Stream

The world of music is changing. People are slowly shifting from owning their music—buying CDs or downloads—to renting it. With Apple Music and other streaming services, you can now access tens of millions of tracks for $10 a month. While not every artist or label’s music can be streamed, you can access most of what you want to hear.

But is this the best way to spend your music budget? Some people—myself included—still buy CDs and still want to own music and listen on our own terms. In this chapter, I look at Apple Music and explain how it works, plus how you can find great music and help Apple Music recommend new music for you to discover.

Stream Topics

What Is Apple Music?

How Do I Turn On Apple Music?

How Do I Personalize For You?

How Can I Discover Music on Apple Music?

How Do I Love Music in Apple Music?

How Do I Tell Apple Music That I Don’t Like Something?

How Do I Stream from Apple Music?

How Do I Add Music from Apple Music to My Library?

How Do I Download Music for Offline Listening?

How Do I Delete Apple Music from My Library?

How Do I Listen to Apple Music Radio?

What about Internet Radio?

How Do I Use Connect?

What Is Apple Music?

Apple Music is Apple’s streaming music service, which launched in 2015. An Apple Music subscription combines several features:

• Music streaming: You can stream more than 40 million tracks from the Apple Music Library. Much of the music that’s for sale in the iTunes Store is in this library, but not all. You can stream tracks on demand, such as a song or album, or you can stream playlists curated by Apple Music editors and contributors. See How Do I Stream from Apple Music?.
• Cloud storage: You can store up to 100,000 tracks in your iCloud Music Library. If you enable iCloud Music Library, the music in your iTunes library is “matched” to the Apple Music Library, a pro­cess that involves iTunes checking each track to see whether it matches a track that’s already in the Apple Music Library. If a track doesn’t match, it’s uploaded. These tracks show in your iCloud Music Library along with tracks you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store and those you’ve downloaded from Apple Music. See What Is iCloud Music Library?
• For You music recommendations: With 40 million tracks to choose from, you can have that kid-in-a-candy-store feeling, where you want to stream everything but don’t know where to start. Apple Music’s For You feature can help you choose what to listen to. See How Do I Personalize For You?.
• Radio: Beats 1 is the marquee streaming radio station on Apple Music, but there are a few dozen others. You can also create an Apple Music Radio station from any song, artist, or genre. See How Do I Listen to Apple Music Radio?.
• Connect: This is a sort of social network for music. If that sounds familiar, you may remember Ping, Apple’s earlier, failed attempt at connecting musicians and fans. Connect lets artists post music, videos, photos, and more. See How Do I Use Connect?.

An individual subscription costs $9.99 per month, and a family plan, available to groups using Apple’s Family Sharing, costs $14.99 per month for up to six people. (Prices are different outside of the United States.)

If you don’t subscribe, you can access a subset of Apple Music features.

How Do I Turn On Apple Music?

To turn on Apple Music, follow these steps:

1. Choose Music from the Media Picker, and then click the For You button in the navigation bar.
2. Click Get 3 Months Free (or whatever option Apple happens to be offering), and follow the prompts.
3. A lot of the benefit of Apple Music kicks in if you turn on iCloud Music Library. To learn about that, read What Is iCloud Music Library?, What Should I Know before I Turn On iCloud Music Library?, and How Do I Turn On iCloud Music Library?.

Once you’ve turned on Apple Music, set up the For You recommendation feature, which I discuss next.

How Do I Personalize For You?

You have your favorites, and you may want to start by listening to them right away. Or you may want to think back to music from years past and check out some of the tunes you grew up with. An advantage of being able to access more than 40 million tracks is the ability to listen to almost anything you want. But you can also discover new artists or composers with Apple Music’s For You recommendation service.

When you first subscribe to Apple Music, you’re asked to choose a few genres so Apple Music can recommend music to you (Figure 26). If you don’t see this screen automatically, choose Music from the Media Picker and then For You in the navigation bar. To remove a genre you dislike, hover over it and click its x. To emphasize a genre, click it once, and it becomes reddish pink. When you finish, click Next to continue.

These genres are broad, and your musical tastes may not match them entirely, but on the next screen, you can remove and highlight artists so Apple Music gets a better picture of what you want to hear. Click the More Artists button to tweak your settings until the screen is full of artists that you like enough to at least click once. When you’re finished, the For You screen displays its initial recommendations.

To perform the initial genre and artist setup again, choose Account > Choose Artists For You.

How Can I Discover Music on Apple Music?

