[NewsPoster]

It's that time again -- Apple has hit us all with a flood of releases, and leading the pack are Apple Music and Beats 1. Join Managing Editor Mike, MacNN Editor Charles, and writer William for a discussion of all the hits, misses, and we discuss if we should keep the wheel in the sky turning for what's on tap, or if Apple's new offering is little more than a rainbow in the dark.

Let's start with the rollout. Technically, good, bad, or ugly?

Mike: This one is a mixed bag. When the update for iOS went live, the servers were really slammed. It took about three hours, but that ultimately cleared up.

Charles: I'm still waiting for my iPad to update to iOS 8.4, and it took hours for my iPhone to get the download. Maybe I've just been lucky to this point, but I usually have little trouble getting updates, and the OS X 10.10.4 and the plethora of other smaller updates came down just fine. As one of our commenters noted, there was some stuff that came out today that could have waited a day to free up the bandwidth for the big updates that all had to come out together.

Mike: Apple totally, totally botched the iTunes deployment. Staffers here started getting bizarre upgrade requests about three hours before the actual availability, and even right now at about 8PM ET, an older version of iTunes on a different computer that I haven't upgraded yet is complaining when I hit "check for update" inside the player itself. I get that OS X isn't a giant priority given the ludicrous amount of iOS users, but still.

Charles: Yes, it was rather odd when one tried to open iTunes on Mac to access the (former) iTunes Radio or Beats 1, only to be told that one must upgrade to iTunes 12.2 -- which didn't appear until the early evening. Then there were the issues many subscribers were having with iTunes Match not working properly as it was being migrated into the Apple Music system. In short, the first day of an iOS upgrade is a bad day to try and upgrade, though I understand the extra excitement surrounding Apple Music.

William: Of course, you lot have Macs. I'm still waiting for mine to come back from Apple's 3TB drive replacement program. So for me, Apple Music is iOS only, and that worked just fine.

Mike: This process needed to happen over a few days. Maybe iTunes for Mac a week ago, with a "coming soon" graphic paved over some sections, compatible iLife apps at the end of last week, and iOS 8.4 today. Everyone we spoke to had some hiccup or other. Maybe it would have been perfect with a staggered launch, but it wasn't truly terrible -- we've seen worse.

Charles: In short, trying to get everything today was like trying to leave a fireworks display after the finale -- a total traffic meltdown that ruins the excitement that's been cultivated. A staggered release by time zone or something might be a better idea -- remember, we had 100 countries (98 of whom never had iTunes Radio) all trying to check out the new service simultaneously worldwide. Apple was begging for trouble with that idea.

William: You forget how iTunes Radio fizzled out. I'm in the UK, and it never came here, but I used to listen to it quite a lot via my US iTunes account. I know people disliked it, but I came to enjoy tuning in, and I did discover music new to me along the way. So there is a part of me that thinks RIP iTunes Radio -- though the last time I looked, I could still get it on my Apple TV.

Beats 1, on its first day, has played a fair variety of new and up-and-coming artists, but has it generally -- to various degrees of success -- lived up to its "just great music" mantra? Can there be a single station most iTunes/Music app listeners will check in on regularly -- or even periodically?

Charles: I say yes. Apart from some weird issues in the early hours, the mix was generally entertaining, and I think Apple has tapped into something college radio stations figured out a long time ago -- people, particularly this generation raised on iPods and Shuffles, like a certain degree of eclecticism and discovery, particularly when its curated by real people. I thought the mix was largely very good, and the bits I thought were poor were short and moved back into decent-to-good stuff quickly. Overall, thought its not quite aimed at my demographic, I enjoyed it as a refreshing change from the ridiculously boring, corporate-programmed, endless-ads "mainstream" FM radio landscape.

Mike:Nope -- but that's okay. There's a reason why there's an "up and down the dial," as famously promised by WKRP. No one station, no matter how hard they try, will appeal to everybody. Beats 1 is a marketing stunt, a sole radio station screaming out in the dark, that Apple can point to and say how hip they are.

William: I also say no, but more because it's just not for me. Zane Lowe made enough of an impact on BBC Radio 1 here in the UK that I became aware of him, but no more so than if the walls between that and BBC Radio 4 were quite thin one day. In my mind, Beats 1 is a worldwide Radio 1, and just isn't for me -- but that doesn't mean there isn't a giant and passionate audience waiting for it, if it's done right.

Charles: Yes, it reminds me of Radio 1 as well. Beats 1 is aimed at a youthful market, but I could see a wider range of listeners than Mike can. Since the heyday of college radio 20 years ago, there's been a couple of generations that appreciate that looser, hand-curated format, and I think those people -- who are admittedly not the majority of radio listeners -- will rally to Beats 1 right alongside the hipsters. It's early days, but off to a good start.

William: I do definitely like that it has these three presenters, and they present to us. There's a type of radio called the "zoo" format, where we listeners tune in to hear a bunch of presenters telling each other how great they are. Radio is a profoundly personal medium; it is one-to-one, even when millions of people are listening. So I think Apple's pitched Beats 1 the right way: live and personal.

