Many questions regarding Apple Music...

[Tartarus]

Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

My main concern now is that I can't setup a playlist on my desktop computer so that I can play it on my iPhone. I assume this is also a bug since that would make the most sense and is the way other subscription services work like Spotify.

Have you enabled iCloud Music Library on your desktop? Go to Edit > Preferences > General and enable iCloud Music Library.

Once you do that, all your playlists in iTunes on the desktop will be visible on your iDevice and vice versa. Every change you make, will also be visible on either one of them

I have to say that as I explore both, I'm finding Spotify much easier to use than Apple Music. Let's hope that Apple get's it's Apple Music act together before the end of September, else I'll have to pass on the service.

Apple has its act together, it's that people are unwilling to spend time and energy to get to know it.

I had Apple Music completely figured out in 2 days. All by myself because nobody was already familiar with it yet.

I don't want to sound condescending, but it's easy to blame others than oneself

 

[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Once you do that, all your playlists in iTunes on the desktop will be visible on your iDevice and vice versa. Every change you make, will also be visible on either one of them

Yep, I have that option selected and I just checked by adding a new song (on my desktop iTunes) to an existing playlist. It did not show up in my iPhone.

Apple has its act together, it's that people are unwilling to spend time and energy to get to know it.

I had Apple Music completely figured out in 2 days. All by myself because nobody was already familiar with it yet.

I don't want to sound condescending, but it's easy to blame others than oneself

I'm glad to hear that Apple Music is working perfectly for you. Are you using iOS 9 Beta or iOS 8.4?

I've been working with it since the day after it was released. I have yet to get it to work the way I would expect it to. Making changes to playlists should work both directions from desktop to phone and from phone to desktop. The only direction that seems to be working for myself is phone to desktop.

 

[Tartarus]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Yep, I have that option selected and I just checked by adding a new song (on my desktop iTunes) to an existing playlist. It did not show up in my iPhone.

I've had that happen to me too. I had a workaround for that. Every time i made a change on my desktop it didn't sync to my phone, so I made an empty playlist on my phone and deleted it, to trigger syncing. Yesterday something weird happened to my phone and I had to enable 'iCloud Music Library' again on my phone. After doing so I noticed changes on my desktop were synced right away to my phone, as it should.

Try disabling 'iCloud Music Library' on your phone and enable it back, that should do the trick for you too, I hope.

I'm glad to hear that Apple Music is working perfectly for you. Are you using iOS 9 Beta or iOS 8.4?

I'm on iOS 9 beta 4

I've been working with it since the day after it was released. I have yet to get it to work the way I would expect it to. Making changes to playlists should work both directions from desktop to phone and from phone to desktop. The only direction that seems to be working for myself is phone to desktop.

I, too, have been working with it since day one. I'm so enthusiastic about it, that I decided to pay for streaming music for the very first time since it exists.

I've tried Spotify, Deezer and Google Music, but none of them were as I wished they should have been. Apple Music does just what I ever expected from it.

I can't say I don't encounter problems.

I have an album of Beyonc? and there are two songs in it which are uploaded rather than matched as Apple Music in iTunes on my desktop. I've tried everything and decided to keep it that way, till I have the time and patience to fix it.

There are over 2000 songs on my library which are marked as uploaded. I've made a separate playlist for them. I'm checking on my desktop in the Apple Music catalog (not the iTunes Store catalog) to see if they are available anyway on the Dutch Apple Music catalog. If they are, I'm checking the song title, artist name, genre and track and disc number to have them marked as Apple Music.

 

[crankerchick]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Your experience with playlists isn't typical. That's not how it's "supposed" to work. As long as you have iCloud Music Library enabled, anything you do on any device should appear on all devices. Please note that everything doesn't happen instantaneously. Play history (and maybe other fields, not sure) is not updated instantaneously from iOS devices to the cloud library (to appear in iTunes). So if you play a song on your iDevice, it won't show as played right away in iTunes. It takes at least 12 hours along with some other conditions to be met for the play history to update from the iDevice to the iCloud Library. However, changes to the makeup of the library such as adding/removing songs to playlists or the library should be near instant. I've seen quirkiness on this topic, such as particular songs not getting added to the library or playlist at all, but never what you are describing where nothing is updated after adding a song to a playlist from iTunes.

I'm not quite clear from your response, but do you have iCloud Library enabled in iTunes?