Apple Music’s For You recommendation feature displays recommendations based on the genres and artists you selected when you joined Apple Music (discussed just previously), music you’ve purchased from the iTunes Store, and music you listen to. The recommendations are refined as you “love” or “dislike” songs (explained in the next two topics).

The first thing you see is a section containing My New Music Mix and My Favorites Mix. (Figure 27)

My New Music Mix is a playlist of recommended new releases, in the genres you have selected, and by artists you like. At first, the recommendations may be all over the map; over time, as you listen to music, and as you love and dislike music, they may get better. I don’t find the My New Music Mix to be very pertinent, because my musical tastes are eclectic, and it seems to use a scattershot approach to proposing new music.

The My Favorites Mix, however, is excellent. It looks at the music I’ve loved and the music I play a lot, and it offers me about two hours of tunes that I really like. It’s a bit limited in genres, but the more you love your favorite music, the more diverse it becomes.

Each of these mixes updates once a week.

If you scroll down in the For You section, you’ll see the following (at the time of this writing; Apple may change this layout in the future):

• Recently Played: The albums and playlists you’ve listened to recently, so you can go back and play them again.
• The day’s playlists: Each day, For You offers a new selection of six playlists. They typically focus on a genre, artist, or decade.
• The day’s albums: For You offers sixteen albums, grouped by theme. For example, at the time of this writing, I see a group of four albums “Since you’re into Bob Dylan,” and another “Some electronic for today.” Your selection will likely be different.
• Artist Spotlight Playlists: This section features six playlists focused on an artist’s music or a subsection of it (for example, Miles Davis: Live), or that artist’s influences.
• New Releases: This section displays new albums you might want to listen to. At the time of this writing, I see the new Bob Weir album, the new Rolling Stones in Mono box set, and Bruce Springsteen’s Chapter and Verse compilation; all music I do want to hear. But I also see some dreck that I’d never, ever listen to. So the quality here is variable. I have discovered some artists and albums I wasn’t familiar with in this section.

To play an album or playlist, hover over any block to display a Play button. Click it.

To learn more about an album or playlist, click its name. In the case of a playlist, you see all the songs, with a bit of editorial introduction and links to artists whose music it contains. To play the album or playlist, hover over the artwork and click the Play button. To play any individual track, double-click it.

How Do I Love Music in Apple Music?

The key to refining your Apple Music recommendations is “loving” tracks you like. Each time you find a track, album, or playlist you like, click the More icon and choose Love to help Apple Music refine its recommendations.

In most views, you can hover over a track and click the Love button, located to the left of the track name. Or you can display the Love column in Songs view or other list views.

You can also select any song or album and choose Song > Love.

To rate something on an iOS device, tap the Now Playing controller bar. Tap the More icon, and then tap the Love button.

How Do I Tell Apple Music That I Don’t Like Something?

Apple Music recommends a lot of music, and you may not like it all; to refine your recommendations, Loves are good, but so are Dislikes. (Don’t worry, Apple Music won’t be insulted if you don’t like a lot of what it suggests.) You can give feedback in iTunes or on an iOS device: just click or tap the More icon next to any album or playlist recommendation and choose Dislike. If you dislike a track you’ve accidentally loved, then the loved rating will go away and vice versa.

How Do I Stream from Apple Music?

You saw above, in How Can I Discover Music on Apple Music?, how to listen to music from Apple Music’s recommendations. But you can, of course, also stream any music in the Apple Music Library.

Start by clicking Browse in the navigation bar to see featured albums, songs, videos, and playlists. At the time of this writing, links at the top of the view take you to New Music, Playlists, Videos, Top Charts, and Genres. Feel free to explore; your Apple Music subscription is a skeleton key that lets you access all this music.

To find music in Apple Music, click For You or Browse in the navigation bar, click in the Search box at the upper right, click All Apple Music, and then type an artist’s name, album name, or song title. Click a search result to view it in Apple Music.

The Search page that appears may contain some or all of the following: Top Results, Songs, Albums, Playlists, Music Videos, Artists, Connect, and Stations. Click an album to view it, and then click the Play button to start playing it. Or hover over a song and then click the Play button that appears.

How Do I Add Music from Apple Music to My Library?

With an Apple Music subscription, if you’ve turned on iCloud Music Library, you can add any music in the Apple Music Library to your iCloud Music Library. Once you’ve added it, you can listen to it again offline and add it to playlists. These tunes remain available as long as your Apple Music subscription is active.

