Apple Music is set to launch at 11am ET/8am PT today, alongside the release of iOS 8.4. As we count down the minutes, however, we can entertain ourselves with the first batch of “early impression” reviews for Apple’s new streaming music service.
Has Apple done it again? With minor quibbles, the answer certainly seems to be a resounding “yes.” Check out some of the review highlights below:
“This was lifted directly from Beats Music and it’s one of the best discovery tools I’ve used over the years. You start by tapping dots with genres of music. The more you tap, the bigger a bubble gets. You can remove bubbles you don’t like and pick and choose what types of music you like. Then move to artists, where you do the same thing. Once you’re done, give the app a second and the Apple Music app will have a customized, ‘For You’ front page with recommended artists, curated playlists, albums and genres.
…
It’s hard for me to over-stress how much I like For You.” data-micro=”1″>It’s hard for me to over-stress how much I like For You. From the very beginning, the recommendations in playlists and albums that the app showed me were dead-on accurate, reflecting my various musical interests. Straight out, I was given a recommendation of a Taylor Swift love ballad playlist and albums from The Kinks, Sufjan Stevens, Elliot Smith, The Shins, Miguel and Drake. So basically my musical brain.”
Over at Re/code, Walt Mossberg is also positive, but with provisos. “Would I pay $10 a month — $120 a year — to use it?” he writes.
“My answer is a tentative yes, with some caveats. Apple has built a handsome, robust app and service that goes well beyond just offering a huge catalog of music by providing many ways to discover and group music for a very wide range of tastes and moods.
But it’s also uncharacteristically complicated by Apple standards, with everything from a global terrestrial radio station to numerous suggested playlists for different purposes in different places. And the company offers very little guidance on how to navigate its many features. It will take time to learn it. And that’s not something you’re going to want to do if all you’re looking for is to lean back and listen.”
Ed Baig at USA Today has similar notes regarding Apple Music, praising its attractive design but observing that it’s not exactly pick-up-and-play in its design.
“Apple Music certainly looks visually appealing on the iPhone 6 Plus preloaded with the iOS update, especially the way Apple extracts the colors and themes from an album cover and displays it across the entire display, though it also took me awhile to get comfortable finding my way around–there’s an awful lot packed into a section labeled New.”
Probably the most favorable review below to LoopInsight’s Jim Dalrymple, who writes that:
“I’m damned impressed. Apple Music is a quality service, with the right mix of human curation and algorithms to help users figure out exactly what they want to hear. I can only imagine that the service will only get better from here. The more I use it, like/dislike songs, the better it will know me.
I was interacting with Apple Music the entire time I was writing this and the radio station I started listening to improved quite a bit in those hours. I’m not skipping songs, instead I have a steady diet of Slash, Godsmack, Led Zeppelin, and Metallica. It’s hard to beat that.
While other streaming services didn’t worry much about Apple in the past, Apple Music will get their attention. In fact, it’s going to grab everyone’s attention.”
Of course, these are only first impressions, so we’ll have to wait until the full reviews come in (or at least until we’ve had a few days to get to grips with the service) to get a deeper dive into Apple Music. However, considering Apple’s late-starter position compared to more entrenches services like Spotify it certainly seems to suggest streaming music has a new champion on its hands.
Now we just need to see if paying customers respond the same way!
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
10 responses to “Apple Music review roundup: Cupertino is hitting all the right notes”
Thanks apple for the new design updates on the music app….but what if you don’t want the radio or connect features? Will there ever be a way to turn these off? My very young kids like playing music from our family itunes match library on our older wifi enabled iPhones…and i would have liked to have seen Apple provide the option to also turn off radio and connect (not just Apple Music) in the settings to make this more kid friendly. our children don’t really need to be sorting through all of the adult music that is out there in the world at their age. I do not see a way to block that at all without disconnecting wifi completely….which means they would then not be able to connect to the itunes music library (a workaround would be to download part of our music library to their iPhones…but as parents know, our children’s iPhones are usually full of fun game apps and the photos and videos they take…so that is not much of an option).
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Ya, God forbid your kids make their own decisions about the music they like.
Maybe for the masses, but not for me. I’ve been using it for the past 15 minutes, defining the type of music I like even more than just the minimum requirements, and as expected, it got it WRONG. It did not even offer my favourite genre, folk (even though the majority of my ripped and purchased music is folk). Also, I don’t see the point spending per month on streaming what I spent every other month on purchases – but maybe that’s a third world world issue (where I live).
Where on earth is iTunes 12.2? You can’t access Apple Music on the Mac without it. Considering that iTunes is the music hub, how can this be? What breakdown in marketing and on the exec level at Apple overlooked this flaw at launch???
it’s up now
Thanks! Yes, I downloaded it…whew! Still baffling as to why this didn’t become available before the iOS updates.
After using Apple Music for a day now and I was expecting I wasn’t going to like it, but in fact I do. Using the iOS app it is much better than the old music app, but I still don’t like the pink menus, and I did turn off connect. The continuity feels natural when moving around, and no more album art wall when you turn your phone sideways. I get a sense that this could see the end of iTunes down the track, and completely replaced with just Apple Music. Far more logical, as apps should have their own home. I for one am over the whole “i” genre, it has no impact anymore. I’m not big on listening to music these days, but this may have me buying a family subscription in 3 months time. The music quality is very very good.
The New iOS App – Music
The new interface is rather non-intuitive and gives me too much useless information, e.g, “Trending Searches”, and a slew of radio stations I’ll never use, more over, give a cats ass about. How about putting my stations right at the top, front and center? No, they are relegated to the “Recently Played” section and are not “my” stations at all. Not sure if I can even organize and manage them. I guess my expectations were that stations would behave more like Pandora stations.
“My Music” is a bit misleading because I have playlists with music only from the Apple Music subscription. I do not own the music, so why is it under My Music?
The new iTunes 12.2
iTunes is still called “iTunes” for some odd reason. Shouldn’t it be called “Music”?
There is a new tab called “New” that is separate from the iTunes Store landing page even though it displays the same content, sans the right-side navigation. So why? I guess they just tacked it on to the iTunes monstrosity, rather than integrate it more gracefully.
I got so fed up with trying to make playlists I just cancelled my subscription entirely. Apple, put ‘Music’ and iTunes back in the oven, they’re not fully Cook’d yet. Then again, are they?