It sounds like everything is hosed up for you and it really might make sense to scrap it all and start fresh. I'm not trying to dissuade you from using Spotify, just trying to give you a chance to experience Apple Music the way it's supposed to work, good and bad, so you can get make a fair comparison. What you are describing isn't the typical experience.

If you want to try and get it working, I might suggest starting completely from fresh. I would turn off iCloud Library and Apple Music on the iPhone. Restart the iPhone. Plug it in to iTunes and make sure you have removed all songs that were stored on the iPhone if you can. You might even consider factory restoring your iPhone and restoring from an iCloud backup (so you can wipe the drive and reclaim all space). I know that doesn't sound fun so I'm just throwing it out but I would probably skip this step the first time and see if I could get it working without a restore. Next, make sure you have a backup of your library file in iTunes and then follow the steps in the iMore tutorials to reset iCloud Library. Turn iCloud library back on in iTunes and let it rebuild your iCloud library from your local library. Then turn back on iCloud Library on the iPhone.

I had over 16,000 songs in my library before Apple Music. I was using iTunes Match and had a few songs that I knew of that weren't matched correctly, but no other real issues that I knew of. When I turned on Apple Music first from my phone, the enabling of iCloud Library worked seamlessly. When I got home and did it on iTunes I had several tracks show "waiting" and were grayed out. I ended up having to ultimately turn off iCloud Library, sign out of my Apple ID, sign back in and turn on iCloud Library again to get those Apple Music tracks to show up. I've experienced several bugs and "features" that should be called bugs in my almost daily use of the service since it came out, but what you are describing is just not typical. Don't think that what you are experiencing is the way it is supposed to work.

Last, I do agree that Spotify, Google Music, and Rdio all work a lot better than Apple Music right now. I do think, though, that a lot of what is plaguing Apple Music will get ironed out soon. It seems a great number of issues can be fixed on the server side. Others will require iOS updates and will take a little longer. The integration that Apple Music offers is what is keeping me from going back to Google Music (for now). I think that Apple Music will be the better choice for most people in time. Changing music services isn't easy, so I'm holding out through the trial and iOS 9 before I port everything to another service completely.

 

[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Try disabling 'iCloud Music Library' on your phone and enable it back, that should do the trick for you too, I hope.

Tried that already. No luck there.

I'm on iOS 9 beta 4

Well, there is the reason you are having more success than others. Not all of us have access to iOS 9. Oh sure, we can sign-up for the developer program and then download and install the beta. However, some of us can't afford to potentially kill our phone's just to play with Apple latest OS.

I've tried Spotify, Deezer and Google Music, but none of them were as I wished they should have been.

I tried Google Music too. My only problem with them was that I had to upload "all" my music to them. I have over 35,000 tracks now. I can't afford to upload that much data. Amazon's Cloud music service works similar to Apple's in that if they have the song you are attempting to upload, they will just add it to your library and not make you upload it. I have all my music, all 35,000 tracks, up there. My problem with Amazon is their player software is very poorly written. Their web interface is leaps and bounds better than their desktop client or iPhone app.

Spotify isn't perfect, but it is working as expected and unless Apple is planning on releasing iOS 9 before the free trial is over, Spotify is probably going to be my subscription service of choice.

Problems like the one you mentioned about music being uploaded when it probably shouldn't is a problem that was around and is probably still around in Apple's iTunes Match service. I don't expect that to drastically change anytime soon. I do expect that over time, the match service will get better and better.

 

[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Your experience with playlists isn't typical. That's not how it's "supposed" to work.
...
I'm not quite clear from your response, but do you have iCloud Library enabled in iTunes?

Yep, I have it enabled.

It sounds like everything is hosed up for you and it really might make sense to scrap it all and start fresh. I'm not trying to dissuade you from using Spotify, just trying to give you a chance to experience Apple Music the way it's supposed to work, good and bad, so you can get make a fair comparison. What you are describing isn't the typical experience.

Actually, I have scrapped everything and started fresh. Twice. It's how I was able to get a playlist on my desktop to finally appear on my iPhone.

I'm not going to go as far as restoring my phone to factory settings, that's a bit extreme to me and since my phone is my "Home's phone", I don't like the idea of being "inaccessible" even for just half an hour. Plus, Apple can't expect the millions of users they have to be doing this when they first turn on Apple Music.

