Postal Address Insanity: Why I Switched from Spotify to Apple Music

From their web site “Spotify USA, Inc. provides the Spotify service to users in the United States.” So indeed, all the customers of Spotify USA live in the US.

I use the 2nd line. And really. UPS stores and the USPS can’t figure this out. I mean how many of these are there? 1000? 10,000?

My wife and I upgraded to a Spotify family plan around six months ago. I had a couple of basic questions regarding the feasibility of seeding my wife’s new account with the music from my long-time Spotify account. We were hoping to begin with the same artist and music lists, since we listen to the same music on devices in different rooms of the house.

Long story short, I got all kinds of wrong information. . . Initially Spotify replied “No Problem.” The attitude of the first so-called “customer support” rep was very laid back and the slang he used when communicating with us gave me the impression that he was barely out of his teenage years. (I’m 64 and my wife is 72.) Normally I couldn’t care less about something like that. . . But combined with the wrong information and the fact that getting straight answers wound up requiring no fewer than 3 different reps over the course of two days, it became a maddening experience.

Another time I had my Spotify account closed because of a problem on their end. One day out of the blue I received an email informing me that Spotify was sorry to see me go and that was that! Since my account was closed, I could not communicate directly with Spotify. I wound up creating a new account and getting the mess resolved took several days (fortunately all my music preferences were retrieved) and the same level of miscommunication I experienced the other time I needed help.

I think that it is time to take a good look at Apple’s music plans. . . I’ve haven’t been happy paying the monthly fee to Spotify since the family plan debacle. Hearing that transferring my Spotify music preferences to Apple is relatively easy is all that I needed to hear. . . Thanks for the heads-up.

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This problem has been familiar to me (outside the US), but unfortunately Apple Music is not a real alternative since it will entirely mess up my carefully tagged music library, irrespective of what you tell it to. So for me, it’s unusable.

I think one of the key reasons why Apple can afford to be less restrictive with Apple Music is that in order to add somebody to your Apple Music family plan, you have to add them to your entire Family Plan, which not only lets them share your Apple Music subscription, but also iCloud Storage, iTunes and App Store purchase history, and your credit card billing profile — meaning that any purchases they make from the iTunes Store or App Store get billed to your credit card.

With features like that in place, people are far less likely to share their Apple Music family plan with anybody who isn’t a very close family member or friend, and in fact a friend of mine won’t even share it with his adult sister who lives in the same household with him, as of course they keep all of their finances separate, so naturally he doesn’t want to have to deal with her purchases going to his credit card (and she doesn’t want to have to deal with the only workaround — buying iTunes gift cards or pre-loading her account with her own money).

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Sounds similar to what you have to do for FedEx or UPS to deliver to a US Post Office box.
You have to use the physical STREET address of the US Post Office where you get your mail followed by “Unit x…” (where “x…” is the box number) and the correct zip code as sometimes USPS boxes have their own zip code.

Let me start by stating that I dumped Apple Music because of its absurd music choices of playlists and music suggestions. After more than a year I decided the learning curve was long past its expiration date and the experience just wasn’t worth the expense of a subscription anymore. I have been using Spotify’s free version for a few months now and I can tell you that the music lists it offers me are not just accurate but spot on (pun intended). It pains me to hear about the troubles with Spotify. I thought I finally found a decent music service.
Well! Back to cd’s and radio then…

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My experience way back when was that Spotify did a better job of recommending music than Apple as well. What I’ve “discovered,” however, is that I prefer the “Play my music” command to Siri, which shuffles through my music library. That way I only get music I like. I wish I could get Apple Music to play “jazz in my library” or “80s rock in my library” but that seems beyond it.

(I gave up on Spotify because of its 10,000 track limit, as Josh mentioned in an aside in the article.)

Thanks for the Siri tip.
I will have to get my music back into iTunes. When I abandoned Apple Music I seem to have lost a number of music tracks that were mine. Another nuisance is the repetitive pop up from iTunes that keeps asking my password for my iTunes music library. No matter what I try, it keeps popping up. Any suggestion to kill this permanently?

iTunes shouldn’t keep asking for the password. My guess is that it’s storing the password in Keychain Access; could something be preventing that from happening?

As far as iTunes losing things, there are a bunch of reasons that can happen, and it depends a bit on where the tracks came from: ripped from CD, purchased from the iTunes Store, or just added from Apple Music.

Musconvtool is one of the best tool to transfer playlist from Spotify to Apple Music. It has been the easier way to transfer playlist from one to another.