To add an album or playlist to your music library, click the Add button next to that item (Figure 28). You can also add an individual track by clicking the plus button in the track’s listing.

In Figure 28, above, the Download icon next to the first track, Young at Heart, indicates that the track is in my library in the cloud, but not downloaded locally. The track comes from The A-List: Jazz, an Apple Music playlist that I added to my library. In short, there is more than one way to end up with partial albums in your library.

When you add a track to your iCloud Music Library, you can find it, play it, and even play it on another computer, iOS device, or Apple TV that is using iCloud Music Library with the same Apple ID. But the music itself isn’t downloaded yet. Read on…

How Do I Download Music for Offline Listening?

Once you’ve added an Apple Music album, playlist, or track to your iCloud Music Library, as I discussed just above, you can download it. This allows you to listen to it without an Internet connection—and to avoid hiccups over a slow connection.

To download an item, find its Download icon. In Albums view, for example, the Download icon appears on the album artwork and near the right of the album’s header bar, as well as in each track (Figure 29).

How Do I Delete Apple Music from My Library?

To remove an Apple Music track from your iCloud Music Library, whether you’ve downloaded it or not, Control-click it and then choose Delete from Library. The track is removed from your iCloud Music Library and all the devices linked to your account.

How Do I Listen to Apple Music Radio?

Apple Music Radio plays music from Apple’s enormous repository of songs and is run by Apple. It also includes a few streaming stations, such as Beats 1, that are run by Apple or that Apple has included, such as ESPN News and Sports, NPR, and BBC World Service.

All iTunes users can listen to a handful of stations, including Beats 1 in most countries. In the United States, a few more stations are available, including NPR News and Culture, and ESPN News and Sports.

Beats 1 has several shows with disc jockeys, and some well-known musicians also run shows where they get to play their favorite tunes. For example, Elton John has a show, as do Fatboy Slim and several hip-hop artists that are part of Apple’s stable. You can see all the shows on Beats 1 on the Apple Music Tumblr.

If you subscribe to Apple Music, you’ll see many more stations, plus you can create your own “radio stations.” These stations sync across your devices; so long as you’re signed in to the same iTunes Store account, you can listen to the same stations on any device—Mac, PC, iOS device, or Apple TV.

These radio stations are a bit like Genius, but on a larger scale. Instead of comparing a song you select to the contents of your iTunes library and dishing up a playlist based on that song, Apple Music Radio looks at the millions of tracks available from Apple Music.

To start using Apple Music Radio, make sure Music is chosen in the Media Picker. Click Radio in the navigation bar, and then click a station to start listening.

You can do several things while listening to a song:

• Pause and play: To take a break, try one of these methods:
  • Click the Pause button; to start playing again, click the Play button. If you’re listening to Beats 1, the toolbar offers a Stop button rather than a pause button.
  • Press the Space bar to pause or play.
  • Hover over the station’s icon and then click the Pause or Play button that appears on the icon.
• Skip it: If you don’t like the song that’s playing, click the Next button; iTunes skips to the next song. You can’t skip ahead in a song; you can skip only to the next song. You can skip as much as you like, but you can’t skip when listening to Beats 1 or any other “live” radio station.
• Add it to your iCloud Music Library: If you’ve turned on iCloud Music Library, hover over a song name in the iTunes LCD and click the More icon to display a menu (Figure 30), and then choose Add to Library or Add to Playlist > Playlist. (Sometimes Beats 1 has interviews with musicians, or the DJs are talking. In such cases, the menu shows only Share Station. Once the music returns, you’ll see the full menu.)

  

  The song is added to your iCloud Music Library on all your devices, where you can download or stream it. If you chose a playlist, the track appears in that playlist.

• Buy it: Click the More icon and then choose Go to > Show in iTunes Store, where you can purchase the track, or its album.
• Create a new station from the current song: Click the More icon and then choose Start Station.
• Love it or hate it: Click the More icon and then choose Love or Dislike. Apple Music takes your loves and dislikes into account when making For You recommendations (see How Can I Discover Music on Apple Music?).
• Share a song or station: Click Share Song or Share Station to tell your friends on Facebook or Twitter about the song or station you’re listening to. You can also send a link to it by email or Messages, or you can copy the link to send it another way.

Making Your Own Station

Your Apple Music Radio listening can go beyond the featured stations to those you create yourself, based on artists and musical groups that you like: for example, if you like Bill Evans, Bruce Springsteen, The Clash, and Alfred Brendel, you can create a station for each.

