Back and Forth Between Spotify and Apple Music

[beingbenjamin]

What a tumultuous three weeks this has been since Apple Music debuted. I've posted a few times here about my disastrous introduction to Apple Music. My one sentence recap: when I turned on iCloud Music Library on my Mac at home, all the metadata of my purchased music was irrevocably altered. After spending some time with Apple Engineering, I restored my library to a pre-12.2 state and then when 12.2.1 came out, they provided a tool to clear out the bad data on iCloud.

Now I've been using Spotify for some years but there are a couple HUGE issues for me. First, integration with purchased music and streaming music is sketchy at best. You can't click on an artist and shuffle all their songs, for example, if you have some purchased and some streaming. You have to create a playlist. Well, keeping your purchased music synced in Spotify is a nightmare all it's own. I make a playlist of my songs that it can't match to it's library and keep it downloaded for offline play as a workaround. Then there's CarPlay. It's horrid and downright dangerous to use. (See my post in the CarPlay forum if interested.) After extensive time with a tech rep, I was told the only thing to do right now is start playing from the app before plugging in. Kind of annoying.

Four times during all this, I've recreated my albums list in Apple Music from Spotify, and let me tell you, that takes a few hours to do. This most recent time, I was working on it and I started seeing some new issues. A few of my albums were split up for some reason, while others were duplicated. I started to clean it up manually. But at that point, I'd had enough. I was willing to give Apple Music a fair shake, but in the end, it just wasn't worth working through the problems.

So I went back to Spotify and started a bit of housekeeping since I had decided to stick with it. When suddenly.... BAM. My entire Local Files library just goes blank. It reads my 2500 songs, but the window is black and blank. Further, my phone won't show up under Devices to sync (which doesn't bode well for that offline "My Library" playlist I have). I tried uninstalling and reloading the app on my Mac and phone. Nothing would make it come back. Go back to support, and in the end, all he said was that they "are working hard on it". Well thanks.

Guess that seals the deal for me. Apple Music it is. Which actually (and oddly) makes me kind of sad because I really liked Spotify. But the two biggest priorities are integration of music and functionality of apps. And Spotify ain't got either. I just can't shake off a bit of reluctance because even as a big an Apple fanboy I am like Rene is (I tease), we all know their efforts in services fall behind their hardware abilities. And the initial trouble has made me gun-shy. And I say that as an iCloud user since the days of .Mac. If Spotify can get their fixes in before the 90 trial is up, I'll stick with what I've got. Otherwise, Apple gets another $10/month from me.

 

[Just_Me_D]

Thanks for sharing...

 

[Tartarus]

I just don't recognize anything you're telling us here.. Can be maybe because I'm on a Windows 7 desktop.. The minor glitches I have experienced weren't and still aren't worth a call to the support desk

 

[Flow39]

I haven't had any issues with Apple Music, other than iCloud Music Library not working on launch day, which is to be expected. Other than that, it has been flawless. I jumped from Spotify and am now using Apple Music. The fact that my purchased music integrates seamlessly with my downloaded and streamed music makes it just that much better and is the biggest reason I'm sticking with Apple Music.

 

[beingbenjamin]

The fact that my purchased music integrates seamlessly with my downloaded and streamed music makes it just that much better and is the biggest reason I'm sticking with Apple Music.

That's exactly what I'm hoping for!

 

[crankerchick]

I e been using Apple music everyday since it launched on iPhone and most days since launch through iTunes on my home and work MacBook Pro laptops. I haven't had my original library demolished like some folks have, but I have run into many bugs and "features" during my use. I've found the experience on the phone to be the best of the platform choices (iPhone, iPad, iTunes on windows, iTunes on Mac). It seems the service is most optimized at this point for the phones. I've had the least problems on the phone, although coincidentally the phone is where I had the biggest problem in that at one point the app crashed and no longer showed my cloud library at all. I had to toggle it off and back on to show my library again, only for it to then not recognize all the music I had saved for offline use (still on device taking up space). I had to connect it and sync with iTunes (no idea why this works since it doesn't actually sync any music when you use iCloud library) to get the app to see the downloaded music. Aside from that, though, it has for the most part worked as designed save for crashes here and there. I also occasionally experience the blank screen when I use the banner from the "more" (3 dots on now playing screen) to launch the album page for the currently playing song. I've had it refuse to add the proper song to a playlist from my own library. It would add a completely different song. Went to iTunes on the Mac and added the song and it worked properly.

The iPad is unusable to add songs to the library by searching for an artist and then trying to click from there to an album to choose a song. I experienced countless times of complete non-response to screen taps or just lag and eventual crashes that i eventually give up. It seems to be artist related. Some artists are fine, others repeatedly and predictivablyhave the issue. This is on an Air 2.

In iTunes I have cases where I add a song to the library and it just doesn't do it and doesn't offer feedback that it won't do it. Sometimes I don't have the option to add a song to my library at all, even though the song isn't in my library already. My metadata changes are sometimes ignored or changed back to original entries, even for my own music that has either been matched or uploaded.

Many of the frustrations aren't deal breakers and I do think just like with iTunes Match that most of the behind the scenes issues will be addressed in time. The software issues (crashes, etc) will be fixed in time.

