
Free, three-month trial of Apple Music now available - knowbody
http://www.apple.com/music/
======
huehehue
Surpised at how unusable the site is.  The background video,
parallax/scrolljacking, and dancing iPhones are really making my laptop choke. 

It also seems like they're relying on the fact that people already know what
the service does, as the copy isn't terribly informative either (at least at
first glance).  I hope the end product is worth it though. 

~~~
james33
What browser?  I'm using Chrome on a 2011 MBP and it all of the animations and
scrolling are perfectly smooth. 

~~~
dopamean
I'm not the guy you replied to but I'm on a newly bought MBP with Chrome and
the website is laggy as hell. 

~~~
afro88
Yeah 2014 MBP here and it's a horrible laggy experience on Safari.  This is on
El Capitan beta though. 

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donut2d
On OS X, clicking the "Start listening now >" link opens up iTunes and you get
a dialog saying that iTunes 12.2 is required for Apple Music.  Clicking the
"Upgrade" button brings you to Apple's download iTunes web page which only has
12.1.X available. 

Guess 12.2 will come out later today.  Updating to OS X 10.10.4 did not come
with it. 

~~~
plg
so Q: do you guys/gals think this is intentional?  Or did Apple encounter a
last minute hiccup with iTunes 12.2?  Could be that they intentionally want to
load up on iOS subscribers first... who knows why (maybe network bandwidth is
more predictable than on desktop?).  Guesses? 

~~~
pille
I've had this problem for years, and I think it's because I often switch my
apple account between countries.  The update notifications and the updates
themselves come through on two different channels, which are usually out of
sync. 

1\. One app will think my account is "in" the U.S., sends me to the App Store
for an update.  2\. App Store checks and sees that, oh, nope, this is a German
account, but maybe try back in few days. 

------
bepotts
It's a music streaming service that integrates downloaded songs into my iTunes
library.  That's all I needed to move away from Spotify.  It'll be very
difficult for Spotify to compete. 

All the other features are nice add-ons. 

~~~
infinitone
Yes... because everyone uses the terrible piece of software that is iTunes. 
Even me as an iPhone user, I won't be switching anytime soon- Spotify has a
sense of community and music discovery. 

~~~
ghshephard
As someone who hate(d/s) iTunes, The new Apple Music app is pretty sweet. 
Though I'm still trying to figure out what the difference is between "New" and
"For You." 

~~~
7Z7
New is new tunes (or new to the service, presumably), For You is things picked
for you from your loved genres. 

~~~
ghshephard
Yup - I eventually figured it out.  Mostly because I really enjoyed almost
everything in "For You", and it seemed oddly aligned with the musicians I was
following, and was a small set, whereas "New" is a vast collection of
tracks/playlists/music.  New is really poorly named - 99% of the stuff there
isn't new at all - some of it from the 70s/80s.  I don't know what better name
could have been used that wouldn't have been confused with the selection
curated specifically for me. 

Overall - _loving_ Apple Music, I'm 90% likely to subscribe for $120/year,
coming from someone who spends about $20-$30 a year on a few select tracks and
the rare album. 

~~~
7Z7
Sorry for the late reply, but as far as I can figure "New" isn't about the
tracks' newness, it's about you looking for "New" music to assign to "My
Music". 

"My Music" is for things you own or already access. " For you" is for new
things Apple thinks you might like based on your preferences. " New" is for
completely new things to add to your collection. 

------
cmiles74
It's pretty sad that they took Beats, which ran in the browser, and have
somehow turned it into yet another piece of functionality bloating up the
nearly intolerable iTunes.  Well done Apple, well done! 

~~~
eridius
I haven't had a chance to try this out yet (because iTunes 12.2 isn't
available yet), but honestly, I would never even dream of using a service that
required me to keep a browser tab open.  Meanwhile, iTunes is open 24x7 on my
computer, and is playing music for a good chunk of that time. 

