Is Apple Music on Android good?
So before the question let me add some context: I'm planning to move from iOS to Android, mostly because how difficult is to backup photos from iPhone into my computer. I don't want my photos on iCloud so I make my backups copying all the photos and videos into my computer, I currently use Fedora Linux and keep my photo library on digiKam which I think is better than the Apple Photos app for Desktop. It certainly was easier when I used my Macbook for that, but being a Macbook from 2015 the battery is almost dead and I no longer use it.
Recently I saw reviews for Android phones from last year and fell in love with the Asus Zenfone 10, I love small phones and that one looks amazing, but I'm still tied to the Apple ecosystem, and the service that I would miss the most from them is Apple Music. So that is actually the only reason that I'm still using an iPhone, (that and the camera which was pretty amazing back when my iPhone13 was released).
So I'll have several options:
- Keep using iOS and suck it up, maybe even giving up and doing my backups to iCloud (it's 10 years worth of photos and videos).
- Move to android and use Spotify like everyone else. (I really don't want to go back to Spotify so that's the last thing I want to do).
- Use Apple Music for Android. Which I really don't know how good or bad it is. I'm even surprised that there's a version for Android.
- Just have an mp3 library like in the good old days. This is a viable solution since I listen to music almost exclusively by albums and it's easier to download music album by album than song by song. But that also means I'll need to be caring around my music library and making backups of it.
So the question is: have anyone here used Apple Music on Android? Is it good?.
I was curious and just installed it on my Android phone, signed in and am using the one free month offer. So far my impression is that it is at least equal to Spotify (which is my reference) in as far as features go and has a cleaner interface. It also doesn't look like they left out any settings as there is an abundance of toggles for sound quality, cellur data, etc.
In short, I get the impression they put in the effort to really make the app work. Likely as a sort of flagship product to entice android users to try out the rest of the Apple ecosystem.
So from a functional level to me it seems like you have very little to worry about there.
One minor annoyance though, two factor authentication will be a bit of an annoyance if you don't have any other apple devices anymore. Which I don't (at least none charged) meaning I had to use sms fallback to get the code. It is a minor annoyance but figured I'd let you know.
Thanks for the quick review, seems like I'll be good after I switch to Android.
I briefly had Apple Music, so I did get to use it, but very limited in scope. From what I’ve heard and my little experience, it’s a really well-polished app. That being said, there are alternatives other than Spotify.
I’m using YouTube Music which has been really good and because of its access to YouTube, has the largest library of any streaming service as far as I’m aware. I have some music in my playlist that isn’t officially distributed, but because it’s on YouTube, it’s there.
I also had a great experience with Deezer, and if it weren’t for YouTube Premium’s other options, I would probably still be with them for their HiFi.
As someone who loves the Grey Album, this is such a key feature for me.
I do wish YTM supported high fidelity audio files, though.
Bonus: A rather unknown DJ released this Lord of the Rings x Wu-Tang collaboration called Enter the Fellowship a few years ago and it has been in my regular rotation since. Apparently it just got onto Spotify a couple of weeks ago.
I haven't tested once I've uploaded them to make sure, but you can upload FLAC's to your personal library on YouTube Music.
The issue is that I subscribe to such services because I don't have my own personal library of music.
omg, this Enter the Fellowship mix is sick. I was looking for something like this a couple months ago and was kind of shocked I couldn't find anything. Thank you!
Hello! Using Apple Music on Android currently because of a lengthy free trial I got. I'm using it right now as I type this. There are 3 things that immediately come to mind when talking about my experience using the app:
There are multiple other UI/UX issues, but I'm not sure if they're specific to the Android version or if they also occur on the iOS version. I don't have an iPhone for to compare the experience.
It's not all bad. The integration with Shazam is great - I can access all my Shazamed songs in a playlist. (There's a Spotify integration as well.) Apple Music's recommendations are slowly improving. I like how it's focused on music, and doesn't shove podcasts down my throat when I don't want them. It doesn't have a terrible TikTok-esque UI. They pay artists better than Spotify and offer lossless at no extra cost. Aside from 2 songs, I haven't had issues with missing songs as compared to on Spotify.
My friend used Apple Music on Android a while ago, and it seems like it's basically the same as on iOS.
Just out of curiosity though, why are you so adamantly against using Spotify? And have you considered things like YouTube Music and Deezer, as mentioned by @Jedi?
Not OP, so probably different grievances. I personally really don't like Spotify pushing "features" on me that actively impede my listening. The new Smart Shuffle being a pretty bad offender. Spotify doesn't have a great idea of what I listen to, and it forcing me to have their songs shuffled in if it don't catch the switch when I hit the shuffle button is a huge annoyance to me. Especially if I'm driving and can't interact with my phone for safety
Spotify also seems vehemently opposed to finding a good state for its UI and leaving it that way. They’re constantly running A/B tests and twiddling with things to try to squeeze out whatever fraction of increased profits, which gets irritating.
For me personally another thing that keeps me away from Spotify is their hostility towards standalone third party players. They used to maintain libSpotify which was a library that allowed developers to build custom players for subscribers to use, but they deprecated that a few years ago and have yet to provide a fully capable replacement (current APIs/libraries allow only browsing of music and control of the official client). They’re hell-bent on forcing everybody to use the official client no matter how awful it is. While reverse engineered third party players exist, one risks getting banned by using them.
By contrast, Apple maintains a library that allows full streaming of Apple Music, and as a result several third party clients for it exist should one not like the official client. It’s wild that Apple is the more open between the two.
I don't like Spotify UI, also they are very slow to fix bugs.
I used to have this bug on my homepage that suggested me the same 3 albums for over 6 months. Also once you accidentally listen one random podcast episode the app suggest you that podcast forever.
Also in apple music the quality of the music is better than Spotify, I've heard that Deezer has very good quality aswell so I may see it as an option.
There are other options than Spotify for Android. I personally use Deezer, and have been quite happy with it. If you'd like to keep likes and playlists instead of starting from scratch, they make it easier for you to port those over.
Just to throw out an option everyone seems to overlook, YouTube Music works more or less like all the other streaming music services, but it also comes with ad-free regular YouTube.
And if you use Vi/RiMusic you get a better experience than ytm premium but for free.
I didn't even know Apple Music existed at all on Android. When I switched from Spotify I switched to Youtube Music (which I'd already paid for bc of the ad free Youtube anyway lol). I think my wife switched to Tidal or smth instead. So I'd recommend switching to a non-Spotify alternative personally.
Funny enough, I'm switching from YTM to Tidal. I'm curious how they'll compare.
My wife is actually switching off Tidal bc she wants an offline music collection instead lol... but she seems generally positive about Tidal still so hopefully it works well for you!
There are tools for backing up iOS photos on Linux, presumably you could point one of those to a place digiKam can pick them up?
I can't answer about the Apple Music on Android question but I just have to say I fell your pain about the photos situation on iOS. I moved to android (GrapheneOS) and it is amazing. I use syncthing to sync photos and everything else directly with my Linux computer.
For music, I went back to a full mp3 library and I love it. I've got a large CD collection that I ripped and I purchase songs from 7digital. All my music is synced between my phone and computer using syncthing as well.
Yeah, I like to keep my photos with the actual creation date on the name and metadata, but the moment I import them to my computer it's all over the place.
The most recent bug I found is that the video files are not imported with the correct creation time but with the UTC equivalent (don't know if the error comes from the iphone or linux tbh), so I ended up to creating a script to fix that metadata and if I go on a trip to a different timezone I have to make sure I run that script with the correct offset so the dates get fixed correctly.