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Posts tagged with "Apple Music"

Apple Music and DJ Apps→

Allen Pike, one of the developers behind WeddingDJ and the excellent Party Monster, has written on the new issues introduced with Apple Music for third-party media apps:

According to our latest stats, 17% of Party Monster users have been unable to play a song in their iTunes library, and 22% of WeddingDJ users have tried to cue a playlist that has so many unplayable tracks that we need to display a warning. While it’s a miracle that we’ve been able to maintain a 4 star rating through all of this, it’s not going to last if we stay the course.

Given all of this, we have a couple options. We could double down and go pro, catering to serious DJs who can load DRM-free music into our sandbox. Pro DJs who use our apps often have a large licensed library of songs, and won’t rely on iTunes Match or Apple Music.

Alternatively, we could steer towards the mass market, drop crossfading support, and regain full iTunes compatibility. We could also put in the work to add support for Spotify or other competing streaming services, and focus our apps less on playback features and more on having a great UI for queueing.

The standard iOS media player has never given a lot of freedom to third-party developers. I wonder if Apple Music with its “love” system could be even more of an excuse for Apple not to make the media player APIs more flexible. Not to mention, of course, DRM.

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Apple Music on Snapchat→

Adario Strange, reporting for Mashable on Apple’s usage of Snapchat for Apple Music:

In a fairly unprecedented move, Apple has taken its promotional message to a competing software concern: Snapchat.

The company’s brief Snapchat story takes us to Los Angeles, where Beats 1 DJ Zane Lowe (sporting an Apple Watch) goes behind the scenes of Beats 1 L.A. After a few scenes of Lowe DJing in the studio, he throws it to his colleague, DJ Julie Adenuga, to continue the music program in London.

I have Snapchat installed because of stories and how publishers are using it (see our previous articles on it), and this is pretty cool indeed. Apple Music has been very active on Twitter, and I hope this Snapchat experiment is successful because I love this kind of “behind the scenes” access.

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Beats 1 to Exclusively Announce MTV VMA Nominees Tomorrow→

Apple is continuing to put a big focus on Beats 1 as a platform to connect music fans and artists. Today, the company announced Beats 1 will exclusively announce the MTV VMA nominees tomorrow. Jordan Kahn writes at 9to5Mac:

The proof of that comes in the form of an announcement today that the station will exclusively reveal nominees for the upcoming Video Music Awards. Clearly Apple has partnered with MTV in order to be first to make the announcements, and it’s obvious from the effort that Apple hopes Beats 1 won’t just be the venue for new music, but also a source for music fans when it comes to news and other industry related events.

And on Twitter:

Just two weeks ago, we were talking about Apple Music as the new MTV. Pretty close as a start.

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Jonathan Poritsky: “Apple Music Connect Is Too Good to Waste on Artists”→

Jonathan Poritsky has a thought on Connect in Apple Music:

Artists postings thus far have been less than stellar. I think Apple has made a massive mistake billing Connect as a place to follow musicians. Connect is actually a wonderful service being squandered by Apple. The things that Apple is expecting artists to post just aren’t that interesting. Links to their own music and original photos or videos are relatively weak sauce, and the posts have been few and far between for most artists.

However, Connect is great for sharing exactly what I came to the Music app for: music. The trouble is most artists aren’t posting music; they’re promoting themselves in a fairly bland manner. I’ve found the best people to follow are DJs and performers with shows on Beats 1, as well as Apple’s in-house “curators.”

What he envisions is dangerously close to what Ping used to be, but the difference of following curators for updates on playlists could be key. I’ve also noticed that most artists on Connect tend to simply post links to their YouTube videos (often shortened to track clicks), so this is an interesting idea.

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Streaming Music and Offline Modes→

Writing for Wired, David Pierce argues that most music streaming services aren’t optimized for offline listening:

Streaming music has an offline problem. As they’ve fallen all over themselves reminding us how wonderful it is to have 30 million songs only a few taps away, all for the low, low price of $10 a month, these companies have forgotten that the key to a great music experience is pressing play and hearing music. That shouldn’t be as hard as they’re making it.

Sure, offline listening is an option in Rdio, Spotify, Google Play Music, and Apple Music, but it always feels like it’s hidden just enough to make you forget it exists.

As I noted last week on Connected, I don’t usually need to keep music saved offline because I’m either on WiFi or I have plenty of 4G data on my plan for streaming not to be an issue. But I occasionally prefer to save some music offline because of poor cellular coverage (such as at the beach where I go every summer), and browsing offline content feels like a bet against the streaming service.

