The Search for the Holy Grail of Music Streaming, Part 4: Apple Music

I deeply dreaded this moment. Every single streaming service so far had failed me. Spotify was too focused on playlists, Google's option just didn't quite work, and Tidal was too unstable as a business. I was going to try Rdio next, but they just got bought by Pandora and are going to be shut down, so they were out. And Deezer isn't available in the United States yet, so that was also out.

That left pretty much one option. The one that I swore I would never try. The one from one of my least favorite companies in the world.

If you guessed Apple Music, you're right. And if you missed that in the title of this post...well, I don't know what to tell you.

I really have never been a fan of Apple as a company, ditching every part of their company except for their music store over a year ago. I didn't like using iTunes with such a large music library, and as for iOS...well, that's a completely different (and much longer) explanation.

Yet, when moving over to Apple Music for streaming, there was this sense of continuity that I loved. I didn't feel like I was using a streaming service: I felt like I had a library of music that was more or less my own.

This is mostly due to the way Apple Music works on iTunes for Windows. Everything is partitioned off in such a way that you never have to look at music you don't want to add to your library. I love this. Every other music streaming service loves to throw you into new music and content right away. Apple, for once, doesn't want you to get new stuff if you don't want to: they want you to enjoy what you love the most. This includes all of your previous iTunes purchases: they're automatically added to your library.

This effect is compounded by the stellar recommendations that Apple gives for new music. It's all under this "For You" banner, which can be found both in the mobile app (which I'll discuss more later) and in iTunes. These are all tailored to your listening habits and likes, and new recommendations come every day and adapt as you listen to more music. Besides a few that are for introductions to some of my favorite artists, these are all quite stellar. I've never been steered wrong by what Apple gives me in this section. There's a lot of variety in what they give me as well. I've seen rap, Christian music, indie rock, dance, pop, jazz, and pretty much anything else you can think of (besides country). It's helping me explore a lot of new bands and genres without being intrusive, which is what I feel music streaming services should be about.

The software is actually the low point of Apple Music if you are using it on the operating systems that I am. iTunes for Windows has always been a poor performer and still is. It's slow with large libraries and incredibly bloated as a piece of software and needs to be split up between multiple programs instead of being mashed into one like it currently is. There's also no web player yet, so if you want to listen on Windows, it's iTunes or nothing. On Android, the app is about as good as it is on iOS, minus the quirks of the beta. There's a lot of bugs that I am confident Apple will fix before moving the app into a stable release. I've heard that the iOS and OS X apps are very smooth and stable, so if you're on those platforms you should have fewer, if any, quirks.

Here's a few more things for you to consider with Apple Music:

• It's $9.99/month with a family plan for six costing $14.99/month. No student discount, but that might change, as Apple's contract with the record companies accounts for one. 
• This is the only streaming service with Taylor Swift's entire discography, as well as some other notable exclusives that I care about a lot less. 
• Apple Music doesn't have the exclusive curated content that Tidal does, but its recommendations are way, way better. There is this thing called "Connect" that's a unique way for artists to interact with their fans on Apple Music, but it's not spectacular yet. 
• There's one more way you can add tracks to your Apple Music library: iCloud Music Library. It enables you to upload tracks that aren't on Apple Music and include them in your library. If it finds that same track in the iTunes Store, it will match it just like iTunes Match would. This isn't done quite as well as Google's implementation because you can't undo bad matches, but it's a pretty useful feature if you find gaps in Apple Music's library. I uploaded the entire Beatles discography without any troubles. 
• The Android app beta is not available on Google Play for tablets quite yet. You also can't store music on an SD card yet unless you've enabled Adoptable Storage on Marshmallow (if you don't know what I'm talking about, then don't worry about it). 

Honestly, this surprised me. I never thought that Apple would do a better job than Google or Spotify when it came to music streaming. They have the best streaming service for my specific needs and wants when it comes to listening to music. They also have cross-platform support, even though it isn't quite as universal as some other services. For some people, being able to play your iTunes purchases through a streaming service is a huge must; to me, it's just icing on the cake. There's still some kinks and bugs, especially when it comes to Android, but on the whole Apple Music is my recommended streaming service.