iOS 8.4 Released with Apple Music, Beats 1 and Revamped Music App

Nothing exploded. Yet.

 

Europa, no new separate app for the new music features! Just as I had hoped. This is cause for celebration. ♫ ♪ *doin' a little dance, makin' a little love, gettin' down tonight… gettin' down tonight!* ♬ And again, everybody now!

Apple Music Streaming Service/Beats1 Radio Station features were neatly incorporated into the existing Music app. The app's icon received a minor makeover—no big surprise there.

I wonder if OS X El Capitan will change its iTunes icon to match the new iOS Music app icon:

 

Anything cool enough to make me want to downgrade from iOS 9 beta 2?

 

Just be sure to go into your account in the Music app to turn off auto renewal of your subscription if you don't intend to actually pay for the service after the free trial.

 

The lovely folks at Apple have added a new feature to facilitate/encourage impulse purchasing of songs: a Buy button for the currently playing song on iTunes Radio right there in the Control Center! That is so absolutely nice of them!

 

Although I would probably like the streaming service, I can't see paying $14.99 per month while having to switch to Family Sharing. My Wife and I have shared an iTunes ID for over a year and it works great. Maybe later sometime. But I'm good with free Spotify. I don't like Beats 1 radio. It's mostly hip hop and pop. I'll pass. TuneIn Radio Pro suites my needs better. The iTunes radio stations seem a bit messy. It took a while to figure some of it out. I lost several stations I had. And there's no replacement for one in particular. When iOS 8 began, several stations vanished. I found 2 online and added them back. It didn't work this time. But there's enough music there. Southern Rock is a narrow genre. Creating a station doesn't work well. You end up with a station that plays your genre, but every 3rd song is of the artist the station was created from. If there's a better way, I don't see it. I'm glad many users will enjoy Apple Music.

 

Try the free three-month trial, then…

Here's how to CANCEL/STOP Apple Music Subscriptions from automatic renewal after three months.

There's no reason not to try it. Win-win. You get your free three months' worth of the service, Taylor Swift gets her royalties, and everybody lives happily ever after.

PS: The red bubbles pouring into the screen where you select the genres, then the artists that interest you was totally worth signing up for this thing. But now that I've experienced this incredibly awesome piece of UI artwork, I think I'm ready to cancel after three months… unless they come up with another totally awesome red bubble animation to keep me subscribed.

 

No need to wait that long. I just updated my Mac to OS X 10.10.4, and iTunes 12.2, which includes the matching icon.

 

I have a quick question about the new Music app on iOS 8.4. Ars Technica's article "A quick tour of iOS 8.4’s new Music app and the Apple Music setup process," quite disappointingly, failed to address the question I have.

To quote Ars Teechnica's article, "You can minimize the Now Playing window to a persistent strip that hangs out as you tap around the rest of the Music app." That's nice. It's quite persistent, indeed.

How do I get rid of it once I'm done with it? I've tried swiping left, right, down, and up. Up is the only swipe that has any effect… it "maximizes" that strip back to a full-size window. Tapping on the "…" on the extreme right of that strip reveals several options, none of which removes the strip.

Here's a screenshot to help ensure my question is clear:

 

May I ask you what app you used to show the example on the pic? Thank you.

 

It's a screenshot of the stock Music app.

As far as the annotations/markups, I used an app called Skitch for those. Tremendously useful.

Skitch on iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skitch-snap.-mark-up.-send./id490505997?mt=8
Skitch on OS X: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skitch-snap.-mark-up.-share./id425955336?mt=12

With a free Evernote account, you can keep your creations synced between your iOS and your OS X apps.

 

Yes, annotations/markups, that is what I was talking about. I already downloaded and tried out. Thank you so much, I always wonder how people did that : ) I really appreciate it, thank you, I am so exited!!!

 

So, it looks like the new Music app has done away with the Genius Mixes that I had created on iTunes over the years. I liked the way they went through my music collection and grouped songs together based on Genres. Now that appears to be gone.