Image via Complex Original
Earlier today, the most valuable company in the world officially entered the streaming wars. With the release of iOS 8.4, Apple upgraded its Music app to include access to Apple Music, the streaming service it announced earlier this month with a star-studded press event that included Jimmy Iovine, Drake rocking a vintage Apple varsity jacket, and a performance from the Weeknd. Here’s what we know about Apple Music: It will cost $10 a month for an individual user account, $15 for a 6-person family plan; it carries a library of music that contains around 30 million songs; it allows offline playback; it hosts music videos and original artist content; it features a global radio station called Beats 1 that will feature shows by Zane Lowe, Ebro Darden, and Julie Adenuga; oh, and Taylor Swift's 1989 is available for streaming. With all that crammed into a single application, how is it to use? We gave the app and service a quick test drive and came back with five ways to get the best Apple Music experience.
Customize your music.
There are five tabs in the new Apple Music app, the first of which is called For You. Before you do anything else in the app, you should go there. Like most other streaming services, Apple Music wants to personalize your listening experience as best it can. To do this, it uses a mixture of algorithms and human curation. But first, you need to tell it “what you’re into.” You do this by selecting your favorite genres and then some of your favorite artists. The service then crunches that data and presents to you a selection of playlists made by Apple Music’s team of editors and albums that it believes you would like. It’s probably the easiest way to set up your musical tastes out of any other streaming service.
Pick a playlist.
Like Beats Music, which Apple acquired in 2014, Apple Music leans heavily on the tastes of its staff and collaborators to keep listeners tuned in. Hit the New tab, scroll down past the new releases and you’ll see three tabs for Apple Music Editors, Activities, and Curators. Apple Music Editors, which, as the name implies, is populated with genre-specific pages that feature playlists and albums crafted by the editors working at Apple Music. Activities lets you pick an activity—say, cooking or studying or waking up—and offers up a bunch of playlists that should suit the mood. Last but not least, the Curators tab is filled with playlists created by publications like Complex, the Fader, and Wired. We're not just saying this because we have a page (which you should definitely check out), but on the whole, the curation in the playlists feels fresh and in tune with the present.
Listen to the radio. For real.
Customization and playlists are cool, but a lot of other services offer pretty much the same thing. The most interesting part of Apple Music so far is Beats 1 Radio. Anchored by DJs Zane Low, Ebro Darden, and Julie Adenuga, Beats 1 is meant to be a modern take on an age-old medium. Depending on your musical tastes, you will either hate or love Beats 1. So far, we’ve only got to hear Zane Lowe spin, but in the short time that he’s been on air he’s already played everything from “City” by Spring King to Pharrell’s new single, “Freedom,” with a cut from Shamir thrown in for good measure. Have you listened to the radio lately? If so you know how mundane an experience it is. You can probably guess the 10 or so songs you’ll constantly hear every hour on the hour. It’s too early to tell, but it doesn’t seem as if Beats 1 will have that problem. With all the music available to the DJs—music that you can easily add to you library with the press of a button—it’s tough to imagine them playing “Trap Queen” every hour, unless, you know, Fetty Wap gets a radio show and decides to play “Trap Queen” every hour.
Consume some original and exclusive content.
Original content is one of the tent poles Jay Z & Co. used to sell Tidal, the thought being that fans would pay good money to be able to access videos and songs (and concerts) that aren’t available anywhere else. Apple is making the same bet with Apple Music. Already we’ve seen Pharrell release the audio and visual for his new single, “Freedom,” via the service. It’s safe to bet that anyone who’s not down with Tidal will be supplying Apple Music with a steady stream of exclusive original content that will only be accessible to members. The Connect tab makes this even easier, as it will allow artists to maintain Tumblr-style pages where they can post new songs, videos, and photos.
Watch some music videos.
Yeah, yeah, we know Tidal already has music videos, as does YouTube. And now so does Apple Music. High-resolution ones, too. If you're giving Apple Music a spin, do like I did and search for some of your favorite artists, go to their pages, and see what videos they have available. Instead of discovering new music, I spent 25 or so minutes just watching old Michael Jackson and James Brown videos. It was great and easy, sort of like the rest of the app.