1y ago

“Apple Music launches a Discovery Station to help you find new songs”

www.theverge.com Apple Music launches a Discovery Station to help you find new songs

The new station uses an algorithm to suggest music.

“The new station will play a curated selection of songs based on what you’ve been listening to but haven’t heard before.”

Looks interesting. To me, Apple’s curated playlists have always been superior in quality to Spotify’s but they really don’t have as vas of a selection of curated playlists. Apple Music stations are often excellent, too, if you know how to crate them.

TechNews @radiation.party

VERGE

Apple Music launches a Discovery Station to help you find new songs

www.theverge.com /2023/8/7/23823577/apple-music-discovery-station-find-new-songs

1 1

56 comments

It takes Apple forever to add obvious features like this but I’m glad they have. I’ll use it a lot.
- Call me an Apple sheep, but they usually get it right when they finally get around to something.
  
  There are exceptions and I think Apple Music is one of them. They've been playing catch up with Spotify. I only have Apple Music because it's with the bundle of everything else.
  Edit: grammar
  
  Not this time. I have found about 3 new (to me) country songs I like and my discovery playlist is full of nothing but twangy country , which isn’t even the genre of the new songs I do like.

Did people forget about Pandora? That’s basically what Pandora was, at least back in my day. back creaks
- yea, for those not paying attention ... the "enshitification" has been a slow development for a while now. There was a moment back circa 2010, before google stopped being "not evil" and when the iphone/smartphone was still new and web pages were capable of doing anything and problems could be solved with apps etc etc ... that tech just seemed "good" and to be doing "good", and there were reasons to think so. But good things have been falling away slowly for years and big things turning shit too.
  
  Has enshitification already reached “gaslighting” status where people just use it when it’s not appropriate?
- Pandora wasn’t only focused on stuff you haven’t heard though. It was a mix. It’s actually closer to the Apple Music “personal station”.
- We don’t get that in the UK so it’s never really been an option for us unfortunately

Ok good, but I still lack some kind of "incognito" listening mode. Spotify doesn't have this either.
I listen to music I like and then I have other music on for "cover" och concentration, like bland non engaging things in the background to cover up other intrusive noise, like family or co-workers.
Having these to fairly opposite genres mixed together isn't a great experience when it comes to history or discovery functions.
Being able to easily exclude music/playlists would be great from these types of features.
And having another account isn't an option since we are maxed out of subscriptions.
- There is an option in Settings to use the music history played on this device (whether phone, iPad, or AppleTV) which sounds like the kind of toggle you are looking for. The setting is on by default but you can turn it off temporarily when playing something you don’t want influencing your algorithm.
  
  Awesome, a bit cumbersome to get to but seems to be the feature I need. Thanks!!

I miss human DJ's.
To be more specific, I miss the left-of-the-dial 11pm variety.
And Shoutcast-style radio with live DJ's. I still spin up a stream every now and then, but it's not the same as it used to be.
- Apple music has a sort of halfway point in the form of Radio. Pre-recorded hour or two of actual radio
- Check out nts.live
  
  This is great, thank you.
- I’ve found Soundcloud to be a great alternative for this. Loads and loads of 1-2 hour mixes, and great exposure to a whole range of new music. Only issue is that some of (what I enjoy anyway), seems to have very limited releases and isn’t necessarily available on Apple Music/etc.
- Twitch is pretty great for that.

I used it today for 8 hours and damm, I must say that it is quite good. Definitely better than the "keep playing song when playlist ends" or the curated weekly lists. I had to skip songs only few times and I didn't mark ANY as "dislike", where I often that to do so few times in a row on the other options.
Perhaps a change in how I use Apple Music made this better, cause I learned from some comment here or on Reddit, that the algorithm acts better if songs are marked as love/dislike to tell it the taste, not like in Spotify where it just goes along the lists or what I listened to in the past.
- I have been using endless shuffle for a few years now that keeps playing songs based upon what is being played.
  I start a playlist and it keeps playing until I realise it might have gone a bit off track.

