Apple Music Day 1

APPLE MUZACK

Updates and change can always bring out fear. Especially when that change almost seems to drastically overhaul the whole structure within one swoop instead of smaller transitions. This does not mean it is a bad thing just a little scary. My initial thought on Apple's Apple Music service roll out is a sigh of annoyance. "Another music streaming service?!?" I download my music, and stream off Spotify on my laptop when I don't feel like downloading a popular single or just in a mood to hear a random song. I'm not a heavy music guy but I have my fair share of favorite artists, and albums. So what's the point of shoving this whole new system on me? But there is no way to avoid this update so might as well try to understand it. It has only been a day and there is a three month free trial for the service so the plan is to come back three months later and write final thoughts on the service. But here are some initial thoughts, annoyances and questions.

The Interface is pretty...

This update completely changes the Music app to be gorgeous! Colors are never a bad thing when done right and is easily shown here. Gone is the old standard white background, white pink text for all albums and here is a new tinted background matching extremely well with the album art. Just look at the before and after of Chance the Rapper's 10 Day album! Looks so FRE$H and KLEAN.

Before:

After:

But feels cluttered

The listing of songs is not perfect though, the addition of a giant RECENTLY ADDED section gives this cluttered feeling minimizing the most important aspect of the music app. The list of your music. Whether organized by artist, playlist, or genre the albums in my case are much smaller and lose giant amount of real estate because of three recently added albums on top. I know what I recently added, I do not need it to take up all that space. This seems like such a minor complaint but it is frustrating when the ability to see a bunch of beautiful album art in a list gone to a smaller pixel-esque form because of an addition of a RECENTLY ADDED section

Apple Music shows promise

The real meat and bones of this update is the introduction of Apple Music, Apple's product to face the monster known as Spotify and the puppy known as Tidal. Is Apple Music good? Really too early to call, it was just released but it does show great promise. It is not perfect out the gate, leaving questions like how exactly does my already downloaded music library upload to the new cloud library, and how to add albums off of Apple Music to the cloud library so it can be playable for offline use so my data usage is not through the roof. These are simple questions but answers seem hard to find. To Apple's defense though it has only been a day and I have not really messed around with the service completely yet. However the idea does really grab my attention. I hate having extra apps on my phone, I was ecstatic when iTunes radio was introduced because that meant goodbye to Pandora, and secretly I never want to download Spotify to have another music app on my phone. Now here comes this Apple service that essentially matches Spotify and may beat it in certain aspects like the music library and quality of the music streaming and it has me intrigued. The idea that my music app will not take up gigabytes of storage on my phone but mere megabytes because my music library is in the cloud seems fantastic! The last aspect and probably the coolest  is Apple's ability to curate music. Being able to curate and introduce new music to you based on songs you have "hearted" (if that's a verb?) including your already downloaded library seems perfect and they have my girl Taylor Swift in their library (just shake it off Spotify) Plus it looks super pretty!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who doesn't want to listen to something called OLD SCHOOL BBQ???

2EAGER 2EARLY

To say I am not excited to at least try Apple Music is a lie, even with it's strange interface choices (seriously Apple I can't make My Music section first instead of the For You section?), and confusing uploading process to the Cloud Library I am very excited to see how the next three months hold for Apple MUZACK.