Mike: Beats 1 I'm not convinced is as live as Apple says it is, unless Billy Zane had a head injury. In the first hour, there was a lot of bumper repetition, and location callout duplication. This resolved itself later, but there's some room for improvement here, I think. I'll keep listening, if I can deal with the musical choices being as neurotic as they are.

Charles: I know Mr. Lowe and company have a vision of championing under-played, undiscovered, or the latest artists, but personally (as a radio DJ myself) I think if I was going to make one suggestion to Beats 1 it would be to throw a few more curveballs. They're playing it kind of safe in these early days, as they should -- but I hope as time goes by, they'll put more of their stamp on it by branching out a little, genre-wise.

One of the songs I heard today was Lauryn Hill covering Nina Simone; oh yes, please, more like that -- and more "deep cuts" from the known and unknown, even the occasional under-appreciated tune from (gasp!) a few years back once in a great while. I'm hopeful that celebrity DJs like Elton John will bring a wider perspective, audience-age-wise, to the mission of exposing people to more -- pardon the pun -- under-sung music. You have a stage, and a lot of people listening: take full advantage.

William: I was similarly impressed by the deep cuts in random Apple Music plays. I have become preposterously addicted to saying "Computer, play 1980s music" -- no, wait, that's how you do it on the USS Enterprise. I have become addicted to saying "hey, Siri, play some Cyndi Lauper" and when I did that, Apple Music chose a reasonably obscure track of hers to kick off with. No Girls Just Want to Have Fun, which would've been the obvious choice, but instead the tremendously moving Sally's Pigeons from a much later album. Loved it.

Mike: Music is grander than Apple, and no matter how many petabytes of storage and licensing deals they hammer out, there will always be so much more. Now, all Apple has to do is restore the iTunes Radio station database, and I'll be fine. They may or may not.

Chas: There are plenty of options for genre-based stations -- in Canada, I counted 37 of them as part of Beats 1, and then there's the ability to make your own -- or several of your own. All my previously-created iTunes Radio "stations" are still there, from a Classic Jazz one to a station I made that's centered around Stephen Merritt (the Magnetic Fields), Devo, and Sparks. Between the genre stations, Beats 1, and the custom stations I made, I have little reason or time to listen to anything else. Sorry Spotify, and good riddance Pandora!

William: I really did not spot that my old iTunes Radio stations are still there. Excellent. I'm surprised how pleased I am, but I'm very pleased. There were just some stations that seemed to always play great music, and I thought that was gone.

Connect, when you first visit it, goes ahead and has you "following" artists based on what's in your existing iTunes Library (you can unfollow them easily if you want). Will this -- along with artist participation and routine music/news sharing -- allow Connect to succeed where Ping failed?

William: So that's why I started with 103 artists? I got confused by this, because when I first went in to Connect, it told me this 103 figure and it showed me three artists -- none of whom where in my 103. I realize now they were further recommendations, but their prominence -- plus how hard I found it to look up a particular artist I really am following -- just made me back right out of Connect.

Mike: It's a really, really good start, but Ping died because nobody cared, not even Apple. It was cared for so little, we didn't even cover it in our Feature Thief series! To be fair, Ping came and went in 2010, before significant adoption of social media, and well before Apple's dominance of mobile really took place, so ...

Apple never put major work into Ping, and then social media exploded, largely making the functionality redundant. This time around, I think they've got something, but it's going to depend on how well Cupertino manages the program.

William: We forgot Ping? I'm strangely okay with that.

Charles: Ha, we did! Fitting, somehow. I think that if artists will get active on Connect, and salt posts with lots of news and tidbits of forthcoming music, it will be a great interaction service. This is the perfect place to post rough demos, live clips, lyrics, backstage moments, and other things fans appreciate. I don't want to know what Taylor Swift had for lunch, but I'd be interested in concert plans, backstage photos, tour diaries, or posts about songwriting from the artists I do follow. I'm looking forward to what else Connect will offer as it grows, and I agree with you that it comes down to how welcome artists feel, and how much ongoing effort Apple puts into it.

Simply put: is the combination of the dramatically longer free trial, the bargain "family" subscription, the album and artist exclusive and the vast iTunes Music Library in Apple Music going to spell trouble for Spotify, Pandora, and the other streaming services?

Mike: Simply put, yes. There will be holdouts. There will be those who lament Apple's control. Those people will never shift. Nor will the obscenely devoted, with carefully-curated and pruned musical tastes on the competing services.

Charles: I'm in total agreement, and of course the other services may adapt and find their own way of making their services more robust -- Spotify has already started moving in that direction. Apple's hiring of Dre and Iovine (and Reznor, who is unusually low-profile in all this) is starting to look more savvy by the day.

Mike: There will also be artists who stay on one service or another -- and like I said about radio before, that's fine. There's a place for everybody, and Apple won't much care if it doesn't capture everybody from all the other services.

