Sharing this in case people out there have been pondering Apple Music and never jumped in. I think it’s good.
In there last post, I wrote about a few Sonos related things, including their sort of new HD radio service which is really good (and is basically invisible playlist streaming because you can pause and track-skip?).
Somewhat related, I decided to try out the trial for Apple Music lately as an easier way to push music I already had to my speakers than airplay, plus a desire to explore some back-catalogs of artists I liked.
I have previously been a Spotify subscriber for an extremely short time years ago, I found the interface to not be to my liking and now, with moving customer money to subsidize grifting podcasters that are absolutely terrible for society, I don’t want any part of that.
The thing that held me up on Apple Music when it first came out many years ago was some alleged problems with merging existing music libraries. I didn’t want to take the risk it might like delete my music collection or I couldn’t play some old albums or anything. No problem, this didn’t happen at all!
On mobile, I would say there was immediately no problem. Things just worked and there was nothing to wait for. Browsing also feels way better on mobile, though with the Sonos setup it helps to pre-create a group than then AirPlay to it, and that experience is something I can see might be a bit of trouble for less technical people. Once you have music in your library, you can just use the Sonos app, and that’s fine. If you were just using your computer or headphones, also, it would just be fine.
It does seem that the Apple Music app (formerly iTunes) has been a bit neglected over the years, probably because people just use their phones all of the time. Synchronizing on iTunes took a few times toggling the “synchronize music” option on and off, and cancelling the sync job, but it finally took. It was also a bit weird how to remember to switch between searching your library and searching the cloud/music-service. The magnifier box is on the left, the tabs to control what it searches are on the right.
The import, once I managed to trick it into running/completing, was pretty much fine. I’m not sure exactly how long it took because I think it might have been working while I thought it was stuck. I’m fairly confident you can figure it out. I have a somewhat large collection I guess, at least I tend to like full albums rather than just pick my favorite songs from them, and some long jam-band tracks definitely take up some space.
Upon merging, I found that most everything was completely fine, there were 1 or 2 instances where I see two artists with the exact same name (like “The Eagles” and “The Eagles”) which is no big deal, and some cases of weird album art choices on compilation albums where it picked a completely different album that also included the track. Just a few though. I’m also not entirely sure what happens if I edit metadata to fix artist names or genres - does it stick?
There was no lost music and I can now stream tracks including ones that were never sold albums at all, like Robert Randolph & The Family Band shows from archive.org from 15 years ago (highly recommended still, BTW). I suspect it uploaded them into the cloud and that does not count against my iCloud storage, I’m not sure, but it seems fine.
The browsing experience in Apple Music is a little weird, in that album reviews seem to have gone away. I don’t think I’ll be using it much for music discovery so much, as finding songs via other means and then trying out albums via Apple Music. It’s also a useful way to say “hey, I know this artist, I want to listen to their older albums”, so depth vs breath. There’s only so much you can have of a particular genre/sound, there are usually very obvious “best” acts, lots of groups didn’t (or don’t) really mix and produce that well, and I’m picky.
If you basically want “unlimited free albums for the subscription price” and also easier ways to stream to your wireless speakers, I think it’s worth it. It’s a huge improvement from dealing with the Sonos “music library” interface and having to leave computer on, or program a line in cable, or make sure your phone doesn’t go to sleep too. Worth it, IMHO.
Apple Music does have their own spotify-styled playlists, but I don’t like them. They tend to be a bit more modern/popular on one end and obvious on the other. So Sonos radio + Soma seems better for when I don’t want to pick what to play, but when I want to play an album or one of my own playlists, Apple Music is a great fit.
Mobile wise, you can choose what you want to download to your phone or configure it to try to download anything, and you can of course tell it to not download over cellular if you want. So pretty good for the car and Apple CarPlay works just like it did before, as will I imagine systems without it.
Speaker reconfiguration sidenote: Speaking of the Sonos setup, I finally moved a speaker around and paired a Play:5 with another in my office, if you didn’t already know (maybe not obvious?) you can Play:5’s (or the newer Fives) vertically and get better stereo seperation in small/mid sized rooms. Great! I’m going to want to add a sub now.