Most die-hard Apple Music fans are expected to roll over to the paid subscription after the ninety-day free trial ends this month in October. However, the main question is: will the rest of the not-so-fanatic Apple Music users remain subscribed to the service? Has the service delivered real value to its users? And most importantly, does the service compare favourably to other music streaming services?
About three months have elapsed since Apple offered the free trial of its music service. And the fact is most people think that Apple’s service has not improved in a substantial way during this period. The users expressed that it was unpleasantly mainstream with a focus on popular music artists.
The playlists and the radio had hardly any variety in its selection of music. Most users were offered music by popular artists such as Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Kate Perry, and One Direction. It forced mainstream pop music recommendations on everyone, even to those who were more into other music genres like Progressive Rock or Dance music.
Apple Music still has not fully worked out its strategy of what it should offer to each user. It could easily have used survey data to find out what sorts of music the users actually wanted to listen to, instead of assuming what users would want to listen to.
Apart from the Apple Music recommendations, the actual application has also not seen major updates after its release. It’s true that no music app is perfect, but the Apple Music App is full of glitches.
The Apple Music, iCloud Music Library, and iTunes crashed during the cloud sync process. Moreover, the app usually hanged on opening when no internet connection was detected, and it had a less user friendly interface to locate and search music on the handset.
Then there is the social network experience that falls short of offering the best experience to users. Apple has allowed artists to posts news on the social ‘bulletin board’. But listeners following the social network have very few options to customize the feeds or track the posts.
The social media network completely ignores the connected 
experience of online music. Sharing playlists of artists and tracks should have been an essential part of the social media experience, but sadly, Apple decided to ignore this feature too.
The fact is that Apple has been considerably late in uppping its game this time. The same was the situation with its hardware, but the company turned the table around through coming up with an irresistible offering for users. That is certainly not the case with Apple Music.
Apple’s strategy for its Apple Music service lacks the vision and imagination of its founder, Steve Jobs. It seems that the company is content with being a follower instead of the leader in music streaming. However, the reality is that it has failed miserably in being a follower too, as Apple Music lacks all the features that could have made it a success.
At the end of the day, Apple Music service must make drastic changes if it wants to win the hearts, and wallet, of consumers. Apple needs to offer a better social media experience, and improve the user interface if it wants Apple Music to get accepted by the consumers and justify its high subscription charges.
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