William: Your saying all this makes me think of Facebook, though: that service wants to be the only service for anything in the world ever, and I'd rather artists had their own websites, literally their own domains. If I were an artist, I'd be wary of committing everything to Connect, but then I'd also be concerned about being outside it. Splitting your effort across your own site and Connect feels like a non-commital, half-hearted route, and I'm very curious to see what happens.

Is the new iTunes and Music App focusing too much on the youngest end of the music-buying demographic? Should there be a bit more that caters to those whose tastes veer off the mainstream of what's currently popular or bubbling under?

Charles: I do my best to keep up with what's current and particularly what I think is really good that's coming out these days -- of which there is actually quite a lot, though you won't find much of that on the radio (or even Beats 1 -- yet). Having lived a full life, though, I think the current narrow focus on the hot and new and fresh may be a little too narrow -- but I expect that will improve with time.

William: Before I even clicked on Beats 1, I was using Apple Music to listen to the BBC World Service. That skews a lot older -- dammit! -- and it's speech, but there it was, right in the middle of Apple Music. I think as a whole, the service is younger than I am in every sense, but it has these mines of broader, older appeal.

Mike: Well, that's the glory of the Internet, right? Even the most nerdy, most obscure tastes have destinations. The unpopular kids have a seat at this table just the same, even if Apple isn't cramming it down everybody's throat.

William: I think you just called me unpopular.

Charles: I kind of like the new focus on getting people to listen to full albums -- there's been some neglect of that over the years, and much of the blame for that can be laid at Apple's doorstep. I still prefer "shuffle mode," if you get my meaning, but a really well-put-together album as a full work has a lot of charms too, and there are many classics that should be experienced that way. One of the things I have always loved about iTunes is that nothing ever need go out of print, so its nice to see a wider range of albums and songs in the human-curated "For You" sections than you might get otherwise.

William: This is perhaps the number 1 reason I like Apple Music today: I've been using Spotify's free service while thinking about subscribing, and after more than a year of not quite deciding, I've come to dislike the constant shuffle. I like being able to specify a track, but I also very much like being able to listen to a whole album in sequence. You can do this when you pay Spotify, and why shouldn't you pay? I just haven't so far, and now if I do pay for anything, it's going to be Apple Music. Though I've noticed my tastes have changed substantially in the move from iTunes to streaming; I went from albums-in-sequence to playlists to shuffle and now more recently back to albums.

There are just some that work so much better heard in one go. Suzanne Vega's Songs in Red and Gray album, for instance, is not 13 or 14 tracks to me, it's one piece. Hang on, excuse me just a second: "hey, Siri, play Suzanne Vega's Songs in Red and Gray." It is unbelievable that this works, unbelievable how much I adore being able to do just spontaneously call out for music I want to hear.

Charles: Like a Roman emperor, you!

Mike: It doesn't take long to find orchestral movie soundtracks, funky electronica, nerd hop, or what have you. With some massaging, Apple's got it -- but like digging in a record store, there's a little work to be done if you don't want Taylor Swift's works.

Charles: I kind of wouldn't want it any other way. Part of the fun is finding a band and thinking for a while that you're one of the very few -- or the only one -- that understands truly how brilliant they are.

William: You can see that in our coverage of Apple Music, you can see it in everyone's: there isn't a writer covering this new service who hasn't thought this is a chance to big up Dar Williams, Suzanne Vega, Cyndi Lauper and more. When Microsoft releases the final version of Office, nobody's going to be slipping in screen grabs of their favourite fonts. Music is special, and sometimes, just sometimes, it really does feel as if Apple is the company that gets that.

[trevj]

Two questions about Apple Music:

1) Does Apple Music — once signed up for — provide online access to ALL music in my iTunes library or only music I've purchased from the iTunes Store?

2) Anybody else still unable to use Apple Music Radio (in Canada)? Nothing happens whatsoever when I click Play on a Radio station.

[trevj]

Two questions about Apple Music:

1) Does Apple Music — once signed up for — provide online access to ALL music in my iTunes library or only music I've purchased from the iTunes Store?

2) Anybody else still unable to use Apple Music Radio (in Canada)? Nothing happens whatsoever when I click Play on a Radio station.

[Mike Wuerthele]

Originally Posted by trevj 

Two questions about Apple Music:

1) Does Apple Music — once signed up for — provide online access to ALL music in my iTunes library or only music I've purchased from the iTunes Store?

2) Anybody else still unable to use Apple Music Radio (in Canada)? Nothing happens whatsoever when I click Play on a Radio station.

1) All music. Stuff that Apple recognizes as part of what they own is NOT uploaded, and you have access to the Apple master. Tracks unique to you are uploaded.

2) I'm not in Canada. Charles?

In the US, I clicked on Internet Radio in the upper left, and all my normal streaming options were still there

[trevj]

I'm referring to "Radio" at the top of the Music page, right between "New" and "Connect. If I hover over any Featured Station, I'm presented with the play icon, but clicking on it does nothing. Is this "Radio" part of the subscriber package for Apple Music?
I can still access the old Internet Radio as you described Mike.
Thanks for clarifying question #1.

[Charles Martin]

It's the second of July now, but no the Canadian stations don't appear to be "online" yet, trevj.