Apple Music has really changed the way that I listen to music since it launched in June 2015. Like most people I used to listen to all the music I had in my library. iTunes Radio came out, and I hardly ever used it.

But then streaming music gained momentum.

Thanks to the likes of Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, and others streaming music came in and completely changed the way that I listen to music. No longer to a refer to the things in my library. It’s actually pretty rare that I select something from my library, since I have so much access to everything…

I was a Beats Music listener before Apple Music took them over. I was excited about the idea that it would recommend music for me to listen too. Apple Music has made that even more exciting since it would sync up with my library and recommend music that I would like at any time of the day.

Unfortunately, those recommendations are very spotty at best.

I know you need to train your music, and I do. I’m constantly liking and hating songs (the work flow for that is terrible, right now. More on that later) and still I get stuff that doesn’t interest me.

But I still continue to pay and use Apple Music because I like what it can do for me.

Inspired by Bradley Chambers piece from 9to5Mac, here are some fixes I’d like Apple to make to Apple Music.

Better Recommendations

I’m going to start this section off with a complaint about the currently way to like or hate a song. While iOS 12 did add a shortcut (3D press on the Now Playing bar to get to the extra options like add to playlist, or like a song), it is too difficult to actually like a song.

From what I understand about the system, Apple uses play counts and ratings to help bolster what it recommends to you. To have something so important buried deep down is awful. I’m guessing they want you to use Siri more to say that you like a song or not, but when you invoke Siri on anything but the HomePod, the music stops. It breaks the flow of what you are listening too. I just feel like that is such bad design.

Plus hiding the like button so far away from the Now Playing section does not help new users find and rate songs.

Apple, if this is a part of the recommendations system, it needs to be more apparent.

With that said, the majority of my Apple Music listening these days stems from the curated playlist that Apple offers during the week, My Favorites Mix, My New Music, My Chill Music, and recently added My Friends Mix. These playlist get updated every week with “new” music.

Generally, I enjoy these playlist since these are the ones that I listen to the most. The Favorites, New, and Chill music are built around what you listen to for the week. Sometimes there playlist are great. Most the time for me though, the songs don’t really match what I like. It’s a real hit or miss (mostly miss) thing too. Some times these playlists will be great. So great that I copy them so that I can listen to them again after the week is up.

The New Music playlist should help introduce you to artist that you might like and then follow on, but unless a song really stands out to me on that playlist, it hardly ever gets added to my collection. Now I have found some really great musicians that I’m now a fan of (like the Revivalist) that I wouldn’t have found otherwise. But for all the music that it has put in front of me, the amount that I’ve saved is very low.

I think this boils down to the recommendations software. I’m pretty sure if I was really into Rap and Hip-Hop the system might be better. It’s not that I don’t like that kind of music, in fact I try to listen to some of it, and even add to my library, but I never get recommended anything in that genre after that. After listening to a playlist like A-List Hip-Hop or A-List Pop, liking and added songs to my library, I still get the same type of music that I always get sent to my playlists.

It would be nice to get some stuff outside of my comfort zone, but not so much that it scares me away.

I just really want better recommendations in these auto updated playlist.

The rest of the recommendations are more miss than hit usually. The human built playlist might be amazing, but besides the giant album art that gets displayed, the system doesn’t try to get me excited about anything else. This goes for the album recommendations it gives me as well. I’d like to be excited about these recommendations, but Apple Music doesn’t really sell me on them at all. Maybe telling me why it recommended a playlist would help.

The album recommendations do this, but I still haven’t really branched out of my comfort zone, or knowledge base there too much. When I have listened to a recommended album, I don’t feel like I’ve been rewarded with amazing new music.

I think the music recommendations need to get better all the way around. It’s a good start, and I know that things will always improve. Until then, I’m just going to keep liking and trying.

New Music

I don’t know why the New Music page is buried so far down in menus on Apple Music. I feel like this should be one of the biggest drives of the service: to provide fans with new music.

Now, they did add a new section for upcoming albums to be released. If you add one of these to your library now, you will get a notification when the album actually releases and has been added to your library. I love this, but I feel like this should tie in to what you already have in your system. Like Bradly said in his piece, it’s crazy that Apple Music knows all this about our music taste, but doesn’t alert us to new music from the artist we already listen to.

Apple Music already know who we listen to, and while there’s not always a stream of new music from artist, you should have enough in your library to make a Coming Soon section in your For Your tab. This could be a stop-gap for now so that you could look through the soon-to-be-released albums of artist that you know and like (and there could be a section for artist you might like) that you could add to your library.

As it is now, all the coming soon albums are stuck together so you have to go searching.

I feel like this, combined with notifications that your artist has added something new could actually drive you towards the new music instead of having to hunt for it.

The way Apple Music currently is, you do have a row on your For You page at the very bottom that lists new music from artist you listen to, but it seems to update days after albums come out.

Apple Music should be proactive about getting the artist I like into my ears. Alerts, new sections, whatever it is, needs to be improved so make that happen.

Handoff or a Central Up Next

Another thing I’d love is Handoff between devices. There’s been so many times when I was listening to something in my car and then got home and wanted to listen to it there. This hasn’t been as much as a problem since I got a HomePod since you can send your music to the speaker.

Often though, I’ll start listening on one device, but then I move to another one. It would be great if I could hand off the control to the device I moved to, instead of hanging on to the one I started it on. Usually when this happens, I wait for the next song to play, stop on my iPhone and then resume on my MacBook.

This works until I leave the MacBook and forget what song I’m on.

I would propose a Handoff feature, or even a universal Up Next. This way my playlist is staying up to date. A combination of the two would be even better. Most of the music I listen to these days is internet based, so why not make the Up Next internet based as well? It would help with the flow of music as you move between devices.

Matching

Apple’s matching algorithm has improved since it first launched iTunes match, and when they rolled it into Apple Music, it was a no-brainer.

When you turned on Apple Music for the first time it would scan the music in your library. If it could match the song in your library to one in iTunes or the Apple Music catalog it would make connect your copy to the one in the catalog.that way you wouldn’t have to upload or download a bad problem.

If it couldn’t find a copy of your song, it would upload it to the cloud for you to be able to download again or access from anywhere.

The problem was that it wouldn’t match all your songs. Over half of my library was uploaded when I first joined instead of matched. This becomes a problem when it comes to liking, play counts, and playlist.

There’s also no easy way to get your music rescanned. I spent weeks this summer using my iPhone and MacBook to download, delete, and rescan my music to get things matched up.

I’d love an easy way go get songs rescanned or even for your library to rescan once a month or something so that those songs can be matched.

Wrap up

These are my biggest request for Apple Music. I’m not a developer so I’m not really sure how difficult these things would be to implement, but I’m sure Apple could figure out some of these.

There are other wishes too. I loved Bradly’s pinned music idea and I’d really like the ability to make a shared playlist as well. These are just the ones that I wanted the most.

What are your wishes for Apple Music? Do you agree with my wishes, or do you see issues with them? Leave a message in the comments.

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