As a kid growing up in the eighties, I was surrounded by music. Not just any music; it was on vinyl. It was an era when pop culture and pop music went hand in hand. This was a time when rock bands got their comic books and video games. Delivering a blow to all forms of physical media was the scum of the ‘ear’ MP3 technology. Music streaming arrived after a few years and though it is not the best solution, it is far better than MP3.

At the moment, there are quite a few music streaming services but there are problems — too much focus on playlist-friendly music and making apps feel like Instagram Reels or TikTok. A music streaming service that remains unadulterated is Apple Music. Be it offering lossless music, Spatial Audio or even an app for classical music lovers, there are plenty of things Apple Music continues to get right. This is an app that has improved by leaps and bounds. Free music services come with too many compromises. Apple Music is not free and it delivers in oodles. Let’s look at some of the features that make the service worthwhile.

High-quality music

Apple Music offers higher-quality music streaming and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. The music streaming service has a catalogue of over 100 million songs but more importantly, a lot of it is lossless audio at no additional cost.

Apple uses its own codec, Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC), to preserve every single bit of the original audio file. It starts at CD quality and you can download ALAC up to 24-bit 192 kilohertz. However, you’ll need a digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) to experience the highest quality.

Collaborative playlists

iOS 17.2 (currently for beta testers) automatic Favourites playlist based on songs you’ve marked as favourites in your library. The update also adds support for collaborative playlists. which is interesting. You can invite people to collaborate on a playlist. If allowed, everyone will be able to add to that playlist, reorder songs, remove songs, and use emoji to react to the songs shown in the Now Playing interface.

Apple Radio

Another advantage of Apple Music is its radio stations. Unlike most modern music streaming services, where a radio station is an algorithmically generated playlist, Apple Music’s radio feature is actually old-school radio. It features human-curated music with DJs and hosts. This includes several stations like Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country. Each of these stations has several shows, such as the Zane Lowe Show and Rocket Hour, hosted by Sir Elton John. These shows provide exclusive interviews and a unique way to discover new artistes and music.

Apple Music Sing

The feature automatically removes vocals from supported tracks and makes use of Apple Music’s real-time lyrics feature to provide an on-demand karaoke experience.

Being part of the Apple ecosystem

Apple Music Sing is an example of how Apple Music benefits from integration within the Apple ecosystem. Users can listen to playlists with family and friends, collaborate on playlists, share music to their car with Apple CarPlay, and control music from their own devices, even if they don’t have an Apple Music subscription.

Apple Music Classical

If you subscribe to Apple Music, you can also enjoy its companion app called Apple Music Classical, which has a catalogue of five million tracks, making it the world’s largest classical music catalogue according to Apple. It supports both lossless and high-res audio, as well as Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio, enhancing the classical music listening experience.

Apple Music Classical is free for anyone who is already a subscriber of Apple Music

Beautiful app design

Unlike Spotify, which bundles various audio products into a single app, Apple Music keeps audiobooks, podcasts, and music separate, providing a less cluttered experience. Equally impressive is library management. Apple Music offers more customisation options for managing your library. You can easily edit song metadata, purchase your own music, and import music from CDs.

In-depth information

iOS 17 brings full artwork into Apple Music which looks stunning. But did you know that if you tap on the three-dot icon you can check the credits of a specific song? You’ll see the performing artiste and also everybody who has helped out with a composition and the lyrics of a song and production and engineering and the available quality.

Sharing to Instagram is easy

Let’s say you like a song. You can press the three dots and tap share song. You can share this song to Instagram Stories and it creates a cool Instagram Story design which you can move around and make it smaller and larger and once you post it on your Instagram Story, there is a link below the song name. If people want to listen to it, they can simply tap on it and be taken to the song in Apple Music.

Discovery Station

Called Discovery Station, you will find it in the Listen Now tab in the Made for You section. At first, you may get the feeling that it’s like [Your name]’s Station tab but there is a twist. Your own station chooses songs you have added to your library or listened to repeatedly. Discovery Station chooses songs similar to those but you may not have heard these songs.

It showcases songs and artistes similar to your favourites but Discovery Station is not about playing songs that are in your playlists or library or have been “liked” by you. Apple Music employs an algorithm to come up with your personal Discovery Station. The new addition is also different from New Music Mix, which updates weekly and comprises music published recently. Discovery Station is like a radio station that can play music from any era.

The continuous listening experience provided by Discovery Station is something Apple Music needed. So far, users could run stations based on genres, artistes or songs but here the user’s tastes are taken into account.

iTunes support

iTunes, which dominated the music industry for over a decade, still exists within Apple’s devices. It allows you to meticulously manage your library and local music. It offers options like iTunes Match, which allows you to match content you ripped from CDs and other sources with Apple Music’s library of songs. Once matched, your music becomes available on all your Apple devices. You can purchase music through iTunes, although not in lossless quality. Spotify offers no purchasing option at all.

At a glance

Service: Apple Music

Price: Rs 49 per month for Voice (designed for use with Siri), Rs 59 per month for students, Rs 99 per month for individuals and Rs 149 per month for family. Otherwise, buy an Apple device and get six months free or enjoy a free one-month trial period.

Are there commercials: None.

Library size: Over 100 million songs and 30,000 playlists