The "features" are where I worry Apple will be slow to catch up. I won't hold my breath for things like being able to add a song to a playlist without adding to the library. I don't hold my breath for them bringing back the ability to customize what is in the bottom tabs like before, where a person could choose if radio or connect or playlists or whatever showed at the bottom of the app on the phone and let the other less used items fall into the "more" overflow menu like before. I don't hold my breath for better syncing of play counts to happen instantaneously instead of every 12 hours once a song is played to completion.

I do think you are making the right choice though. I'm coming from Google Play Access for the purpose of integration of all my music and so I can use the Music app since third party apps get punted from memory. It's annoying when I get in my car in the morning and have to launch google music again. Many times if hasn't been punted, it has trouble resuming so I still have to take my phone out of my pocket and hit play again (it's stuck trying to resume the song so I just have to choose the song to start playing again). With the music app, ideally all music is one place and will always play (since the music app is what will start playing music if no other app is still in memory). I'm still not there yet, since of course right now the Music app seems to wipe the playing queue after a while, presumably when it gets punted from memory. With iTunes Match, it would often start a song from the beginning on resume after a while, but it would still remember the play queue. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore since Apple Music. It will completely forget the queue and so when I get in my car, it starts playing my entire library on shuffle.

Sent from my iPhone 6 Plus using Tapatalk

 

[John Yester]

I am sticking with Spotify.

 

[miket222]

I was able to change the bottom tab for Connect to Playlists. Go into Settings, General, Restrictions, and turn off Connect. It will take the Connect icon away and change it to Playlist.... works much better for my use.....

 

[beingbenjamin]

I am sticking with Spotify.

Reasons?

 

[BreakingKayfabe]

I've already turned off Apple Music. It really feels like the music app is in beta and I couldn't stand it anymore. Adding stuff to certain playlists and they don't add, the very messy layout, and so many songs still greyed out because they're still not available. Having access to only my library feels much more useful to me.

 

[John Yester]

Reasons?

Just didn't seem all there. Spottily I have so many custom playlists, that i would have to start over IMO.

 

[Flow39]

Just didn't seem all there. Spottily I have so many custom playlists, that i would have to start over IMO.

If a developer were to make an app that moved playlists from Spotify to Apple Music, I bet a lot more people would switch. I know a lot of people in the same situation as you are.

 

[beingbenjamin]

Even after all my trouble, I spent a lot of time doing just that. A LOT of time. But thankfully, I don't have to re-create them all from Spotify, since there is better integration of purchased and streaming. I don't have to make artist playlists in order to shuffle them. I can just tell Siri "shuffle artist so-and-so". But in Spotify, it won't shuffle like that without a playlist, if you have a combo of Local Files and streaming tracks. (And although you can tell Siri to shuffle, Apple really does need to add a shuffle button to the artist page.)

 

[John Yester]

If a developer were to make an app that moved playlists from Spotify to Apple Music, I bet a lot more people would switch. I know a lot of people in the same situation as you are.

There already is some 3rd party sites who access your Spotify info and transfer it to iTunes locally on PC/Mac. But it sucks. It only puts songs in library. Not the true playlist....

 

[Tartarus]

There already is some 3rd party sites who access your Spotify info and transfer it to iTunes locally on PC/Mac. But it sucks. It only puts songs in library. Not the true playlist....

That's easily resolved. You have to select all existing songs in iTunes and edit info. Go to the Groupings bar and enter a random text there. After adding songs from Spotify to iTunes with said 3rd party apps, just choose the ones without the grouping tag and add them to a playlist you can name the same as in Spotify

 

[Tartarus]

On the side note, there could be songs in Spotify which where already in iTunes. If that's the case, you'll have to add them manually, which can be a pain in the (self censored)

 

[crankerchick]

Even after all my trouble, I spent a lot of time doing just that. A LOT of time. But thankfully, I don't have to re-create them all from Spotify, since there is better integration of purchased and streaming. I don't have to make artist playlists in order to shuffle them. I can just tell Siri "shuffle artist so-and-so". But in Spotify, it won't shuffle like that without a playlist, if you have a combo of Local Files and streaming tracks. (And although you can tell Siri to shuffle, Apple really does need to add a shuffle button to the artist page.)

So I found that they do have a shuffle option on the artist page if the artist has 2 or fewer albums. If they 3 or more, the tracks are collapsed and the shuffle option is missing. I can't imagine this is done on purpose. Has to be an oversight in the coding when rendering the screen to not show the tracks. They forgot the shuffle button.


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[phreddyl]

That's easily resolved. You have to select all existing songs in iTunes and edit info. Go to the Groupings bar and enter a random text there. After adding songs from Spotify to iTunes with said 3rd party apps, just choose the ones without the grouping tag and add them to a playlist you can name the same as in Spotify

Sounds very time consuming tho. I wish there was an app that just did it without all the extra steps.


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[Gruffalo26]

I think i will be sticking with Spotify.

Although i have several playlists on Spotify i did attempt to add the exact same songs on Apple Music and found that they are not available. The same with the albums, on Spotify you can listen to all 40 tracks on an album but when you search the same on AM you can only listen to 3 out of the 40+ songs as the others are not yet available. Spotify just seems to have a lot more new tracks where as AM has a lot more back catalogue.

The one thing i do like with Apple music is that i can flick through my playlists on my Apple Watch but that doesnt warrant me making the switch as im sure Spotify will have an apple watch app sooner rather than later.

Until this is updated i am happy to part with my money for Spotify.