Apple Music Radio stations don’t play music just by that artist: if you choose an artist for an Apple Music Radio station, you’ll get a couple of songs by that artist and more songs by similar artists. And if you create a genre station, you’ll hear a broad variety of music from that genre.

To create an Apple Music Radio station from your iTunes library:

1. In the navigation bar, choose Music from the Media Picker and then click the Library button.
2. Pick any view you like from the sidebar, hover over a song title, and click the More icon.
3. In the menu that displays, choose Start Station.

iTunes begins playing that station’s music.

You can access your new station later in the Recently Played section of the Radio view. You cannot delete stations you create in this manner.

Viewing Your Radio History

Apple Music Radio is about serendipity. Ideally, you’ll hear songs that you like and haven’t heard for a while (and that aren’t in your iTunes library), as well as songs and artists that you’ve never heard before.

iTunes records your listening history so you can check the songs you’ve heard, and potentially buy them or add them to your iCloud Music Library. To review what you’ve heard on all Apple Music Radio stations, click the Up Next button next to the iTunes LCD when the Radio view is active and click History (Figure 31).

Here’s what you can do with a song in a station’s history:

• Hear a preview: Hover over a song’s icon, and click its Play button. You’ll hear a 90- or 30-second preview from the iTunes Store; the duration depends on the length of the track. You cannot play an entire track from this list, even if you have an Apple Music subscription.
• See it in Apple Music or the iTunes Store: Hover over a track, click the More icon, and then choose Go To > Show in Apple Music or Go To > Show in iTunes Store.
• Add it to your iTunes Store wish list: Hover over a track, click the More icon, and then choose Add to iTunes Wish List.
• Add it to your iCloud Music Library: If the track listing has a plus button, click it. (Some tracks in my Radio history don’t display a plus button when they should. If this happens to you and you want to add the track to your library, click the More icon, choose Go To > Show in Apple Music, and add it from there.)
• Purchase a track: Click the More icon, and then choose Go To > Show in iTunes Store to buy the track or its album.

What about Internet Radio?

Unlike Apple Music Radio, which plays music from Apple (described just previously), iTunes Internet Radio lets you listen to non-Apple Internet radio stations, stations that stream music over the Internet. To listen to these stations, choose Internet Radio from the Media Picker.

The Stream column lists available genres, ranging from Alternative to Sports Radio, and including Jazz, Blues, Classical, and much more. (These genres change from time to time.) Click a disclosure triangle next to a genre to see its contents, then double-click a radio station to play it. Look for stations with the highest bit rate, which will offer the best quality.

There are hundreds of radio stations, so use trial and error to find the ones you like. When you do, you’ll want a way to remember them. To do this, create a playlist and drag your favorite stations to it. You’ll be able to access them from that playlist at any time, though they won’t sync to an iOS device.

How Do I Use Connect?

Connect is designed to be a sort of Facebook for music. Artists who have signed up for Connect can share music, videos, photos, and more with fans. Users can follow artists in iTunes or in the iOS Music app.

Connect is available to anyone, even if you don’t have an Apple Music subscription. However, you can follow artists only if you have an Apple Music subscription.

Previously a standalone category on the iTunes navigation bar, Connect is now part of For You (Figure 32). To access Connect, click For You, then click Connect.

Using Connect is easy. Here’s what you need to know:

• Get a nickname: If you plan to comment on posts in Connect, you should do this. A Connect nickname is a name with an @, like on Twitter; mine is @mcelhearn. Choose Account > Profile, sign in if asked, enter a name in the Nickname field, and click Save.
• View an artist page: Enter the artist’s name in the Search box at the upper-right of the iTunes window. In the search popover, click the All Apple Music button. If the name appears in the search results, click it. The name should appear in the Top Results list. Click it. Some artist pages are simple, with just lists of albums, songs, and, in some cases, videos, followed by a brief About this Artist text. Some have more information, such as a header graphic, playlists, and Connect posts.
• View a curator or artist page: If you are already following a curator or artist, you may see a post from them on the main Connect view. On that post, click the image or name to open the page.
• Follow: Click the More button that displays on an Artist or Curator page and choose Follow. Or choose Account > Follow and click that person’s Follow button.

  To automatically follow all artists whose music you add to your library, choose Account > Profile, sign in if needed, select “Automatically Follow Artists,” and click the Save button.

• Unfollow: Find the page as described above in this list, click the More button, and click Unfollow. Or choose Account > Following to see all the artists and curators you’re following, and click the Following button for the one you want to unfollow. Don’t worry, they won’t be offended.