Apple Music

Had a long lunch with KathyG this week! Got the lowdown on all the office newbies. Good times.

I'm in the process of making the switch from Sirius Radio to Apple Music. Apple Music currently gives you a free three-month trial, which I've begun. So far, I really love it.

I've been paying $10 a month for music stations on Sirius. I listen to 3 stations, and the vast majority of the time, really only Hits1. I can only listen in the car, and I'm not driving as much as I used to since I work from home. Sirius is good radio, but the car play limitation is an issue and it's certainly not a solution for maintaining my own personal music collection and playlists.

Apple Music is also $10 a month. It provides a bunch of  'radio stations.' I like radio, because it's the best way to hear current music. There are also human- edited playlists. You can share your own playlists with friends on the service.

Building on the iTunes concept, your library includes your owned music (purchased from iTunes or another service, or uploaded from CDs), now alongside songs you've selected to add from Apple Music. Apple Music has had almost every song I've searched for so far. It's an enormous selection. You can choose to display whether or not a song is owned or from the service. It doesn't really matter, as long as you're paying for the service. If you stop, you'll lose access to those songs, but you don't care as long as you're paying.

I'm using the iCloud Music Library, which most people do. Basically, all your songs that have a match in Apple Music are noted and will just stream from the service when you play them. Music that doesn't have a match, like something you've created yourself or live performances you've downloaded here and there, will be uploaded to your iCloud Music Library for streaming playback on any of your devices. You can have 10,000 unmatched songs like that in your iCloud Music Library. There are some limitations on what files they will store for you, so be sure and read up on that if you have a bunch of that sort of thing. I only had one item it wouldn't store.

You'll still have one computer or drive where your purchased music will be saved. If you ever stop the service, you'll still want to have those songs. Before you canceled the service, you could always re-download the thousands of songs you purchased from iTunes over the years and the heaping buttloads of CD music you spent hours ripping to iTunes (if you're from a generation like mine, with lots of CDs), but you won't want to spend time doing that. When you stop Apple Music, you'll lose access to all songs in your library that you added from Apple Music, even the ones you downloaded to a device.

My summary (confirm these things before you jump in of course)-

• While a member of Apple Music, your personal library includes all the songs you own within iTunes, along with any songs you add from the Apple Music service (40 million currently available).
• Listen to your personal library/playlists, Apple Music's full library/playlists and Apple Music radio stations on any device with the iTunes or Apple Music app. You have the same songs/playlists/etc. everywhere. If you have any trouble with your music or playlists not matching across devices, make sure you have "iCloud Music Library" turned ON for all devices.
• You can still purchase music via iTunes, but as long as you're paying for Apple Music, I don't know why you would.
• You can download all the music you want, to have a physical copy on your device, though it makes more sense just to download the songs you want to have for a road trip or something, where you don't want to stream a ton of data.
• Streaming does use data on your phone. Keep an eye on the data usage, or download songs for local playback when you're away from wifi. You can turn off cellular data for Apple Music, if you want to.
• If you stop the service, you retain ownership of music you own, but of course you won't be able to access songs on the service, nor will you be able to play any songs you've downloaded from Apple Music to a device.
• Apple has a family sharing plan for up to six people for $15 a month. Each maintains his/her own music library and playlists, and gets his/her own personal music recommendations, etc. (Family Sharing allows sharing of all sorts of things, including photos, apps, calendar, etc.)