Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2019/09/06/apple-launches-beta-of-apple-music-for-the-web/
Have you been wishing you could access Apple Music on a non-Apple platform like that Windows machine at work? You’re in luck—Apple has now launched a beta of a Web-based Apple Music client that brings the service to any platform with a modern Web browser.
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Interesting. So it can access the local iTunes library on a Mac or PC?
It can if you use Apple Music to sync your library to iCloud.
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As a classical music lover, the first thing I noticed is that it doesn’t honor my choice of listing albums in my library by work and movement, rather than by song. Otherwise, it looks quite slick. I see it does honor my system’s light/dark setting, obviously a much higher priority for Apple.
That’s great if you use Apple Music to rent your music. But if you have gigabytes of music locally on your Mac or PC, it means renting space in iCloud, which is also a winner for Apple. Of course with the new Music app, that replaces iTunes going forward, you can still listen to your music locally. Thet advantage of the browser based app is that it offers more flexibility to a wider variety of users. Which, as you say, puts the emphasis on services, which is a prosperous sector of Apple’s portfolio already. Everybody seems to be adopting the services model, including Adobe, Microsoft and Google.
If you subscribe to Apple Music, it uploads your local library content (matching songs where possible) without counting against your iCloud Storage (though there is a 100,000 song limit). You can use the free 5 GB iCloud tier and music content will not count against that storage.
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That’s great if you use Apple Music to rent your music. But if you have gigabytes of music locally on your Mac or PC, it means renting space in iCloud, which is also a winner for Apple.
I do have a ton of music that I’ve collected from various sources sitting on my hard drive and after years and years of use and other stuff thrown in, my iTunes library has grown into a big sloppy mess that I can’t seem to organize effectively. Remember the old horror movie “The Blob?”
Of course with the new Music app, that replaces iTunes going forward, you can still listen to your music locally. Thet advantage of the browser based app is that it offers more flexibility to a wider variety of users.
I think it makes a lot of sense that music, podcasts and videos will be split up into separate apps.
Which, as you say, puts the emphasis on services, which is a prosperous sector of Apple’s portfolio already. Everybody seems to be adopting the services model, including Adobe, Microsoft and Google.
Don’t forget Spotify, Pandora, Netflix, Disney/Hulu, etc. But what I think sets Apple and Disney apart is that they want to sell you a lot of other expensive stuff, like iPhones, Macs, Watches, AirPods, iPads, and Disney has toys, theme parks, cruises, clothing, books, etc., etc. I suspect that’s why Disney and Apple’s prices are comparably cheaper.
Adobe and Microsoft are different stories. I think the switched to subscription services because how many more highly compelling features could they add to Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Lightroom, etc every year or two or so that will be convince enough that people would want to pay hundreds of dollars to upgrade. I’m plugging along with CS5 just fine.