Apple Pushing Promotional Content into Apple Music Radio Stations and Playlists
Over at Macworld, Jason Snell laments that Apple is now inserting promotional content into Apple-created radio stations and playlists. Play one of Apple’s on-demand radio stations and you’ll be subjected to ads for other Apple Music radio shows. You can skip them, but that shouldn’t be necessary. On the playlist side, Apple is now featuring a particular artist each week, and it leads off with a short spoken-word interview with the artist. That’s also easily skippable if you’re starting the playlist from within Music, but less so if you’re invoking it via Siri or have it on shuffle. Unfortunately, there’s no way to filter out these ads and interview clips—at minimum, there should be a setting to eliminate such intrusions. Overall, however, it’s a troubling direction for Apple to be taking a service that has previously focused on the music.
The reason I have sustained a long term love affair with Apple Music since the debut of iPod is that I wasn’t forced to listen to promos, promos and promos, as well as endlessly blabbering DJs, and BS interview chatter. Unless Apple decides to change its mind, I’m going to rethink paying Apple $9.99 per month for Music.
Is there any comparable service other than the paid version of Spotify? Personally, I think Apple made a dumb mistake here.
I hear more and more good things about Tidal, though I haven’t used it.
I haven’t specifically noticed but then I generally listen to my own playlists rather than Apple curated lists. My feeling is if I’m paying for a subscription then advertising/promos are taboo. I don’t pay to hear people trying to sell me something in lieu of that to which I want to listen.
LOL. Makes me even happier I never paid a single Dollar for Apple Music or tuned in to any of their “radio”. The last thing I want is ads after paying for a subscription. Same reason I don’t have cable.
This, folks, if what it really means when Apple schmoozes about “services”. You’d like to believe it means iCloud will finally become more reliable. But in reality, it’s actually about Apple becoming a whole lot more like the companies we used to run to them from.
Same here. What I really love about subscribing to Apple Music is how easy it is for me to make my own playlists from what is, for my purposes, a limitless source of tracks.
If I were relying on Apple’s own lists or radio stations as a way to do that, I’d probably be looking for alternatives right now.
It’s not clear which playlists are problematic. I subscribe to Apple Music and often listen to items on the Listen Now page on my Mac. These include:
Very occasionally, I listen to a ‘Featured Collection’. I never use the selections in the Browse or Radio lists, but, I do employ the Search function.
I have not seen any ads when using Apple Music in this way. So, where are folks seeing the playlists with ads?
In the Mac version of Music, at least, click Browse in the sidebar and then click See All to the right of Our Top Playlists.
However, although there were the spoken-word interviews in several of the playlists (ALT CTRL and Today’s Country) when I edited Josh’s ExtraBIT, looking through all of Apple’s playlists now reveals none. Perhaps Apple took the hint that these weren’t welcome!
Just on listening trends, whenever I try listening to one of the suggested lists I end up with things that are of no interest to me, I think when I first subscribed to music it asked what genres I preferred and I listed those typical of my age (classic rock, prog rock, bowie, zeppelin etc) and I somehow end up with Country, rap and soft pop like Adele and Elton John. It’s a waste of time as I end up skipping about 60% of the tracks which play. Their artificial intelligence doesn’t seem too smart.
Also annoying, there is no ‘Playing Next’ option for these curated lists, only history. If I could see what was next I could get rid of things before they play. Music app fits well with some Dire Straits lryics - “It’s a mystery to me”…
I’m shocked – shocked – that Apple would do something it thinks is best without giving users an opt out if they don’t like it.(/sarcasm)
Seriously, I love my Apple products and wouldn’t trade them for anything. But this is hardly the first time Apple has decided it knows best.
Be nice if I could get rid of all the junk in the Apple TV app. That is filled with attempts to sell and rent. It could have been a useful app for combining streaming services, but in its current form it is completely unusable. The search app on the Apple TV appears similarly polluted.