What attracted me to the idea of Apple's Music service was the "seemless" interaction with music on my phone already, music I have in my iCloud library and new music I want to add via Apple Music. When iOS 9 comes out and I'm finally able to tell iOS that I don't want music to stream if the phone is connected to cellular data as opposed to WiFi, then I would feel comfortable about using the service as described. However, right now, I don't have that option and I can't afford to have data overage charges like I have in the past.

I'm not giving up on Apple Music. However, I don't expect any updates to the "client" or iPhone software until iOS 9 is released. I can't imagine Apple is going to push another iOS 8 update before 9 is released.

 

[crankerchick]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

To disable the app from using data, go to Settings > ITunes & App Store and turn off the cellular option. There's also a similar toggle in settings > cellular for the music. The first one seems like it will affect streaming and downloads. The second one might block cellular completely so even browsing Apple music. Not sure.

I don't think Apple expects millions of people to start fresh. Millions of people also aren't having your issues either.

You can also call or get web support from Apple about this.


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[crankerchick]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

There's rumors of 8.4.1 but who really knows.


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[crankerchick]

Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Also there are plenty of things to be fixed that will be server side fixes as opposed to iOS updates. Forums will help you stay up to date on updates if you turn Apple music off completely.


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[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

To disable the app from using data, go to Settings > ITunes & App Store and turn off the cellular option. There's also a similar toggle in settings > cellular for the music. The first one seems like it will affect streaming and downloads. The second one might block cellular completely so even browsing Apple music. Not sure.

The iTunes & App Store "Use Cellular Data" option is for purchasing apps/music/books/updates. Not for streaming music in Apple Music.

Millions of people also aren't having your issues either.

You don't know that, just like I don't know if millions of people are having problems with it. I would hope that 99% are not having problems. However, when I see people like Jim Dalrymple are having confusion, I have to assume that there are quite a few that are having issues.

You can also call or get web support from Apple about this.

I posted, pretty much, a copy of the questions I put here on Apple's support forums. No response yet.

There's rumors of 8.4.1 but who really knows.

It would be nice if they make bug fixes in Apple Music with that possible update. Time will tell...

 

[crankerchick]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

The iTunes & App Store "Use Cellular Data" option is for purchasing apps/music/books/updates. Not for streaming music in Apple Music.



You don't know that, just like I don't know if millions of people are having problems with it. I would hope that 99% are not having problems. However, when I see people like Jim Dalrymple are having confusion, I have to assume that there are quite a few that are having issues.



I posted, pretty much, a copy of the questions I put here on Apple's support forums. No response yet.



It would be nice if they make bug fixes in Apple Music with that possible update. Time will tell...

But even your experience wasn't Jim's experience. Jim had all the commonly seen complaints with the bonus of his music getting deleted when he turned Apple music off. Your playlist syncing experience isn't among the common complaints against the service. You're right, I don't know how many people are experiencing your problem but I know it's not the common complaint seen in the forums (I hang out in the Apple Community forums too).

The Apple community forums are not by Apple. They are just forums of people like you and me here on iMore helping each other out. Apple tech support doesn't respond on those forums. For support from Apple you would need to contact Apple by calling or doing a web chat.

That toggle in the iTunes section includes iTunes Match and Apple music (it says so and I can tell you so from using it with iTunes Match before Apple music launched). Its just I don't if it includes actually streaming or just downloads. It's also a catch all so it means disabling it for all services (which is why I wouldn't turn it off). I can easily test if it includes streaming but I'm sure you've already tried. Have you tried the location in settings > cellular that I mentioned?


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[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

But even your experience wasn't Jim's experience. Jim had all the commonly seen complaints with the bonus of his music getting deleted when he turned Apple music off. Your playlist syncing experience isn't among the common complaints against the service. You're right, I don't know how many people are experiencing your problem but I know it's not the common complaint seen in the forums (I hang out in the Apple Community forums too).

I wasn't saying that there are millions of people experiencing my exact problem. I'm saying that there are a lot of people probably experiencing problems that don't post on these forums or even know about iMore or Apple's support forums.

The Apple community forums are not by Apple.

I'm well aware that Apple doesn't use it's "community" forums for tech support. I mentioned them because it's where I go before making any attempts at contacting Apple.

That toggle in the iTunes section includes iTunes Match and Apple music

Your right, it does say that. I missed that when I was looking at it earlier. However I have had that setting off for quite some time now. Maybe I need to toggle it on then off again for Apple Music to see that it's disabled and not attempt to access the internet when playing music if not on WiFi. I'll check into that...