~~~
jamesmcq24
If iTunes ran on linux that would be great.  No iTunes on linux, no Apple music
for me. 

~~~
eridius
Fair point.  I think Apple believes, probably with good justification, that
there aren't enough consumers on Linux to be worth maintaining a version of
iTunes for it. 

And FWIW, a quick DDG search shows that people use WINE to run iTunes on Linux
(though these results are several years old).  So if you really want to try out
Apple Music, it seems you can do so.  But I wouldn't blame you for not wanting
to go to that effort. 

------
LargeCompanies
As a heavy Siri user in and out of the car I'm very impressed with the success
rate of asking Siri to play x artist and song and her doing so 90 percent of
the time. 

I was a Spotify user, but the ability to bring up an artist and or any song
via my voice makes for safer driving and I think it's pretty cool! 

------
ghshephard
I'm confused what the difference is between "For You" and "New" \- are they
both just customized channels for me?  Why are there two?  I wonder if everyone
gets the same "New" \- I clicked on a ton of Pop Songs, Artists - and under
New Music, one of the first recommendations was the explicit version of
"Dreams Worth more than Money". 

I'm guessing it's because I clicked on Drake. 

Ballsy recommendation, regardless.  Also, pretty good. 

But - overall, the App's pretty fantastic.  Every Song I've looked for by every
artist is there.  Great Integration with my (extensive) iTunes library.  And
_Free_ for three months.  I'm going to cost Apple a fortune (Well, $0.002 * a
heckuva lot of plays) over the next three months. 

But I'm still confused as to why there is a "New" and a "For You" tab. 

[Edit - Seriously, _everything_ seems to be here.  All of Taylor's stuff of
course, but AC/DC, you name it.  I'm guessing there is very little that Spotify
has that Apple Music doesn't. ] 

[Edit 2 - Holy Crap offlining is easy.  You just "Add to my Music, Make Offline
- boom.  Downloaded onto your iPhone.  I've just dumped a bunch of live albums. 
I wonder what the limit is...]

~~~
daigoba66
I think that for the most part Apple has the same streaming contracts as
Spotify/Rdio/Pandora/etc. 

There are still a number of albums/songs/artists missing that simply aren't
available anywhere (Tool and The Great Gatsby soundtrack are two I always
check). 

But it seems that I should be able to mix tracks I own with streamed tracks,
which is going to be the killer feature for me personally. 

Having used Rdio for many years now, and Zune Pass previously, comparing
apples-to-apples (no pun intended) with will be interesting. 

------
uncletaco
The latest version of iTunes (12.2) doesn't seem to be available for 64-bit
Windows.  So no Apple Music for me. 

~~~
thesumofall
Also not on OS X yet.  Probably later this day. 

~~~
uncletaco
Glad to know I'm not the only one. 

~~~
thesumofall
Interestingly the "Try Now" opens iTunes which in turn asks you to upgrade
iTunes which in turn leads you to a site asking you to download the old 12.1 -
Bit of a hick-up there. 

~~~
balls187
hiccup. 

:)

~~~
sulam
hiccup! 

------
evanriley
Well, contrary to the other comments in this thread.  So far I've been enjoying
it for about the hour I've had it on my phone.  I enjoy the UI more than
Spotify/Rdio (Although I only used Rdio for about a week.)  It has artist I
enjoy from Pharrell and Eminem to DJ Okawari and Major Lazer (although I guess
they aren't as obscure anymore.)  So far listening to Zane Lowe on their Radio
channel has been entertaining.  Do I think I'll leave my playlist from Spotify
to come to Apple Music?  Possibly, I have 3 months to figure that out, and
currently I can't say I'm disappointed in the service? 

Although I will say I'm hoping apple does more with the whole Music Connect
and actually following artist that Spotify and other services currently don't,
I'm going to hear about the new album regardless of whether or not I follow
them on your service, update me with interviews they do, or if a concert is in
my area, rather than just updating me whenever their album eventually hits
your servers. 

------
spiralpolitik
Surprisingly good start for Beats One, although the NYC host is a bit too
saccharine for my tastes. 

The question becomes can they maintain the quality?  They definitely need to
hire add more diverse DJs and expand the number of countries they broadcast
from if they want to be the radio station of the world. 

------
lcswi
How easy or hard is it to rip the music without transcoding?  It's legal for me
to do so. 

~~~
RealGeek
AirPlay Recorder works quite well, but it's slow because it plays and records
the full songs. 

------
gdubs
First thoughts are that I like the music presented to me post-launch.  Will see
over time how that holds up, but so far so good. 

On-boarding was typically Apple.  No frills, minimal signup screen.  This is
followed by the Beats-style bubble genre/artists selector.  That screen was
fun, but I was a little confused by the search icon in the nav-bar, which I
thought would allow me to add bubbles, but seemed to just span out into
something else entirely.  I backed-out of it and just continued with the few
bubbles I had selected. 

Like I said, music quality and selection seems solid so far.  The app feels
rather big -- this may prove to be a plus or a minus, but at the moment leads
me to want to explore it a bit, which is seems like a plus for a content app. 

There are some new UI patterns I haven't seen in an Apple app before,
particularly the minimize icon when you're in the song player -- which is a
modal rather than push on the navigation controller. 

~~~
seivan
The first time I saw that pattern was in Youtube where you could drag down the
video to the corner and it would transition dow. 

I am just guessing that they're using a custom transition on a modal
presentation and using UIPercentDrivenInteractiveTransition to let you drag it
up or down. 

------
sidcool
I am surprised, they have also released for Android. 

