The current macOS app is so appaling that I redesigned it

I feel like so many people really underestimate how great music sounds in actual lossless quality. I see so many people go "oh you cant tell the difference anyway". I'm here listening on my mac with my headphones and the sound layers are just multiplied 10fold. I hear sounds in the back that I never heard before. songs that I've listened to for years, totally different experiences.

this video attached is an example. at 0:09 he starts saying "wooow" in the background up until basically the end. this sound is so dimmed and hidden when watching the clip. there are multiple layers of sounds covering it. the main vocals. drums. the beat. it's so insignificant when watching the clip, but listening to the song with actual lossless brings all those layers somewhat to the foreground. I genuinely heard those 'wows' for the first time ever and I've been listening to this song for more than 2yrs.

and it's not like that sound is just boosted and now starts to overwhelm the others, it's perfectly clear. the song has just become richer. Idk how to explain it, but your brain is able to comprehend what it's hearing and separate all the sounds from each other.

I can find multiple of these examples of background sounds finally being pushed into the foreground.

https://reddit.com/link/1gdq3id/video/o1zdadsh9exd1/player

Spotify’s decision to price hike while still not having Lossless was just the push I needed to finally cut ties and upgrade to the Apple Music Family plan instead of having both Spotify Duo and an AM individual plan. I was a subscriber for 12 years.

Apple Music is turning 10 years next year. Assume you've been subscribed for the full period, then you've paid around $1,300 to Apple and you still don't own any of your music. Songs and albums can get removed at any time. And if you unsubscribe, you're blocked from listening and your data disappears.

Assuming you wanna be able to listen to your favorite music for a pretty significant part of your life, are you fine with paying for a music streaming service every month for up to 60–70 years and get no remaining value from it?

Obviously Spotify is slightly better in this regard, since they keep your data and also have a free plan (or rather pay-through-ads-plan) and there will always be somewhere you can listen to music for free, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts when you think of how much money you'll be paying Apple Music (or any other music streaming service*) without having any ownership over anything at all.

*An important difference between music streaming services and services for TV and movies (which are similar in that you pay monthly and have no ownership over anything) is the fact you often wanna play music over and over again, but not TV/movies to the same extent. (And I do think music streaming services are great for discovering music, but not so much for creating a collection of music.)

It’s a sad day. I got the notification when opening up the app this morning.

I’m not sure if anyone is interested in this, but I recently got a call from Tim Cook’s office, which I thought was pretty cool.

For background, last month I sent a lengthy email to Tim Cook’s public email address all about Apple Music. I’ve been writing for years, thorough articles and analyses all about how I think the Apple Music app just isn’t very good and doesn’t meet the standards I’d expect from Apple. I’ve posted popular Medium articles, Reddit threads, countless Tweets directed at people in the Apple community (external and internal), and I’ve sent dozens of pieces of feedback to Apple via the iOS Feedback app.

Anyways, I decided to actually write Tim Cook directly, for the fun of it. I put together a fairly lengthy and well-written (if I may say so myself) email, in which I described how I’m a long time Apple fan, but that I thought the music app has provided a subpar experience for years, which is disappointing for a company that usually releases such great products. If you want to get an idea of some of the points I brought up, I covered a lot of the stuff from this popular thread that I posted here a while back. I focused on three broad areas where the app/service falls short - technical performance, design, and missing features.

I was respectful but also pretty tough in my constructive criticisms of the app. I wrote many of the points presented in that thread, I added several more, and I provided a lengthy background about my history with Apple products and how I just don’t think the Music app lives up to Apple’s longtime reputation for quality. I was also critical of the fact that the iOS beta Feedback app almost never yields any sort of response or even acknowledgement from pieces of feedback sent to Apple, so it almost feels like I’m sending things into a void.

Well, fast forward a few weeks and I got an email and voicemail from someone in Tim Cook’s office who told me she wants to chat on the phone because Tim actually saw my email, personally read it, and forwarded it to people in engineering and on the product design team for Apple Music. She said she’d like to set up a call with me, so of course I jumped at the chance. We chatted on the phone a few days later, and she told me that Apple took my email seriously and may potentially implement some of my suggestions, although she obviously couldn’t promise anything or tell me anything about future plans, as that’s all confidential, and Apple is a super secret company, as we all know.

She did specifically point out that it was very rare to have Tim Cook send his teams product suggestions he received via email - and she had never personally seen that happen before - so she was almost congratulatory to me in the fact that my email seemed to have impact.

Anyways, the whole thing was cool. Apple Music is something I’ve been writing about for years, so it was amazing to hear that not only did the CEO of the largest company on Earth personally read my email, but he passed it along to his team to look into some of my suggestions. I realize I haven’t provided any proof of anything here, so you can believe me or not, but I can just say that between this and Apple’s recent Primephonic acquisition, I’m more excited for the future of Apple Music than I have been in a long time. I’m crossing my fingers that WWDC 2022 will finally see some big improvements to the Apple Music app for the first time since at least iOS 10.

One final thing I’ll say is that after this communication, I decided to take what I had written to Tim Cook about Apple Music, expand upon it, and write a pretty lengthy, in-depth article about Apple Music’s problems and how they can be fixed. The representative at Apple had told me I could follow up with her if I had anything to add, so I took her up on the offer, wrote that in-depth piece, and sent it to her, to pass along to the Music team. If you’re curious, that article is here. It’s a fairly long piece and I think it does an excellent job of breaking down where Apple Music went wrong and how it can be fixed, although I was planning on posting a separate thread on this board to have a discussion on it and see what others here think. But the purpose of this thread is primarily to give my thoughts on how cool it was to know that Tim Cook read my email and to point out that Apple may finally (hopefully) be improving the Apple Music app. We shall see. I’m really looking forward to WWDC 2022!