Have you tried the location in settings > cellular that I mentioned?

Yep, I tried that as well. It's hard to say for sure that it is or is not accessing the music servers when they are off. The only indication I have seen is the spinning dots next to the WiFi signal strength in the upper left corner of the screen. I see those dots spinning on songs in playlists set to be played offline.

 

[crankerchick]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

I've seen a lot of questions related to Apple Music go unanswered on the community forums so I wouldn't hold my breath.

The only indicator I ever see as well is the dots next to the signal indicator. When I want to play only music saved for offline, I toggle it to show only saved music. I've never switched off my data to verify it's truly not streaming so I don't know if it's actually truly not streaming. I have no reason to believe it isn't, and my battery life certainly suggest that it's not.

What kind of feedback does Spotify give that it's playing local music? On Google Music there's no indicator either. When I last had Rdio I don't remember any indicator either. Whenever I was interested in not using data (usually because of poor service) or to preserve battery life, I set all of those different services to only show me offline music.

Is your complaint that it's hard to know what music is available offline, or that you don't know when it is streaming versus when it is playing local music?

 

[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

... I wouldn't hold my breath.

I'm not. I really don't expect an answer. I did help someone on their forums with a question about moving files that have been ripped to the iPhone when it's connected to the computer with iTunes.

I have no reason to believe it isn't, and my battery life certainly suggest that it's not.

Battery life is not the concern here. I listen to music on my phone mostly when I am away from my WiFi. I have been hit before with a very expensive data overage charge due to not realizing that I wasn't connected to my WiFi even though I was just outside my house.

I have switched Apple Music to only display saved music, but it's spotty when it comes to actually showing tracks that should be there. For example, I just did a search for a band, added a track from that band to My Music and also made it available offline. I canceled the search and saw the song being downloaded, but it didn't appear in the list of bands that are available for offline playback. It shows up in the "Songs" list, but not in the Artist or Albums list.

What kind of feedback does Spotify give that it's playing local music?

When you go into a Playlist, there is an on/off toggle called Available Offline. When you switch to on, the app downloads all the tracks in the list. There are indicators (little green down arrows) on the tracks and oddly, some tracks have that arrow and some don't. I'm not sure what it means (I need to do some research on that little green arrow). To be fair, I can't verify if it's playing from in my phone (other than it downloaded the tracks). When I ask it to play a song that I haven't downloaded, it plays without any indication that it downloaded it or is streaming it.

Is your complaint that it's hard to know what music is available offline, or that you don't know when it is streaming versus when it is playing local music?

Both I suppose. Only because I don't want to use cellular data when listening to music away from home. Seeing that network indicator spin when playing tracks makes me very nervous when it comes to playing music away from WiFi.

 

[crankerchick]

Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Yes I get that your biggest concern is data usage. I was just noting that when I'm playing songs that I have downloaded to my device, I believe they are truly not being streamed because my battery life is better. Streaming seems to burn about twice the battery on my iPhone 6 Plus as playing local music. Streaming in apple music (via wifi) seems to consume more battery than Google Music (in my completely non-scientific, purely anecdotal observations). My indicator that I'm playing local music, aside from trusting that it's only showing local music when I tell it to, is that my battery life is much better, as is to be expected.

It sounds like Spotify and Apple have the same type of indicator, with a little icon on the track indicating it's downloaded. Now that I think about it, Google Music does this too. The problem with the Music app right now is that the stupid indicator gets confused when you make a playlist or album (or entire artists' catalogue) available offline. It doesn't set the icon for the individual songs in that case.

I have strong confidence that will be fixed sooner rather than later. Seems like that's an iOS update versus server side update. Like I said before, this problem existed with iTunes Match and was resolved in a subsequent update soon enough. It's ridiculous that it's back now, but I'm sure it will be fixed.

None of the services truly have a streaming versus non-streaming indicator. The only way to know for sure is to kill data to the app (or go into airplane mode of course). Beyond that, you are just trusting that the app is streaming based on it indicating the song is available offline.

A work around is to use the make available offline for every song, but that's just stupid and time consuming to do.