Even in Apple Music – the successor to the iPod and Music app – browsing offline content in Airplane Mode mostly breaks everything else (static, last-seen previews aren’t cached in the For You and New tabs), and playlists saved for offline listening are still displayed alongside those that are not (even after toggling the offline switch).

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Apple Music as the New MTV→

An interesting thought by Zac Cichy on Apple Music:

Apple is positioning Apple Music to be the place to go for all things happening in the world of music. Think less MTV circa 1999 and more MTV circa 1992. Apple Music is meant to be the place both signed and unsigned artists alike strive to be. Beats 1 is the station they want to be played on. Which begs the question, is Apple Music as it stands enough?

A less discussed aspect of Apple Music is the ability to watch music videos with no ads. Maybe because they are not actually very prominent in the app. The important thing is that there is indeed a video component to the service.

Over the past week, I’ve noticed that I go to Apple Music whenever I want some music – whether it’s from search, a public playlist, a video, or a radio show.

I wasn’t sarcastic when I tweeted the variety of experiences revolving around music that Apple could consider. Vevo and YouTube are two obvious candidates: for many, listening to music has turned into listening to a free music video, and having video support from the first version signals that Apple is thinking about this space. There are some evident limitations, though: as it stands today, I can’t find many of the official videos I want on Apple Music, and, obviously, live shows and fan-recorded videos can only be found on YouTube.

There are many technical issues in Apple Music today, but I’ve also found a superior way of discovering music (which I’ll elaborate upon soon) and a key theme that permeates the entire service – everything about music.

While initial bugs can be fixed, core ideas are much harder to build at a later stage. The idea of a central destination for all things music resonates with me, and that’s why I’m paying close attention to Apple Music.

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Dave Wiskus on Apple Music’s Connect for Artists→

Dave Wiskus has written about the process of posting a song to Apple Music’s Connect area as an independent musician. Wiskus is in the unique position of being an iOS designer who plays in a band, and I find his perspective fascinating and helpful:

But the worst offense of all is this: I can see no way to invite people to follow us on Connect. I can share the link. I can even tweet about it. Yet there’s no way to know how many followers we have, encourage people to follow us, or directly engage with anyone who hasn’t already purchased a song from us on iTunes. That feels broken. Somehow people were able to comment, which is great, but it makes me sad that I feel no sense of… well, connection. And I really, really want that connection.

It seems like there’s room for plenty of improvements in Connect. As Wiskus notes, this feels fundamentally better than Ping, but the social features are lacking right now. Also: go check out Wiskus’ band, Airplane Mode. Their demo is really good.

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How to Use “Likes” in Apple Music→

Each music service has its own implementation of likes and tuning, and Apple Music is not different. Jim Dalrymple talked to Apple about the “love” button in Apple Music and shared his findings:

When you play a radio song, you will notice a heart—this is the like button. If you tap the heart, indicating you like that song, it does absolutely nothing to “tune” that station. Since the stations are human curated, there is no need for a tuning algorithm.

Tapping the heart does affect “For You,” the section of Apple Music that’s custom built with playlists, albums and songs tailored to your individual tastes. For You also takes into account music you add to your library and full plays you listen to. Skips aren’t really taken into account, because there are so many reasons you may skip a song—maybe you’re just not in the mood for it right now.

The post also includes details on how tuning works for stations you create yourself, and how you can downvote recommendations in For You.

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View Lyrics for Apple Music With the Musixmatch Widget on iOS

I wrote about the Musixmatch widget last year, noting how its integration with the iOS media player and Notification Center was “too good to pass up”:

Here’s how it works: start playing a song in Apple’s Music app, open Notification Center, and Musixmatch will show you synced lyrics that follow the song you’re listening to. If you’re used to the traditional Musixmatch experience (in the iOS app or one of their desktop integrations, such as Spotify), you’ll recognize the service’s display of lyrics and timeliness – only as a widget on iOS.

I was listening to some playlists on Apple Music today and, to my surprise, the widget is already compatible with any song streamed from the service without an update required. Simply install Musixmatch, put its widget in Notification Center, and play a song in the new Music app. Musixmatch will match the song with its large database of officially licensed song lyrics, and upon opening Notification Center you’ll have to wait a second for the lyrics to load and be displayed in real time alongside the currently playing song. No setup, no search or music ID required.

If you care about song lyrics like I do, this is a great user experience, especially because it works out of the box. I wonder if Apple will eventually add built-in lyrics to Apple Music, but, until that time, the Musixmatch widget is a handy addition to the service.