Comment by SyrupThinker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SyrupThinker | Hacker News Reader

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> However since moving to MacOS, I have to either use iTunes or Music, […]; they expect me to use their services and that's front and clear, while my local music is hidden away in a menu button.

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. Listening to your own music in the macOS Music app is as simple as dragging (importing) the music into Music.app and selecting any of the options ("Recently Added", "Songs", etc.) in the Library sidebar.

Most media players I've used work like that. The application reopens where you last left off, so it is not like the Apple Music "Explore" or "Listen Now" page is shown on every launch to push the service on you.

I think the complaint makes sense in relation to the Apple Music sidebar items, but considering that there are users who want to use Apple Music, how would you surface it without having an easily discoverable item in the sidebar? I think having the option to hide it would be enough to alleviate it, but apparently one cannot, so that's a point against Apple here.

> How would you surface it without having an easily discoverable item in the sidebar?

There are many ways!

- The "music player" plays your local music, the "music shop/service/itunes/spotify" can handle music stream/buying/etc, which gets incorporated into your music player. Or you'd have all your local and streaming music (IF you subscribe) mixed all together seamlessly.

- Allow to easily change the default music player in the system. They make it impossible now, you have to fiddle with 3rd party software and scripts.

- Only require agreeing with the terms if you are going to buy music, not for playing your own music. Don't analyze my local music for your algorithms, thanks.

And TBF, Apple Music is still one of the best closed source music players I've tried, but pushing for their service hard is a no-go, I don't want to feel like I'm being sold at every time I'm using a simple app.

But on OSX, there are TONS of choices for music apps. You just need to bother yourself to explore the landscape a bit. Nobody will force you to use Apple's apps.

On Android, PowerAmp is still there and still the best.

If anyone ever forced you to use Windows, then MusicBee is the best.

Try Dopamine on Windows. It's very simple and light https://github.com/digimezzo/dopamine

Why would you use Dopamine instead of Foobar 2000?

> Listening to your own music in the macOS Music app is as simple as dragging (importing) the music into Music.app and selecting any of the options ("Recently Added", "Songs", etc.) in the Library sidebar.

This was not true in my experience. Sure it worked most of the time but I had tracks in my collection which were apparently incompatible with the Music.app and would not play. This led to me migrating to Plex about 4 years ago.

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