Apple Music Review

History

Opened in 2015, Apple Music started as a download service using iTunes. Apple migrated its music service into a streaming model but was initially slow to support non-Apple devices. As the company becomes more dependent on services it has had to embrace competitor devices and support for non-Apple products has continued to improve and now most mainstream devices are supported. Apple announced that it had 60 million paid subscribers in June 2019 and revealed that it had a total of 745 million subscribers in its Q4 2021 financial results. The company declined to say how many of these are Apple Music subscribers.

In June 2021 Apple Music introduced a lossless streaming service at the same price as its Standard Quality plan. It has an extensive catalogue of 90 million tracks in Standard Quality (AAC 256kbps) and expects to have the majority of this available in lossless formats by the end of 2021. Spatial audio is also now supported using Dolby Atmos technology.

One criticism of Apple Music and of all the other main streamers has been the poor support of searching and content metadata for classical music. Apple purchased specialist classical music streamer Primephonic in August 2021 taking it offline with the promise of a dedicated classical music experience using its best features. Launch of the new classical music features will be in 2022.

Apple’s own Voice Assistant (Siri) can be used with Apple Music on mobile and smart devices and it has started to rollout out the Apple Music Voice Plan in selected countries at a very competitive £4.99/month. This could prove to be a very popular plan particularly for subscribers using smart speakers with a voice assistant.

Services

Monthly subscriptions

Voice £4.99/month 3 month free trial

You can access the Apple Music Voice Plan across all Siri-enabled devices and features, including HomePod mini, AirPods, CarPlay, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Mac.

Individual £9.99/month 3 month free trial

Student £4.99/month 3 month free trial

Family £14.99/month 3 month free trial

Access for up to six people with a personal account for each family member (requires Family Sharing)

Availability

Apple Music is available in 167 countries worldwide.

Audio Quality

Standard

AAC at 256kbits/s which Apple claims gives a superior audio quality to Spotify.

Lossless

Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC)

From 16-bit/44.1kHz (CD Quality) to a maximum resolution of 24-bit/48kHz

HiRes Lossless

Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC)

Maximum resolution of 24-bit/192kHz

Spatial Audio

Dolby Atmos encoded tracks – needs compatible devices for playback. For a full list and how to enable Apple Music app go here.

Content

90 million tracks in all genres (Pop, Rock, Classical, Jazz, World, Soundtracks etc)

Radio

Apple Music Radio

• Apple Music 1 (formerly Beats 1)
• Apple Music Hits
• Apple Music Country.

You can listen to Apple Music Hits and Apple Music Country for a limited time without an Apple Music subscription. If you don’t have an Apple Music subscription, you can listen to Apple Music 1 live, but can’t access previously aired shows on demand.

Broadcast Radio

You can tune in to your favourite broadcast radio stations, including your local station. With the rollout of iOS 13 in 2019, this added 100,000 radio stations to Apple Music and all Apple devices.

Podcasts

Unlike Spotify which has incorporated podcast listening into its apps, Apple Podcasts need a dedicated app which is free to download and free to use. There are millions of free shows and there are some publishers on the platform that offer premium shows, episodes and channels that can be purchased through a monthly or annual subscription. The podcast app for iOS can be found here. Android and desktop users will have to download a podcast app from the Google Play Store or stream the podcast from the publisher’s website.

Music Discovery

Apple Music offers the usual Search, Browse and Playlist functions common to most streaming services. There is now a new feature called Autoplay which creates a continuous stream of music based on what you listened to last. You can also dial up local broadcast radio stations by name or frequency or just ask Siri.

Apple Music have a range of playlists such as New Music Daily and New Music Mix and you can find new music in the following ways by tapping ‘Browse’:

• Explore featured music: Swipe through featured songs and videos at the top of the Browse screen.
• Browse playlists created by music experts: Tap one of the many playlists created by music experts.
• Explore new music: Swipe through the songs found under New Music, or tap See All.
• Play music that matches your mood: Tap a mood, such as Feel Good, Romance, or Party, then tap a playlist.
• See what’s hot: Tap a song under the Best New Songs heading. Swipe left to see more songs, or tap See All.
• Listen to the top songs from around the world: Tap one of the Daily Top 100 playlists. These playlists reflect the day’s most popular songs in countries across the globe.
• Listen to tracks from upcoming albums: Tap an album under Coming Soon, then tap an available song to play it.
• Browse your favourite categories: Tap Categories, choose a category, then tap a featured playlist, song, album, artist, radio station, or music video to enjoy music handpicked by music experts.
• Play the day’s most popular songs: Tap Charts, then tap a song, playlist, album, or music video to play it. Tap All Genres at the top of the screen to see the top songs and music videos in a genre you choose.
• Watch music videos: Tap Music Videos, then tap a featured music video or playlist of music videos.

In 2018 Apple bought Shazam an application that can identify music, movies, advertising and television shows based on a short sample of audio. The app is well integrated with Apple Music and songs that you have Shazamed can be added automatically either to a playlist called My Shazam Tracks or to one of your existing playlists.

Features

As with most Apple products integration with Apple Music is good although there is a caveat that some existing devices do not support lossless streaming without either a physical connector or an external DAC. New models in future are unlikely to have this limitation. In addition to iOS mobile applications there are Android, MacOS and web players but Windows users are still being offered iTunes which looks distinctly tired compared to the iOS and MacOS based offerings.

Smart devices using alternative voice assistants such as Google Nest and Amazon Alexa are supported as well as Smart TVs and Games consoles. Smart watches are also supported.

In Car Entertainment integration can be via car makers dedicated infotainment systems or using Apple’s CarPlay or Android Auto.

Casting to HiFi and devices can be either via Apple’s own AirPlay 2 or Google Chromecast. Bluetooth is always an option if your device does not support either of these options but currently lossless via Bluetooth is not available although this is expected to be rolled out by Qualcomm for early 2022.