Ballymena Today loves Apple Music

We are profoundly passionate about music. It’s a force that’s driven and inspired us from day one. So we’ve set out to make it better. To bring you more music than ever with access to millions of songs for just £9.99 a month, or £14.99 for your family. To give you personal recommendations from people who know and love music. To deepen the connection between artists and fans. To reimagine radio with a 24/7, global station. This is Apple Music. And it’s just the beginning.

These are bold words but we’ve come to know that Apple make bold statements and bold products to back up them up.

Not long ago we wrote about how we loved Spotify here but, will Apple Music affect their recent years of dominance in the online music streaming world? For now I have cancelled my Spotify subscription and am taking advantage of the three month free trial offered by Apple.

Will we stick with Apple or return to Spotify? That remains to be seen… but, here are some initial things we love about Apple Music so far. Oh, and one thing we don’t like.

The App

Having all of our music in one place is a feature that you get right across all of the Apple Music locations but on a phone, this is a super easy and helpful feature that we love. Being able to move seamlessly between our own music collection and the endless possibilities of the music Apple curates for us, as well as new music and the radio features, is ace.

Discovering new music

Other streaming services allow you to listen to virtually anything as well. This is not an Apple music exclusive but in the first few days of listening, we have begun to discover that the ‘For You’ feature is really paying attention to our tastes. So far the album and playlist recommendations have been really super and varied. With over 30 Million songs in the iTunes library, there’s plenty to discover and enjoy. If Apple Music continues to nail great playlists and recommendations that it now ‘knows’ we will enjoy, then this could just turn out to be the best feature of the service… for now, at least.

We’ve yet to really put the radio feature to a proper test but will do that soon.

How it looks

We’ve seen mixed reviews about how Apple Music looks with some users hating what they see. We love it… we think it’s clean and easy. We are also pretty certain it’s going to evolve like every other piece of Apple software we’ve ever seen.

One thing we don’t like… at all

Apple Music feels connected to your already existing iTunes library if you already have one but, being able to add friends and share easily among those friends is a huge miss. The ‘Connect’ feature is a little lost, almost pointless as far we are concerned. We’d love to see that evolve into a more social community among users however, for now it’s not a deal breaker.

Overall verdict

You’ve guessed by the now that we love Apple Music. After a few days it already feels like Apple Music knows me and knows what I want to listen to which, for us, is a huge win. We spend most of the week behind a desk with music playing all day every day so making the discovery of new music and the re-discovery of music we haven’t heard for years is amazing. Being able to experience all of this on one interface on my desktop or in one app on my phone without switching back and forth is also a great advantage.

We’ve read the criticisms and the issues people have had with their music libraries becoming muddled up. So far we have only had minimal issues with a few duplicate tracks which is no big deal in our iTunes library of over 1200 albums.

And there it is, Ballymena Today loves Apple Music.