Apple announces Apple One subscription bundle for Music, TV Plus, and more
theverge.com
theverge.com
But not now. Apple's offering is going to have to really suck to not offer a good value at $79/year. Known names like Peleton might come out okay (as in survive, not flourish), but less-known companies are sure going to hurt.
I was a skeptic but peloton is a super compelling product, esp in the quarantine.
The idea of iCloud Photo Library having all your photos ever is great, with kids and 4K video on all the new phones, 2 TB is just not enough
edit - not sure if you can buy more storage on top of the 2TB plan though.
Don't think you can, no. At least, I've not seen any option for doing that yet.
That aside, this looks like a decent offering. I wonder how profitable it actually is. Apple TV and Arcade have, by my understanding, not done great. I don't have a sense for Apple Music personally but I don't know anyone locally who uses it over Spotify.
I haven't been able to make the switch for a couple of reasons:
- Spotify Discovery weekly playlists are a differentiator and nothing on Apple Music comes close.
- Apple's UI was terrible, maybe this has gotten better - but it was really bad. Spotify isn't great here either and often changes things for no reason. I'm not sure why it's so hard to just be able to add songs to a library and then make playlists? Spotify's current UI has this now, but didn't have it for a long time.
- There are apps that allow you to sync your Spotify lists to apple music to make it easier to migrate over, but there would often be stuff missing.
- iTunes was bad, but since that's gone now it might no longer be a problem.
But then again, music discovery is something I am absolutely not interested in for my music player. Different strokes for different folks.
I generally agree with you on the UI, Spotify's is also bad. You can add songs to 'liked songs' which is functionally the library (used to be called library, before that was 'starred songs') and then sort by artist that way.
I have no idea what they're doing over there though changing that stuff every couple of months. They have no idea how their UI should work, no design consistency - it's generally bad.
Is the Apple stuff pretty good now?
I think the way Spotify discovery works is looking at songs you have favorited and compares other human created playlists from users that have your favorite songs, then taking songs from those playlists you haven't heard and putting them in a list for you. I think they also do some modeling after that, but it's secondary.
This works really well since there's a human selection element they're taking advantage of and playlists tend to collect stuff that people who have the same taste will probably like.
Radios based on seed songs I've found to be pretty unimpressive, similarly curated playlists that don't know about your tastes are also uninteresting.
It's the combination that works.
The weekly distribution is also good because you get time to explore new stuff each week (rather than just being overwhelmed) and you can further improve things by liking/disliking new stuff.
Good to know the Apple UI improved though.
Also looking again at my Music app there is a Favorites Mix that isn't a radio station but appears to be what you seem to be describing with Spotify Discovery. I'd be shocked if both services didn't have similar functionality at this point.
EDIT: Actually there is a whole "Made for You" section apparently I never paid attention to before that is full of different automatically generated discovery type playlists. Neat!
EDIT2: There are even more sections I hadn't noticed - yearly recaps, what my friends are listening too (that one is scary; I have some friends with odd tastes apparently) and more.
I think I need to spend less time in youtube and dedicate a bit more back to music. Lots of good stuff I need to catch up on.
- Want to clear everything in your queue and listen to something else? You need to select each queued song and remove it manually.
- Adding a song to the queue, OK. Adding a playlist to the queue, impossible.
- Want to change your profile name? You can't do that on the website, just on the mobile app.
- Want to edit the description of a playlist? You can't do that on either the mobile app or the website. I was only able to do this in a Linux desktop app
And those are just the ones off the top of my head.
Things keeping me away from Apple Music:
1) I like being able to use my Amazon Echo and my Roku to run my Spotify.
2) I can't use Soundiiz (or similar) to sync Artists & Albums from Spotify to Apple.
Right now I'm paying for Youtube Premium, Spotify, and 2TB iCloud. The fact that I don't particularly care about the cost is kind of keeping me on those three platforms..
The closest analogue is "New Music List," but there's also "Friends Mix," "Chill Mix," "Get Up! Mix", and "Favorites Mix." One can reasonably prefer one or the other but it seems odd to say that nothing comes close.
Apple doesn't need for these services to be very profitable. So long as they break even, investing in these platforms invests people in Apple's eco-system and hardware. While Music has an Android client and TV+ has some support outside Apple TV, many of the services require Apple hardware.