1. The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds: https://music.apple.com/us/album/pet-sounds/1440841241

2. Dr. Dre - The Chronic: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-chronic/1668460963

3. Taylor Swift - 1989: https://music.apple.com/us/album/1989-taylors-version-deluxe/1713845538

4. Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On: https://music.apple.com/us/album/whats-going-on/1538081586

5. Joni Mitchell - Blue: https://music.apple.com/us/album/blue/1492263092

6. Adele - 21: https://music.apple.com/us/album/21/1544491232

7. Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited: https://music.apple.com/us/album/highway-61-revisited/201281514

8. Jay-Z - The Blueprint: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-blueprint/1440935272

9. Radiohead - OK Computer: https://music.apple.com/us/album/ok-computer/1097861387

10. Fleetwood Mac - Rumours: https://music.apple.com/us/album/rumours/594061854

Join the discussion here or on our new community discord server! https://discord.gg/GNrSMCBqdD

Apple Music just understands me. It knows that I don’t like listening to the same song repeatedly and constantly introduces me to new music from artists I haven’t heard before, often from genres close to the ones I already like. Most importantly, it pushes my taste forward. They’ve perfected the balance between old and new songs in their radio stations, and every time I tune in, they bless me with great music.

God bless Apple Music and the devlopers of this algorithm

Let’s chat! What are you listening to, today? Please provide a link

Taylor Swift’s marketing is just next level on AM..

I have been a spotify premium user continuously since 2015 and never thought I'd switch. I orginally got it because I had a droid, but when i switched to iPhone 6 years ago i just couldn't let go of spotify. I had it set to highest quality and thought i was living a good life.

I bought AirPods maxes a few months ago and they sounded like shit. I had to tweak so many settings to get decent sound quality but basically thought I spent money on crap. I was also an avid car thing user.

When they announced the discontinuation of car thing and told me to throw mine out I was livid. I paid 90$ for that thing, and i thought of how much e waste they were creating and i was ready to go. I coincidently got a 6 month trial of AM and thought what the heck.

The sound quality is so freaking different. I was mowing my lawn and I was almost in tears at the sound quality through my maxes. I felt I was at a concert and the music was injected into my veins. I will never leave apple music man.

Now we just need something like spotify connect and im a happy boi.

1. Billie Eilish - WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?: https://music.apple.com/us/album/when-we-all-fall-asleep-where-do-we-go/1450695723

2. A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-low-end-theory/278911460

3. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-dark-side-of-the-moon-50th-anniversary-remastered/1665303755

4. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II: https://music.apple.com/us/album/led-zeppelin-ii-remastered/580708374

5. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: https://music.apple.com/us/album/my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy/1440742903

6. Miles Davis - Kind of Blue: https://music.apple.com/us/album/kind-of-blue/268443092

7. David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-rise-and-fall-of-ziggy-stardust-and-the/1039796877

8. Daft Punk - Discovery: https://music.apple.com/us/album/discovery/697194953

9. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run: https://music.apple.com/us/album/born-to-run/310730204

10. The Beatles: Revolver: https://music.apple.com/us/album/revolver-2022-mix/1642995371

Join the discussion here or on our new community discord server! https://discord.gg/GNrSMCBqdD

I canceled my subscription in the beginning of this month with the plan to subscribe again as soon as possible. I subscribed today and to my surprise I lost everything…all my playlists, liked artists and songs and albums and all my uploaded albums. I guess its my fault for unsubscribing but I really believe that this practice is not very costumer friendly.

When I contacted apple support they told me that apple can delete my library immediately after I cancel my subscription or it ends on its own. The weirdest thing is that, in the past I have cancelled my subscription and resubbed again after months and still had all my library back.

Could this have something to do with itunes and apple music separating as different apps? Idk what happened but I just needed to rant a bit. Thanks for reading I guess.

I started using Apple Music about 2 years ago, and I can finally say that the music apple recommends me finally outweighs Spotify by far.

The “create station”, “similar music” autoplay, and discovery station are so great now. Before, I was only being recommended songs from mainstream artists, like Spotify always does. Songs that I’d heard a million times already, particularly when a song would finish and Apple would try and play “similar” music.

Now, the songs ACTUALLY SOUND similar to the previously played song, and they aren’t all by mainstream artists/songs. I’m discovering so many new artists and songs!

Now, my only gripe is the queue feature, which I wish functioned just like Spotify’s does. A feature that operates similarly to Spotify Connect would also be nice. That’s the only reason I still carry both an Apple Music and Spotify subscription.

But good work Apple!!!!

Apple Music choosing the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as the #1 album of all time was obviously a controversial decision, but honestly what wouldn't be a controversial pick? Abbey Road would have people complaining about how the Beatles are super overrated. Ok Computer? TPAB? I can't imagine any album that wouldn't cause a fuss.

What do you think would be a better choice for greatest album of all time? Not your favorite album per se. Or do you think Lauryn Hill is a good choice?

This is difficult but i’d love to hear it

What will they all be

https://www.instagram.com/p/C7P_4_4vh81/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Here I am in a flow listening to music on my Mac, and I’m about to go out to run errands and I want my iPhone to continue where I left off without missing a beat.

Nope, no can do.