Finally Got Apple Music

I actually got Apple One if we are splitting hairs. I’m not sure how many of the TV shows I’ll watch but I did get talked into getting cable TV by Telus during the coronavirus and watched a surprising amount of TV including a couple of Apple TV exclusives, so when my free Apple TV+ was expiring I decided to go all in.

I didn’t get games or Apple Fitness so I guess I didn’t go all in. Maybe I’ll have to consider it, the coronavirus has not been good for my health, though I avoided catching the actual virus. Twice my exercise routine got derailed and the second time I never recovered, now I’m nursing recurring injuries that flared up during my move.

One of the things I did after I moved was try to upgrade from iTunes Match to what ultimately turned out to be Apple One. Previously while working from home I was in a smaller apartment with a desk in my living room beside my stereo. I had bought an Apple TV to stream music to my stereo after my G4 was finally deemed too old by Apple to fulfill that function. So in my opinion the killer feature of Apple Music is I can get my music on my Microsoft work laptop through the browser.

It took talking to four or more Apple employees and even then it was not confirmed that my iTunes Match subscription would not auto-renew and I wouldn’t be charged for AppleTV+ if I bought Apple One. I just looked and so far so good.

I was never excited for most of Apple Music’s killer features. I can make my own custom playlists, I don’t listen to podcasts or popular music, I haven’t felt the need to share my custom playlists or tweet my tunes for awhile. But I do enjoy having access to new music, today I listened to a Todd Snider live album and it made my day.

I bought Todd’s debut album then kinda lost touch with him, he changed record companies etc. He isn’t exactly popular music, but he was on the Shel Silverstein tribute album and songwriters I admire praise him. So I do think Apple Music is worth it if you like music. You can’t buy every album especially not on vinyl, you can’t keep up on every artist, genre, and release, so a streaming service has uses but the algorithm has biases, I think Apple and certain artists are doing co-promotions.

I don’t know if I’ll share my profile and use all the social media features, someone famously said Apple doesn’t get social, and honestly there is a lot of music on YouTube. I actually find a lot of music through YouTube, but I still support artists monetarily, I use Bandcamp, I support the local record store, I even buy things directly from record companies still on occasion when they contact me.

Hopefully a return to painting and in-person gaming will also correspond with an increase in music listening. Sometimes I can turn on music while working, sometimes I can’t as we have a lot of meetings. I hope the algorithm will get better over time, but I’ve been using iTunes and the iTunes music store for over 20 years, so Apple knows what kinda music I like. One casualty of my move to Apple Music it seems Last.fm can no longer track the songs I play. Maybe it’ll work out eventually and hopefully Apple provides a summary of my music listening so I can blog about it, as has become tradition.

What are your thoughts on Apple Music and the rest of Apple One, do you prefer Spotify, YouTube, or vinyl? Feel free to leave a comment below with your thoughts and recommendations.

This entry was originaly posted on August 29th, 2021, it was last edited on August 29th, 2021 and is filed under: Technology and tagged: Apple, iTunes, Music.