It took some doing to make iTunes even less user friendly and worse overall, but they’ve certainly managed it.
Hey, it’s a streaming service. You don’t own this music, you’re borrowing it. Have you ever borrowed a CD from a friend? Do they always deliver exactly what you want, when you want it? I think you’re expecting a bit much, ingrate.
I don’t use streaming services–if I can’t find it on a shellaced 78, it isn’t worth even two bits. Harrumph!
You mean the people who gave you iTunes suck at music apps!
Shocking!
Hey look, 99% of the millions of people using Apple Music had no problems. One guy did, so IT SUCKS. Well, it surely does suck to be him, who apparently has thousands of tracks from old CDs and no way to replace them. So he tries a brand new, unproven service, and doesn’t even back up his music? How can a tech blogger not back up their computer? It just takes one spilled drink or hard drive crash, or beta software blowing up… it boggles the mind.
Upon reading this review, I’m suspicious of using the service. I have a collection that’s more than 50% live recordings (Phish, Grateful Dead, etc), and “duplicates” are everywhere in my library. For some songs I have more than 50 different versions. I really, really don’t want a music service determining which of those are “real” and which aren’t. Reading the full article, I’d be suspicious that I’d encounter similar problems.
I do have a few backups of that data, but I’m not going to try out a service that’s getting consistently negative reviews in the areas I care about. I’ll stick with Spotify.
I’m trying the free 3 month trial. I won’t be continuing after that. The thing I don’t like is I add music that isn’t on iTunes, Apple Music uploads to the cloud and then somehow manages to think that a song in a album belongs to a different album by the same artist. When I did this on Google Play Music, it showed the album correctly and didn’t try to change anything. Since I won’t be saving any money switching to Apple Music, I’ll just let my trial run out and stick with Google Play.
I’ve been using it pretty constantly since it debuted. This reviewer’s issues are incredibly atypical and very bizarre, to be honest – Apple Music doesn’t just delete your library under normal use. Especially if it’s backed up, as it encourages you to do repeatedly.
Its biggest issue is its UI, which is stripped-down so far that it has a steep learning curve. There’s icons on the screen that I’ve no idea what they do. Does a plus sign mean it adds music to my library? To a playlist? To iCloud? Not sure. Managing and navigating iTunes is awful.
The other issue, which he mentions, is its strange restrictions on syncing. You can manage your playlists on iTunes, but they don’t sync to your devices. You need to create playlists and download music independently for each device you use. It’s very non intuitive and awkward.
All that said, it’s still a very generous service with huge potential, and the part that’s deservedly getting a lot of attention is its radio. Beats 1 is a really amazing radio station with creative, original, cross-genre programming. It’s the star of Apple Music.
When I borrow a CD from a friend, I get all the tracks on the CD, not half of them.
i have a friend who is a rockabilly musician who occasionally releases a single on 78. they sell well in brazil and argentina.
Yes, I’m a Windoze user, but I tried to use iTunes for awhile,and I wanted it to work, I really did. I had purchased an iPhone 3 at the time and I wanted to have music on it. Mein Gott! what a deeply frustrating experience! It was hard to catalog new music. It was a PITA to find and load music to the phone since iTunes completely ignored my directory structure…I just wanted to dump a directory of music to the phone rather than make a fucking playlist. It all just became such an aggravation that after two years when I could get a new phone, I happily renounced the Apple Way, purchased an Android phone and scrubbed iTunes from my hard drive. By comparison, my life is now farting unicorns and chocolate chip cookies.
i can understand where he’s coming from - there are lots of problems lurking around in here, and i have definitely had some frustrating issues with the new iTunes. i have a big collection and also use iTunes match, but i was never super anal about metadata. now that i have apple music turned on, i may have lost some metadata but i would not know. this is because i started using rdio a couple of years ago and just stream everything now.
i decided to give apple music a try since the family streaming is considerably cheaper than rdio. i will probably stick with it since the willingness to keep an account credit with apple nets me a ~20% discount on anything in the iTunes store, including apple subscriptions - i only buy iTunes gift cards when they are on sale.
Doesn’t the 78 technically have no bits?
On another note: Syncing is a plague on humanity.
When I lend CDs to friends however, I get none of them back…
Certain programmers will always be fans of databases-- real databases, not two dimensional tables arranged on a spreadsheet.
iTunes appears to go for the database approach, whereas “just wanted to dump a directory of music to the phone” suggests that you’re still trapped in the pre database world.
Begone, foul Morlock!
iTunes appears to go for the database approach, whereas “just wanted to dump a directory of music to the phone” suggests that you’re still trapped in the pre database world.
If iTunes only went for a database approach, I’d have no problems with it. It helps speed up searches, and makes it faster and easier to explore your music collection.
However, it’s not just a database approach. iTunes wants to (re)arrange your music collection to match its ideas of how music should be stored, often obliterating carefully created folder/file structures as it does so. And it does that with no option and little warning - it simply assumes you’re happy to work its way.
That’s why the OP - and others, including myself - find iTunes to be a very poor piece of software.
I’m offended that you think I’m a programmer!
The only time I ever used iTunes was frustrating enough that I said I’d never touch it again. It’s been a decade and I’m not even remotely tempted. If I want to stream (read: schlurp like an unconcerned infant at the teat of profiteering centralization) then I’ll stream from a web interface, and if the streaming service doesn’t have such an interface, fuck it (hence my not being even remotely tempted by Apple Music).
That said, when I went 80/20 Linux/Windows (instead of the other way 'round) I had to find something to stand up to foobar2000, which was just perfect for an annoyingly-obsessive UI customizer. I eventually settled on Quod Libet, which is not as customizable but is blessedly well-documented and thoughtfully designed. I had considered just running foobar2000 in WINE but… eh.
Never mind the music service, notice what the latest ios 8 update did just to the music app? It moved the audiobooks into ibooks. Sure sounds like a logical idea, however, now your music, podcasts and audiobooks are in three different locations instead of one handy dandy app like before.
