Apple Music: Five tech critics react

Costing Australians $11.99 a month and families (up to six) at $17.99, Apple Music offers 30 million tracks and playlists that are curated to cut straight to the heart of the joy of discovering new music.

It is similar to Spotify in subscription cost but Spotify offers 60 days’ free trial to Apple’s 90. Both services offer subscribers the opportunity to download songs to their devices and play them even when the device is offline.

RE/CODE:

Would I pay $10 a month — $120 a year — to use it? My answer is a tentative yes, with some caveats. Apple has built a handsome, robust app and service that goes well beyond just offering a huge catalog(ue) of music by providing many ways to discover and group music for a very wide range of tastes and moods.

But it’s also uncharacteristically complicated by Apple standards, with everything from a global terrestrial radio station to numerous suggested playlists for different purposes in different places. And the company offers very little guidance on how to navigate its many features. It will take time to learn it. And that’s not something you’re going to want to do if all you’re looking for is to lean back and listen.

TECH CRUNCH:

Two areas where the U.S. company has hit the right notes are international availability and pricing.

It’s always surprised me how slow the music streaming industry has been to move into emerging markets. It’s refreshing that Apple Music has gone global from day one. Beats 1 is available in 100 countries. That might sound obvious, but it is completely in contrast to Apple’s iTunes Radio service, which rolled out very slowly to North America, parts of Europe and Oceania but no further.

It isn’t just about global availability though, Apple has done right on price, too. Apple Music costs from $10 for a single account in the U.S., but the company has priced its service competitively across the world. In Thailand it is $5 per month, as is the case in Indonesia and elsewhere, but it is even lower in other parts of the world. The service costs around $3 in the Philippines and Russia, while in India it is available for just 120 INR (less than $2) per month.

USA TODAY:

Apple Music certainly looks visually appealing on the iPhone 6 Plus preloaded with the iOS update, especially the way Apple extracts the colors and themes from an album cover and displays it across the entire display, though it also took me awhile to get comfortable finding my way around–there's an awful lot packed into a section labeled New.

WALL STREET JOURNAL:

But before you tap OK to join Apple Music, heed the sage words of Aretha Franklin: You better think. Streaming means renting access to music rather than buying albums or MP3s. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet that might change what music you listen to. And like most buffets, what you’re eating may really not be worth the cost.

Apple Music both delighted and confused me. Its live Beats 1 radio station makes it easy to discover and add new music to your collection, but the app doesn’t seem to do enough to leverage your existing iTunes library. That should be Apple’s competitive advantage as it plays catch-up with pioneering streaming services like Spotify, Google Play Music and Rdio that have seen subscriptions surge among people passionate about music.

"Streaming services aren’t just jukeboxes. Apple’s strategy is to combine all-you-can-eat tunes with software that watches what you’re playing, and also when and where you’re playing it. On top of that, humans (DJs and musicians alike) recommend their own choices through radio stations like Beats 1, which you can add to your own collection with a tap. The end result should be playlists based on your tastes and moods, plus a little serendipity, though on its first day, Apple Music’s recommendations for me weren’t great."

FORBES:

Apple has yet to detail how Apple Music will work offline (presumably it will) and audio tracks max out at 256kbps verses the higher quality 320kbps of Spotify and Google Music (Apple uses AAC’s excellent compression, but Spotify and Google use the equally powerful Ogg Vorbis standard – both of which are far ahead of the ageing MP3)… As such Apple Music isn’t quite the revolutionary knock-out blow many predicted, but it’s a compelling start and, with Apple’s marketing potential behind it, could well become the most high profile streaming music service around. Compared to other streaming services, there’s simply a huge amount of stuff to browse.