It would be great if they would give some love to the apple music preview app for windows 11. It is a source of constant frustration for me, with regular crashes, wild volume changes and overall sluggishness. Sadly it's only slightly better on macOS
- Cider 2?

I thought this is what my weekly New Music Mix playlist was meant to do.
- It is. But this one will just go on forever. Not entirely sure what the point of having a station and a playlist is 🤷‍♂️

About time!

I really want to like Apple Music more but I don't know why they don't allow you to follow radio shows like: https://music.apple.com/au/curator/beats-in-space-with-tim-sweeney/1573950910 and be notified of latest mixes? Unless I'm just missing something and the feature is already there?

The problem I have is that I have my Apple Music family account hooked up to my Alexa’s and Sonos so the kids can listen to whatever they want and I can play music through the Sonos using Alexa when I’m cooking and can’t use my hands.
Unfortunately this means that my favourites mix and any recommendations are tainted with the godawful noise my kids call music 😂
There really needs to be a way to link an Alexa or other device to a specific Apple Music family member.
- HomePods recognize your voice and switch accounts on the fly.
  
  Unfortunately they’re also much more expensive than the other options unfortunately. That feature does sound exact i need.
  however, I have a three storey house and so use Alexa’s drop in and announcement features as intercoms as the kids would never hear me from the kitchen on the ground floor when they’re in their top floor bedrooms. Being able to put Alexa’s wherever I want for very little outlay was a big plus.

Will be interesting to see what it suggests I discover. Currently it thinks I’m really into dababy and maroon 5, which aren’t my taste at all.
- Spotify added an AI DJ that usually works well, except for when it plays an artist I "used to listen to a lot but not so much recently" and then 5 Machine Gun Kelly songs come on. I've listened to him for about 30 seconds in total the 6 or so years I've had Spotify and it was only out of morbid curiosity when he released a "punk" album.
  Though their discovery Playlist is on point for me.

It's a bit late, but hey I will take it still. I tend to have pretty bad luck with discovery apps as I have narrow musical tastes, but I will give it a shot for a while.
I have had the most luck with the custom Apple Music stations honestly, seems to have the best balance of songs I know and like with newer stuff in the same vein. I am not sure I would spend as much time on a playlist entirely composed of new things.
- I have narrow musical tastes
  Tell me about it. So often ... I'm thinking to myself ... "sighs ... it's not about the genre ... it's about being good".
  
  There’s this song from a Dutch band that I like, but when I start a station with it, I just know it will misinterpret the reason why I like that particular song and inevitably it’ll start playing random songs by Dutch bands.

Apple surely can see the complete catalog of The Who that I have in my library, including the vinyl albums that I've ripped. Not that the Music app could see it, but Apple could also see the eye-watering amounts of money we've spent on tickets to watch 75 year old men prance around on stage (via the tickets from the last three tours in Wallet).
So what's the first song played on this new Discovery station? "Who Are You?" by...wait for it...The Who. Whether you're a Who fan or not, is there anyone walking this planet over the age of 21 that hasn't heard that song?

I tried it today and liked it so far, only one skip. For the most part it was "adjacent" to things I've listened to, and brought in a couple of new offerings. I have been really into the "My Station" stuff since it basically plays me an array of the things I already love, but the "Discovery" mode is interesting and I'll probably use it here and there to add likes to the algorithm for better suggestions.

Sick, hope it works well

wait, this wasn't a thing already? I dont use apple products so Im not familiar. YT Music has had a discovery playlist for years at this point.
- Apple Music already had a discovery playlist called New Music Mix that updated weekly. This new thing is a Discovery Station.

Right after a Spotify price increase, I just might give Apple Music another shot today!

Most of the indie artists I listen to and YouTubers publishing covers are available in Spotify but not in Apple Music. Moreover, I need to log in to apple account in macOS (system wide account) instead of just music app (app account). This is a no-go for me
- I just checked on my iPhone and I see the discovery playlist, without logging into anything else though?

56 comments