> Apple TV and Arcade have, by my understanding, not done great.
It's really hard to tell how good Apple TV+ is doing. Creating a streaming service/ network out of thin air is ridiculously difficult even for a big company like Apple. While I wouldn't pay $10/ month for Apple TV+, having it as part of a bigger bundle makes it a solid add-on.
I haven't tried Arcade because I don't game much, but having it as an add-on to a bundle means I have a source for casual games which are add-free.
I kind of suspect both Apple Arcade and Apply TV+ were launched last year to gain a little momentum for launching the bundles this year. The fact that TV+ was free for a lot of people over the past year until now supports that idea. As I said above, I wouldn't have paid for TV+, but I do enjoy some of the programming on it. (Ted Lasso is pretty damned good)
I could only find a handful of things to watch, in total. I was shocked it was released with such a small amount of content.
I've enjoyed everything I've watched on them.
* Used to subscribe to google play music, but grew confused by where they were headed and moved over to amazon music. Never tried stadia after the slow rollouts of games after it went live.
I still have other subscriptions too (spotify, hbo, etc). I dont see them as competing with each other.
But for $10/month (which it was back then) I was totally fine paying for it.
Youtube music has all of the music ever posted on youtube which is nice because it means you can generally find almost anything there (even obscure stuff not on Spotify). Unfortunately this can also make it harder to find what you are looking for, youtube music is full of low quality user submitted covers/remixes of songs that I don't want to hear but sometimes it plays anyways. Sometimes youtube music will have versions of songs that were really meant to accompany a music video and not the standalone song itself which is annoying to say the least.
The app is also far less capable as a standalone music app. Never has any lyrics, this weird concept of switching between video and audio, hard to view all fo the work of a particular artist/group on one page, no continuity between mobile and desktop a la Spotify. The hand curated playlists are also updated less than the ones on Spotify. Interestingly the machine generated recommendations from Spotify have also always been much better than that of Youtube Music, which is strange given how good Youtubes video recommendation algorithm has gotten in recent years.
On top of all of this I have been using Spotify since 2013; I have a massive amount of music in my library there that I have no way of porting over to Youtube Music.
Now that you mentioned it I looked at youtube music again and it looks much better. I might want to try it out and cancel spotify (although I dont know if my wife would come away from spotify).
It really depends how much non-streaming TV you watch. I dropped cable TV (and landline) a while back. They didn't have zero value but certainly not $120/month value. I'd like to get live TV every now and then, e.g. for the odd sports game. But all the services, including YouTube TV, are pretty expensive for occasional use. Less than from the cable company but way more than any other content service I subscribe to.
I find Sling to be the best value now. YouTube TV turned into cable.
I agree with your general point. The streaming bundles are pretty much the same as cable TV bundles. So you either subscribe to a la carte very selectively or do without. I'd probably pay $30/month for a full cable bundle but not $65.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6308116?hl=en
Is this the replacement for google play music?
I’m still not sure why Google couldn’t just focus their energy on one music service which seemed to be doing fine, but as far I was concerned it was a nice extra that at one point had a couple of albums I was having difficulty tracking down anywhere else. Maybe it’s a smaller scale version of their messenger ADHD. That said, their messaging was terrible, excuse me, is terrible.
Google Play Music + Ad-free YouTube + YouTube Music with what is it? Six family members including the main account for $15/month was a pretty amazing deal. I launched YT Music a couple nights ago to play some music you can really only find on YouTube a couple nights ago and it prompted me to import the small amount of Google Play Music I had before they totally kill the service (or maybe they already have?).
See [0]:
> YouTube Music will replace Google Play Music by December 2020.
0: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-music-will-repl...
Oh come on. There’s nothing unique on Apple Music. Apple TV+ is a joke with absolutely zero content worth staying for. So effectively that’s $15 for a me-too music-service and nothing else of interest.
Google has YouTube music ... and ad-free YouTube where tons of new content is published every single day, from a global pool of creative, independent creators. For $12, that is, for less.
In this particular case, why on earth would I prefer Apple’s offering over Google’s?
>The Family plan includes the same apps, but with 200GB of iCloud storage. It’s $19.95 a month
Seems like a deal worth looking into considering I'm paying $10 a month for Spotify alone. Not sure how the Apple TV lineup compares to Netflix though, but the iCloud storage is a pretty nice add-on as well.
