iTunes was the first real music management software I ever used. I’ve tried a few streaming services including Apple Music and Spotify. With a new iPhone purchase in the house came a 3 month trial of Apple Music (via Apple One) so I’m back on the Apple wagon.
I’m happy. Now to convince the others in the family to switch before the trial runs out. Some changes to the app since I last used it make that much easier.
- Price — dollar for dollar, Apple Music on a family subscription is cheaper than Spotify. Under the Apple One subscription, for the same price I’m paying for Spotify plus 200GB of Apple storage, I get an Apple TV subscription as well.
- Artist support — everywhere I look, Apple pays an artist more per stream that Spotify.
- Upload missing titles — this is a big one for me; the ability to upload an album not currently streaming. My standards are Mike Oldfield’s The Orchestral Tubular Bells, Marilyn’s Despite Straight Lines and the first four albums by Dodo & The Dodos. All I need to do is convert FLAC to Apple Lossless audio using fre:ac and drag the files in. Apple Music uploads them as part of my library and I have access everywhere. I outlined the hell this is in Mobile play of out-of-catalogue items using Spotify. My interim workaround had been Mobile play of out-of-catalogue items using Plexamp instead.
- Play a folder of playlists — ah Eurovision. I create a yearly playlist of my favourite songs. But what if I want to play all of them? Eurovision through the ages so to speak. Can’t do it on Spotify. Previously couldn’t do it on Apple Music’s iOS app either. Now I can.
- Shuffle across albums — you might expect it would be easy to shuffle across all saved albums. Spotify no, Apple Music yes.
- Smart playlists — dynamic playlist helpful for identifying all live tracks or 12” extended editions automatically.
- Download management — much simpler to identify and remove downloaded files
- Transfer — super easy, barely an inconvenience. Apple Music connects directly to SongStream and transfers your files as if you had a premium subscription.1
As of February 2025 the Apple Music app has improved greatly since I was using it just 12 months ago and that helps a lot.
Apple Music is for curating a library of music, and not just throwing likes at it to see what sticks.
Footnotes
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I suggest you create a playlist of all your liked songs so that you can mark them as favourites after the import. ↩