I used to think that Apple Music was an enormous treasure chest filled with amazing things that you could never really get out.
And I used to think that Spotify’s biggest advantage over Apple Music was not its free tier, but its user experience and playlists.
Not any more.
I’ve been testing the iOS 14 betas for a number of weeks now, and thanks to a penchant for long walks and daily workouts, I’ve probably spent close to 20 or 30 hours in the new Apple Music. Not to put too fine a point on it, iOS 14 Apple Music is a monumental upgrade: the kind of experience that I always hoped for when subscribing to a service that includes pretty much every song you could imagine. And also the kind of experience that Apple Music never was.
For me, it starts with being the ultimate DJ.
Listen to this story on the TechFirst podcast:
The problem with have about 70 million songs in a music platform is obvious. It’s the paradox of choice: everything is available, but what do you pick? So you search for a few things you know (and remember!) and you browse top charts in various genres, and ultimately you end up consuming just the very uttermost tippy-top of the stem of the cherry that is perched on top of the richest sundae cake you’ve ever seen.
In other words, you barely scratch the surface.
iOS 14’s Music app transports you throughout that universe of musical content. It opens the padlocks on the treasure chest and shovels out the gold.
Most of the time now, I’m on “John Koetsier’s station” on the radio tab, where Apple Music’s algorithm serves up songs I love. Many of them I know. Some were in my library or playlists. But many were not, and are either deeper cuts into albums from artists I like, or completely new options.
And the new options don’t suck.
(Yes, this is entirely subjective. And yes, that is exactly the point.)
Where the old Music app started with your Library, that incomprehensibly narrow slice of the world’s musical treasure that you happen to have come into contact with and saved to your lists, the new Music app on iOS 14 starts with Listen Now.
Just think about that difference: from a database or file cabinet … to an experience.
You can still access your Library, but it’s now the fourth tab, just before search. The Listen Now tab in the new Music app is essentially the “For You” tab in the old app, but better. Smarter.
The new app’s second tab is Browse, which is mostly about events, new music, and celebrity-hosted shows, plus the top charts.
Most of the time now, I find myself on the new middle tab, which is Radio. And Radio is exactly what you’d think it would be: radio-type shows. Except for my personal radio station, which is an astonishingly-good take on the kinds of music I’d like. I consume a pretty wide variety of music, from classical to hard rock to electronica to Christian contemporary to French pop to folk to funk and more, and the personalized radio station that Apple put together captures it very well indeed.
A new feature in iOS 14 Music that I also appreciate is Autoplay. You start playing a song, maybe that you’ve searched for just because you want to hear it. After the song’s finished, Apple Music will keep playing other, similar songs.
I have not been kind to Apple in terms of its artificial intelligence — autocorrect is still awful — and Apple hasn’t talked about how much AI is built into the new Apple Music.
But this is one area where Apple has hit a home run. And built in a lot of intelligence.
