bradley Chambers contributed to this piece
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