With Apple's new music offering, I was hoping for quality curated music with discussion about or with the artists. So far, to my experience, there has been little engagement of the musician, though a number are hosting their own shows.
There is far more Rap / Hip Hop than I am interested to hear.
A number of the special program segments are of more interest (Elton John's Rocket Hour, St. Vincent Mixtapes). Now that these shows are becoming available as Playlists, and I can listen to them entirety at a time of my choosing, the Apple streaming service has more value, and offers more enjoyment to me.
- I have lots of trouble with the Applemusic site on Tumblr. On the iPad it will not properly load the Tumblr page, and on my Mac, the links were broken when trying to go to to the page of any of the curators; it opened the Apple Music Application, but does not load the personal page of the contributor. This appears fixed as of Saturday August 8th. Works on the iPhone though....
Other streaming services including CBC Music and the plethora of stations on TuneIn radio offer similar variety, in my opinion, and have specialty stations playing specific genres of music such as CJYQ Newfoundland music.
I have not yet delved sufficiently into the product to make the discoveries of new music as has been suggested as one of the major boons of Apple music. This is likely due to much of my music listening being in the car, or as low level background noise about the house. Also, two of our local radio stations play music we enjoy, and CBC fills in the gap for knowledge radio.
I'm undecided if I'll keep the service after the trial period.