~~~
Nicholas_C
Apple is releasing an app for Android?  I don't think that's ever happened
before and I'm a bit skeptical. 

~~~
sidcool
[http://www.apple.com/music/](http://www.apple.com/music/) and search for
'Android'

------
wahsd
I find it rather peculiar that they highlighted iPod when there hasn't been
any kind of update to any of the iPods in over three years and no substantial
update in more than that. 

------
jbrooksuk
I am, but at the same time, I'm also not surprised by Zane Lowe and the team's
last minute checks that are still going on right now (Beats1). 

~~~
thesumofall
I think that was planned... with the kick off 1h after the release of 8.4

~~~
tachion
It does sound like it, especially after the announcement that was just made,
the guy was aware he's online for the whole time.  That, or he's really good at
impro, either way, nice feeling to have a man behind these playlists. 

~~~
jbrooksuk
Yeah, Zane Lowe is really good at impro stuff - he really does know music. 

------
nefitty
Sure, I'll abandon Spotify and all my created playlists, saved artists,
favorited tracks and albums and all the playlists people have shared with me
there from the past four years to try an almost exact similar service from you
Apple.  Not.  The only thing they might remotely have going that's interesting
is Beats Radio but you don't need a sub for that anyway...

------
thesumofall
Looks pretty nice and choose some decent music for me after having gone though
the sign-up process.  It's gonna be difficult for Spotify

------
georgecalm
FYI: Apple Music requires iTunes 12.2 and its download page currently says:
"iTunes 12.2 is coming soon." 

------
yellowapple
Pleasantly surprised that they're planning on releasing an Android client for
this. 

------
untilHellbanned
An interesting part is the sharing links at the bottom.  I get that music is
super social, I've just never seen Apple show other companies on their site. 
FB, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat.  Not surprisingly...no Goog. 

~~~
robinbrandt
Another thing I wouldn't have expected: The link "Complete Schedule" from
inside the Music app's Beats 1 page links to
[http://applemusic.tumblr.com/](http://applemusic.tumblr.com/). 

------
kylnew
I'm sold on Apple products relatively easily, but not so much on any of their
services short of the Apple Care plans. 

------
Sephiroth87
Man, the music app is still broken as f...

------
seivan
Some i18n strings are missing, but apart from that, pretty good.  Added my
songs and I'm ready for a run. 

------
akie
Nice site.  And even though I understand why they stuffed it into iTunes, I
disapprove nonetheless. 

------
ljk
did anyone else notice the title of this hn thread change? 

~~~
Grue3
It's funny because usually the title gets changed from informative to generic
(like product name), but here instead of "Apple - Music" it becomes almost an
ad copy. 

~~~
eridius
The thread title normally changes to reflect the title of the article. 

In this case, the window title of the page is "Apple - Music", but the page
headline, which can reasonably be considered the title of this "article", is
"Free, three-month trial of Apple Music now available." 

So it seems to me that this change is perfectly in line with HN's normal
policies. 

------
tvvocold
Android

Coming

this fall. 

------
pimlottc
So the only people who can currently listen to Apple Music are iOS users
running 8.4?  Is that correct?  That can't be many people. 

~~~
ctdonath
The number of iOS users is very high, and the adoption rate for the latest iOS
version is very high (yes, it's available, I just updated).  That will be very
many people quite soon. 

~~~
pimlottc
I know the upgrade rate on iOS is quite high, and I'm sure driving updates is
part of the reason they required it, but within one hour?  You'd have to be
pretty on-the-ball to be ready to listen when the broadcast first started. 

And I can't be the only one who is wary of running an OS update first thing in
the morning on workday.  Granted, Apple have been very good about their
updates, I haven't had one screw up yet, but the last thing I want to worry
about is possibly having a dead phone all day. 

~~~
Bud
Apple Music isn't a "broadcast".  Yes, a live radio station is part of the
service, but a very small part, really. 

Also, you should perhaps wait to criticize Apple's iOS release timing until,
you know, they actually have a problem.  To be fair. 

~~~
ghshephard
" very small part, really." 

Zane Lowe is a very important part of this launch, and the Radio is a major
component of Apple Music.  See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zane_Lowe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zane_Lowe)

------
carbocation
Has anyone enabled "iCloud Music Library"?  I'm curious to try it, because it's
required in order to save Apple Music songs for offline listening, but I'm
hesitant because there seems to be insufficient description of the options to
"merge" or "replace" the songs on my current device.