Limitations of Apple Music
And how I work around them
After boycotting Spotify to protest its founder’s investment in an AI drone company, I switched to Apple Music as part of the Apple One Premier plan. The switch itself was easy with a pretty automatic migration of Spotify playlists and a good fit into our new streaming strategy. However I’ve run into a few frustrations. Here’s a rundown of what I miss from Spotify, the workarounds I’ve found, and some open questions for fellow music streaming fans.
Limited Device Support
One thing I appreciated about Spotify was its nearly universal support across both Apple and non-Apple devices.
For the most part being limited to Apple devices isn’t a problem, as most of my personal technology is Apple. I have an iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air, an AppleTV connected to our Samsung TV in our living room, and a Toyota with Apple CarPlay. Apple Music works fine most of the time.
However, I also appreciated that Spotify runs well on non-Apple devices, too. For example, in my home office, I have an old Vizio TV, and a friend gave me a Chromecast for free. I used to stream Spotify on that device. I also appreciated the ability to use Spotify with in-room Chromecast at hotels, including Hyatt. (I stayed at the Hyatt Place San Francisco when I went for my visit to UCSF as described in Episode 008 of my podcast.) By default, Apple Music works only with Apple’s streaming protocol, AirPlay, which is much less common.
There is a workaround, of course, as Apple Music has a Progressive Web App for Google Chrome that also supports Chromecast. I did a little demo video using Google Chrome on my Macbook Air. It’s on my YouTube channel if you’re interested in how this works.
Do you have better ways to workaround the device limitations of Apple Music?
Poor Autoplay Selections
Spotify’s Autoplay feels spot-on for discovering new music of the same variety, even after a playlist ends. Apple Music’s version hasn’t impressed me as much. (Of all the streaming platforms, I think I like Pandora’s ability to select similar music the best, even if it’s more limited.)
I have been playing with a workaround, which is to use the ChatGPT integration with Apple Music to develop longer playlists. If you recall the writeup I did on the project to recover Marsha’s old vinyl, I decided to extend some of the hits from that collection into a 2-hour playlist. Here was the prompt:
Create an Apple Music playlist for me. 2 hours of 12” single extended dance mixes. Some of my favorites are Erasure’s “Chains of Love” Fetter Dub Mix, Electronic’s “Get the Message” DNA Sin Mix, Information Society’s “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)” Club Mix, and Noel’s “(Silent Warning)” 12-inch Club Mix. Call this one “AI Club Mix”.
Here was the result:
I’ve also included a link to this generated mix on Apple Music: AI Club Mix
I liked the selections, and I even learned of a couple of new cover bands of 80s music:
New Life Generation who covered Depeche Mode
Parallox who covered New Order “Touched by the Hand of God”
I’ll keep playing with the AI here to see if this is worth it, but I felt that using ChatGPT was an extra step and just a workaround for Apple Music not having an AutoPlay feature that I liked.
Do you have other suggestions to keep playing non-stop music on Apple Music?
Terrible Looking Playlist Art
Spotify automatically generates playlist art based on representative bands in the list. Apple, on the other hand, just generates a shaded text box for every playlist I import from Spotify, which is both uninspiring and hard to scan visually.
My workaround was to downloaded an app called Denim, which made it easier for me to customize the playlist art so that I could identify the playlists more easily.
Again, customizing the art myself was fine, but it still required a bunch of work on my side.
Was all of this worth it?
After a bit of experimentation, I have found ways to make Apple Music work for me, but I am not thrilled. On the positive side, I do like Apple Music because it enables me to play both my ripped music and my cloud music. And I do like the cost savings of the Apple One Premier plan. However, I am frustrated that I felt motivated to do other kinds of research (and work!) to work around Apple Music’s limitations..
I’m curious what you think. Have you joined the Spotify boycott, or did you also switch to another streaming service?