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Comment by klmadfejno | Hacker News Reader

For a while I would get news links in the side menu of my iphone that, when clicked, would tell me I couldn't read it without Apple News+. I wasn't sure how that differed from the oft-hated candy crush ads in windows. Idk if this is still a thing.

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.

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I've tried to switch to Apple Music a few times because the integration would be nice (and I think Spotify's attack on the federated podcast ecosystem is harmful and something I don't want to support).

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.

It's funny how people can have such different experiences. I'm currently trialing a switch from Apple Music to Spotify, and the Spotify UI is completely baffling. I cannot understand how they make it impossible to, just, browse the music in my library. I just want to add songs to my library, then browse my library by artist. This is, as far as I can tell, impossible with Spotify.

But then again, music discovery is something I am absolutely not interested in for my music player. Different strokes for different folks.

Same experience for me moving from Google Play Music to Spotify. Their UI is missing incredibly basic features, and isn't even consistent across platforms.

- 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.

The queue stuff is mind-bogglingly broken. Sometimes, if I have old stuff in my queue, whenever I instruct Spotify to start playing a new album or playlist, it will play only the first new song, then will skip to the old queue. This doesn’t seem to happen consistently, but it’s incredibly annoying while driving.

I have this problem too.

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..

I thought I didn't care about music discovery either, but for me that turned out to just be because all the discovery I'd seen previously was bad. Spotify Discovery weekly playlists are really good and getting a new one each week is a really good model.

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?

Apple still has the radio station functionality (AI generated playlists on demand, from a seed song you pick) and they also have curated playlists that change on a routine basis as well. I far prefer Apples interface, and they are slowly fixing the major issues with the Music app - it's not nearly as awful as when it first launched and still way better than Spotify's UI for all reasons already outlined.

The seed song approach isn't very good.

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.

The radio playlists also take into account your ratings; I've found them to be quite effective.

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.

Thanks! - Maybe it's time for me to try a migration again.

But songs must be individually liked in order to show up in “liked songs.” If you press the heart icon on an album, that album will only show up under Your Library > Albums. There is, as far as I can tell, absolutely no interface to see all songs that you have added to your library.

Every week I get multiple playlists of music from Apple Music.

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.

> I wonder how profitable it actually is.

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)

Another thing to bring up is that even the Apple apps on other platforms still help increase Apple's mindshare. Which in turn may influence some people to go Apple on their next hardware purchase

A lot of people who were all-in to the itunes/ipod ecosystem took the upgrade path to Music instead of switching to spotify, including my family. I don't believe Music is substantially better or worse than Spotify. That means it is best-in-class.

I felt the same way. I'm not a very demanding music consumer, my ripped collection was already in iTunes, and it was just the path of least resistance and seems "fine."

I got a free Apple TV subscription for an iPad purchase, and I looked through it on my iPad.

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.

They're not making thousands of shows. They're just focusing on quality content.

I've enjoyed everything I've watched on them.

Foundation alone (due next year) is worth the cost.

I would say the same thing about Ted Lasso

Almost every successful streaming service has been launched by companies with big archives of content. Netflix was lucky that they landed some sweetheart content deals before the studios and networks realized the value of online content. As far as I can tell, Apple TV+ is the only network to launch with a clean slate this way.

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