Spotify also does way better on social features (like sharable summaries at the end of the year of what you've listened to, integration with other apps, etc). Of course that's something that a lot of people don't necessarily care about.
I moved from Spotify to Apple music because Spotify had janky network issues under certain conditions, and network issues would sometimes hang the UI. Now that I'm spending a lot more time at home, im considering making the move back to Spotify, since Apple Music has its own share of irritating bugs
I get Apple Music and like it fine. And I pay for some iCloud storage. So, even if I don't watch Apple TV Plus or play Arcade much, we're only talking a few dollars over and above what I'm already paying.
(Which I'm sure is part of Apple's pricing logic. People will pay us $3 or so per month for services that they'd unlikely subscribe to anyway plus we get them that much deeper into our ecosystem.)
It's crazy how stingy Apple is with iCloud storage though. 50 GB for a paid upgrade? Apple hasn't sold an iPhone with that little storage in years.
I already spend £7 on 2TB iCloud, and £15 on Spotify family. So it would kinda make sense to swap. But I won't
Partly principle, but I also think they're really stingy with iCloud storage amounts. Only 200GB for the medium tier? And I have to spend £30 a month for 2TB?
To put it bluntly, which one would you bet on being accessible in 10 years? As much as I love what they do, I don't know if Spotify has proven that they're financially sustainable (for themselves, or for artists).
Comparatively, Apple has a handful cash cows, and can afford to lose money on the isolated vertical of "music".
I try to stick with the products that are a company's life blood - music is hobby at best for apple.
Google have the best search because it's where all their money comes from. Apple make the best phones for the same reason. Netflix have the best content (and by far the best tech) And Spotify have the best music app (except where apple have made it impossible for them. eg watch)
Anything more complex now?
I recently myself cut out Apple Arcade. The games were obviously well beyond the norm in quality, but it was difficult to justify in a pandemic when I'm at home all day and not experiencing those commuting scenarios where short games slot in.
As part of a bundle tho, Arcade increases the value.
No need to set a reminder. With free trials I'll cancel them as soon as I sign up to make sure I can't forget.
I did discover today that you can now change it to monthly automatic renewal instead of annual. But still pretty sleazy they don't let you schedule the trial to just expire without having to remember to cancel to avoid a charge at all.
There is if I don't want to do it right this second, yet stand a chance of forgetting before I get to $DEVICE_WITH_WHICH_TO_CANCEL. Or can I do it from a browser? Or from my Mac? Oh, screw it, I'll do it tomorrow. "Hey, Siri, remind me tomorrow..."
Usually, the hardware usually costs 30-40% more in India than the advertised price in the US.
The higher hardware pricing is mainly because Apple doesn’t give up much on its margins and because the import tariffs are high. The latter should go away for some products that are being made locally there though.
Arcade and News aren’t really reasons to buy for me. I’d probably use them if they were there, but I wouldn’t miss them and wouldn’t pay for them.
You can also still make Smart Playlists and with Smart Playlists you can slice and dice away to your hearts content. You need an app if you are iOS only: https://www.cultofmac.com/636256/miximum-apple-music-smart-p...
Speaking of apps, as others point out there are third party apps that can give you even more insights.
Reports are that Apple isn't happy with its performance, so I'd think Apple would want it in a lower tier bundle to entice people.
Marketing page: https://www.apple.com/apple-one/
Since you can share all of the above with family sharing and I need a bit more that 200GB but not 2TB, I may split this with my family and I'll actually come out ahead.
It all depends on how you slice it. at first I thought the Premiere was nuts, but even without family sharing for $20 more a year its still cheaper than all three individually. And I end up with everything (which gets them momentum in the other services they need).
It's a little annoying they don't remind folks that if you have Apple Music, you really don't need match any more.
The ability to listen to some of the music I have that's not available on streaming services is one huge reason I chose Apple Music over Spotify.
I still made a backup of everything before turning Match off :)
Now whether I could, say, rip a CD, match it and it would stay forever like it did with Match - that is an interesting question.
In contrast, handling that job correctly is the entire purpose of iTunes Match. Even if it is essentially abandonware within Apple, as long as it keeps working I will use it.
I'm not sure if it's the setup, pihole, or that I'm coming from a cloud ip address.