The Apple Beat: Taking a first spin at Apple Music

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Apple’s collected a vast amount of data through the years (as has Beats) on what music lovers like, there are powerful curation algorithms that ensure that there’s always something new or something surprising for each user each time they fire up the service.

Apple’s new Music Service ‘Apple Music’ kicked off yesterday and was made available to millions of iOS and Mac OS users via respective updates to iOS (8.4) and iTunes on OS X Yosemite. Apple Music is available now in 115 countries.

The service is Apple’s biggest play in music since it created the iPod a decade ago. Since then, iTunes has become the largest music seller in the world and practically changed the game for music distribution and the digital age.

Apple Music is trying to solve a problem in various fronts. Consumers are now keen on music subscription services and are fine with paying $9.99 a month (the price of one CD) for access to a vast library of music that’s streamed directly to their devices.

Music ownership isn’t as big a deal as it used to be. The same way the album concept, an idea that thrived when LP’s and CDs were the norm, has been largely abandoned for buying singles.

Commercial FM radio is riddled with ads and the music on rotation being mostly top 40 or specific genre-programming.

Even Satellite radio, the most exciting development to come in years. Has lost a lot of its lustre for being too nebulous.

Apple Music’s Radio 1, has an excitement to it. With energetic DJs pushing a wide range of international tracks from various genres, it is bringing back something we’ve missed from radio in decades, the joy discoverability via live radio.

As for Apple Music. It lives within iTunes on your Mac (or soon, your PC) and allows you to shift from you music collection to what’s available on tap which is roughly 30 million songs.

For anyone that has amassed a large library on iTunes, this means access to that library as well as the ability to find new ways to try and listen to new artists, music, genres without having to buy entire albums. 

Many wondered why Apple would buy Beats Music, well the answer is pretty clear. Beats plus iTunes plus iTunes Radio plus elements of Ping now constitute the core of Apple Music.

But there’s a lot more to this service. Apple’s collected a vast amount of data through the years (as has Beats) on what music lovers like, there are powerful curation algorithms that ensure that there’s always something new or something surprising for each user each time they fire up the service.

I’ve been using Apple Music on various devices for almost a day now and I’m finding that it is getting smarter about what I want (which isn’t easy, my musical tastes are vast and eclectic. I favour early Punk, Post Punk, 80’s Synthpop as well as blues and Jazz, classic rock, 90’s grunge and rap and hip hop). My tastes aren’t closeted, though, I’m pretty much open to anything that sounds good or moves me. I’m interested to see how Apple Music will shape my listening habits.

Music is probably more important to me than technology and that’s saying a lot. I used to tape songs off the radio. I was a teenage DJ who earned spending money by spinning for dance parties and I eventually became a music critic for a nationwide newspaper.

I still buy CDs, I still buy CD players, I have various iPod Classics containing volumes of music I’ve collected through the years and I’ve tried various music streaming services.

I like Spotify because it has a good social aspect to it (sharing playlists) I can access Playlists from my favourite shows like Halt and Catch Fire or websites like Slicing Up Eyeballs. If this can be replicated by Apple Music, there’s really very little keeping me as a subscriber to that service. 

Apple Music is a great and promising start but there will be growing pains. There are still various artists that are holding out for various reasons but things are changing and hopefully we’ll see even more variety. If you love music and have been left wanting by your current collection or by other services, give Apple Music a try and fall in love with music all over again.

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Gadjo C. Sevilla has followed and covered Apple's products, software and services for newspapers, magazines and websites for 18 years. He is founder of Canadianreviewer.com as well as an internationally published technology, business, and lifestyle columnist. He lives in Toronto Canada.