As for a song not being available offline after you've made it so, I guess I've experienced that. I have experienced a song failing to download and not indicating such. Before iOS 8.4, every song had a down arrow next to it (or maybe a cloud, I can't remember) and when the song was available offline, the arrow (or cloud, I think it was definitely a cloud) went away. So if a song failed to download, you could see it was either stuck downloading, with some portion of the download circle not being full, or failed (the arrow would come back).

They will get that back. If there is an 8.4.1 update, I think it will be fixed there, and if not than I'd be surprised if it isn't fixed by the time iOS 9 comes. They fixed it "quickly" with iTunes Match. That is of course assuming it's not a server side fix. Seems like it shouldn't be a server side fix, but I don't really know.

 

[Tartarus]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Both I suppose. Only because I don't want to use cellular data when listening to music away from home. Seeing that network indicator spin when playing tracks makes me very nervous when it comes to playing music away from WiFi.

So, to make sure you don't use cellular data for music, there are 3 switches to be toggled off.
1? Settings > Cellular > Music
2? Settings > Music > Playback & Downloads
3? Settings > iTunes & App Stores > Music

It could be you're on 8.4 and don't have one of these toggles. Don't worry, just look for anything music and cellular data related in settings and toggle them of.

 

[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

I was just noting that when I'm playing songs that I have downloaded to my device,

Sorry, I didn't realize...

The problem with the Music app right now is that the stupid indicator gets confused when you make a playlist or album (or entire artists' catalogue) available offline. It doesn't set the icon for the individual songs in that case.

In my case, when I tell a playlist to download for offline playback, it doesn't appear to do even that. It puts the indicator in the playlist thumbnail, but the tracks don't get downloaded. I can tell this by the network indicator spinning for a second or two on "tracks" that don't have the gray phone iconlet.

(or go into airplane mode of course)

I didn't think about airplane mode for testing. I'll remember that for future tests. Beats turning WiFi off and watching the network indicator.

A work around is to use the make available offline for every song, but that's just stupid and time consuming to do.

That is not stupid, it's what I planned to do with my music. I don't want to download all my music from Amazon to get the music back on my computer. I want to use what ever streaming service I wind up with as my library. I'll download tracks that are not available and leave the rest to the service. I don't mind the fairly short amount of time it takes to download the tracks I want to listen to. I don't have a massive storage iPhone. Just a 16GB, so I only have a few Gig's available for music anyway.

 

[vesperdem]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

1� Settings > Cellular > Music
2� Settings > Music > Playback & Downloads
3� Settings > iTunes & App Stores > Music

That had better not be the final way to make sure music doesn't stream over cellular. That's just ridiculous that three separate locations have to be adjusted. A single central setting should be the only way to tell Apple Music to not stream over cellular data.

Also, you are right, I don't have #2. A lot of people don't have that since it's a iOS 9 Beta option.

---

So apparently, that network indicator is spinning for some other reason. I switched to Airplane mode and attempted to play songs that I thought were not downloaded in a playlist even though the list was set to offline mode. They played just fine. In fact, when in Airplane mode, Apple Music switches to showing only songs that are physically on the device. Gray iconlet or no, the tracks were available to play. I can't explain why the network activity indicator spins when not in Airplane mode.

Still, it's good to see that its working better than I thought. Now if they fix the issue with not updating the phone when making changes on a desktop and also adding some tracks from on the phone too. They might just have a contender.

 

[Tartarus]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Yeah, those three options aren't the way to make sure cellular isn't used. I pointed them only out to make sure you won't get to pay for overage.

The only option you'll have to disable is #2 on iOS 9. Till that time, #1 is the way to go.

#3 is for downloading purchased music in iTunes on your desktop automatically over cellular data to your iDevice.

 

[crankerchick]

Re: Many questions reguarding Apple Music...

Yeah, those three options aren't the way to make sure cellular isn't used. I pointed them only out to make sure you won't get to pay for overage.

The only option you'll have to disable is #2 on iOS 9. Till that time, #1 is the way to go.

#3 is for downloading purchased music in iTunes on your desktop automatically over cellular data to your iDevice.

I figured #1 is for streaming and #3 is for downloads. Thanks for confirming. The problem with #1 for me would be if I did care about data usage, I would only care for the streaming part, but not for just loading content from Apple Music. For example I want it to load artist pages when on cellular. I would want it to let me the see the New and For You tabs or check and see if a song I want to get later is available, I just wouldn't want it to allow me to actually stream or download the song. The option in the cellular section presumably doesn't let the app use data at all in the Music app, with no exceptions.


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