Musicians Are Happy With Apple Right Now

Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon are joining forces to appeal a ruling by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board that would increase payouts to songwriters by 44%. Can’t have the people producing music for your service making more money. But Apple isn’t joining the appeal, which makes musicians happy.

We thank Apple Music for accepting the CRB decision and continuing to be a friend to songwriters,” he said. “While Spotify and Amazon surely hope this will play out in a quiet appellate courtroom, every songwriter and every fan of music should stand up and take notice. We will fight with every available resource to protect the CRB’s decision.

Physical Music Purchases Surpass iTunes Downloads

Sales of physical music media, like CDs and vinyls, have surpassed the number of people downloading music from iTunes. Which makes sense because everyone else has moved on to streaming music, which accounted for 75% of revenue last year for the recording industry.

Downloads represented just 11 percent of US labels’ revenue last year, a music industry trade group said Thursday. Physical sales — the term for music formats you can actually hold, which are mostly CDs and vinyl at this point — booked 12 percent.

Apple's Classical Music Problem

Last year Apple Music got its very own classical music section, but it seems as if it has languished ever since.

Frustrations with classical music streaming are nothing new, but as Charles tells us, this is a problem that affects nearly every streaming music service, including Apple Music rival Spotify. In an effort to find out exactly what’s wrong with classical music on Apple Music — and what steps could be taken to address these problems — we asked Charles and Rumiz to detail the biggest issues with classical music on Apple Music.

Verizon Unlimited Customers Get Free Apple Music

Customers of Verizon Unlimited plans will get free, full Apple Music as a perk. This is for the Beyond Unlimited and Above Unlimited plans.

The bonus Apple Music should be launched in the next couple of days, according to the information that we received. Verizon is yet to make the announcement publicly, but the information comes from a source that has proved reliable in the past.

Doppler Music Player Updated With New Features

Doppler, an app I reviewed a while back, just got a big update today. It’s a music player app that lets you play music offline, import MP3s, FLAC files, and more. Version 1.2 dropped today, and it brings features like:

Added support for importing music from Safari
Added support for scrobbling to Last.fm
Added support for sending now playing updates to Last.fm when connected to Wi-Fi
Added support for saving Last.fm scrobbles while listening offline
Added support for editing album information
Added support for editing album artwork
Added support for searching and downloading album artwork
Added support for setting album artwork from Photo library and clipboard
Added indicator for changed metadata fields
Added confirmation alert before deleting albums and songs

Doppler music player is available on the App Store for US$3.99.

SongShift Lets You Transfer Apple Music Playlists to Other Services

There’s an app called SongShift that lets you transfer Apple Music playlists to other services. Supported services include Apple Music, Deezer, Discogs, HypeMachine, LastFM, Napster, Pandora, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube. You can “shift” complete playlists from one streaming service to another, and automatically keep all of your playlists synced with each other. I’ve heard some Apple customers say that when they unsubscribe from Apple Music, then re-subscribe later on, none of their playlists and content is saved. I’ve never unsubscribed yet so I haven’t run into this issue, but it sounds like SongShift can help in these cases. App Store: SongShift – Free

Want an Apple Music Web Player? Try This

Ever since Apple Music first came out, people have been clamoring for an Apple Music web player. Recently, Apple has opened an Apple Music API for developers. Although Apple hasn’t created an official Apple Music web player, Redditor u/zseguin has come to the rescue. It’s still in early development, but the code is available on GitHub. All you have to do to get started is sign in with your Apple ID, and allow the app to connect to your account. Everything is available. Not only can you find your own music, but even Apple Music recommendations in the For You section. However, note that the player is built on an API that is currently in beta. The application may stop working at any time.