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Comment by akshayB | Hacker News Reader

They need to re-ramp the UI/UX on Apple music app. I have been using it for fairly long time and you can see how other competition like Youtube/Spotify have much nicer recommendations and ease of use. Some sort of streamline and unification needs to happen.

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Personally I LOVE the lack of recommendations in my face. I find that one of the most annoying features of YouTube. They just run me in circles when it comes to playlists and I have a hard time training it to let me listen to more than one song of something different.

But I don't let Apple Music run with streams, really. I stick to my own selections. So YMMV

I try Apple Music about once a year. Only when they are offering a free trial. I always cancel the trial quickly. Apple Music is just bad. Ignoring my experience with a privacy violation that still makes me question Apple's commitment to privacy, nothing about Apple Music is enticing. Ignoring the confusing UI, music discovery is awful.

Apple has a large selection of songs it can pull from to know what I do and do not like, and could easily recommend things for me. The last time I checked out the recommendations, they were awful. Spotify? Spot on. =) Also, Spotify is just available everywhere I want it. Apple? Pretty much "Apple brand" or nothing. Apple is not the end-all of my universe. I'm sure Apple Music is fine if you ONLY use Apple products or listen via Apple approved products, but no one I know does that. Not even the iOS developers I know.

Anyways, even if you are a fan, you have to admit their offering is pretty lame.

I have to disagree pretty strongly. I have both Spotify and Apple Music, and the latter has spot on recommendations, sound quality, and the far better UX for me. Probably 80% of my listening time is in Apple Music. TIDAL seems better for lossless/master quality in my stereo setup but is really expensive, so I only sign up occasionally.

The only reason I use Spotify is sharing playlists with friends or on social media, which is something Apple Music recently added, but isn’t widely used. I will admit that Spotify has nailed The music sharing UX.

I just opened up Apple Music to see if it changed much. I tapped on a song to play. Instead of playing, I got a full screen ad.

A full screen ad. For Apple Music. The app I'm in.

Edit: And I want to make sure I'm clear here. I pay for iTunes Match. I have a nice music library, and it's in iTunes, so I like having it with me where I go when I want to listen to something from that. So, I'm in Apple Music, trying to play music I own. And it's synced through a service I've already paid for. And Apple has the audacity to ask for more money? Stop me from playing my music after I've already paid them and deal with an annoying full-screen popup Ad.

Opened Spotify, and is synced up with what my Desktop is doing.

It's fine you disagree. It's just Apple has done everything they can to make me hate using Music.

You're paying for iTunes Match, which is a different service than Apple Music.

It's fine you hate using Music, but at least be honest about the situation: You want it without paying for it.

You're not paying for Apple Music. Apple Music costs the exact same price as Spotify Premium: $10 a month, or $15 for a family.

You're paying for iTunes match which is an annual fee of $25 that lets you play your CD-ripped library anywhere without transferring the files. Go to your Library, play your music, relax, this is what you paid for.

To suggest that somehow you're entitled to free Apple Music because you pay an annual fee of a separate product, is disingenuous.

Definitely agreed on recommendations, I've just been switching over from Spotify to Apple Music this week (adding aftermarket CarPlay and Spotify's support for that was a trainwreck). Overall I like Apple's app better across all platforms, except using web rather than native on Windows. On Apple's platforms it's snappier than Spotify, feels properly native, and is presumably better for battery life since it's not made of a bunch of Chrome instances glued together. But I definitely feel like I'm losing something with Discover Weekly and Release Radar.

Apple has their "For You" tab, but it's not as streamlined and the recommendations have been much more hit or miss.

Maybe it needs some more time to figure out my music tastes.

Spotify's automated recommendations seemed okay for me at first, but since I spend most of my time using spotify while working, I think the algorithm decided I'm really into instrumental or ambient music that isn't too complicated and that's all I get now.

Where Spotify really did a good job was just having artists create curated playlists that you can take. I'm amazed Apple doesn't do this more. They have "Inspirations" playlists that are kind of stuff that influenced a specific hit album, but they're clearly curated by someone at Apple.

I guess what I'm asking for is for them to recreate Ping, but make it good this time. Haha

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