Is Apple Music Really Deleting Your Music? Doubtful.

Jason Tate May 5, 2016

Serenity Caldwell, writing for iMore, looks at what may have happened in regard to the blog post going around saying that Apple Music deleted a bunch of files off someone’s hard drive.

Whatever the case, Apple Music was never designed to delete Pinkstone’s source library, and it won’t delete yours. That’s simply not how the service works on your primary Mac. But if you’re not aware of how iCloud Music Library stores copies of tracks, you may delete your local copies to save space, thinking you can get them back — and get screwed as a result.

My guess is that there was a misunderstanding in how the system works, because the system is pretty stupidly confusing at times, and there is always the chance it was a bug. But there’s absolutely no way that deleting your music, without you expressly saying to do it, is “working as intended” as apparently the original author was told by tech support.

What I consider to be the killer feature of Apple Music, the combination of my local library with their streaming library, is also the feature that adds the most complexity to the service. While it does work, and I do use it, it’s far from perfect and definitely confusing. That’s on Apple to fix if they want you to trust your music library to their product. If they don’t have that trust then people will continue to use two apps: one for music they own and then Spotify for everything else.

Apple Music to Get Design Overhaul

Jason Tate May 4, 2016

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple Music will be getting a pretty big overhaul this year:

Following a management shakeup, the service’s new look is being overseen by content head Robert Kondrk and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. Design chief Jony Ive’s team also has provided input, along with Iovine and Eddy Cue, the senior vice president in charge of Internet services.

9to5Mac has more on what the new look may be, and it’s described as a more “black and white” interface:

The new user-interface ditches the current colorful and translucent look in favor of a simpler design that emphasizes black and white backgrounds and text. For instance, the user interface in the albums view will no longer change in appearance based on the color of a particular album’s art. While the new interface will eschew color in the user-interface, album artwork will become “huge” and a larger part of the interface in order to avoid a dull black and white look, according to people who have seen the updated Apple Music service.

There’s a small aside at the bottom saying that iTunes itself will get a minor update this year with a larger revamp expected next year. My argument has long been that iTunes needs to be separated into different apps. There’s just too much going on. I’m still using, and for the most part enjoying, Apple Music. The ability to combine my library with the Apple Music library remains the killer feature for me, but god damn when the bugs hit they are infuriating. I currently have two versions of “Thrice” in my library even though they’re named the same and I’ve checked all the sorting options and tried renaming them multiple times. I mean what the hell.

Inside Pandora’s Fight with Spotify and Apple Music

Jason Tate May 4, 2016

John Paul Titlow, writing for Fast Company, looks at Pandora and their attempt to fight back the big streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music:

By shifting toward on-demand subscriptions, Pandora is hoping to add a new, much deeper layer of data and understanding to its artificial brain. By creating artist-based stations and thumbing songs, listeners can teach Pandora a lot—but behaviors like saving albums and listening to them on repeat or adding individual songs to playlists are vastly more informative (as Spotify and Apple already know). Right now, if you’re obsessed with the new Rihanna album, Pandora has no idea. These are the types of blind spots the service needs to fill in, especially if it wants to target superfans with special perks.
Data is just as crucial when it comes to selling concert tickets.

I’m fascinated by the idea of big music data and how it can find the perfect next band or album for a listener. I think Pandora is smart to be moving into trying to tie their music service into other things like selling concert tickets. But, I’m bearish on the company as a whole. They’ve been relegated to what is basically a feature in other apps and there’s no reason to pay for something you already get in a good enough fashion somewhere else.