Tomas Chlebek When she was at WWDC 2015 last June introducing the new Apple Music service, was split into three parts – the streaming service itself, Beats 1 XNUMX/XNUMX live radio, and Connect, a social network directly connecting artists with their audiences. The streaming service itself was praised and criticized at launch, but Connect was not talked about much. Since then, the situation in this regard has rather worsened.
Apple Music Connect is an indirect successor to Ping, Apple's first attempt at a music-focused social network. Ping, introduced in 2010 and canceled in 2012, was intended to encourage iTunes customers to follow artists for new music and concert updates, and to follow friends for interesting music recommendations.
Connect has completely given up trying to connect music fans with each other. Instead, he wanted to offer a place for artists to share work-in-progress songs, concert or studio photos and videos, and other news and highlights with their fans in the same app they use to listen. “iTunes” on Mac and “Music” on iOS had the potential to provide a complete, living world of music. Even at the moment, they have such potential, led by Apple Music Connect, but more than half a year after the launch, it is a bit low.
From a music fan's point of view, Connect is interesting at first glance. When the application is first launched, it starts following several artists, looks through their posts and finds some information about an upcoming album or concert line, or discovers a video that it has not seen anywhere else. He starts browsing the music library on his iOS device and taps "follow" on artists who have a profile on Connect.
But in time, he finds out that many artists do not have a profile on Connect and many others do not share much here. Moreover, if the user interface on the iPhone seems nice but rather basic, he will be in for an unpleasant surprise when switching to the computer, where he will see exactly the same thing - one or two narrow bars in the middle of the display.
From a musician's point of view, Connect is also interesting at first glance. They create a profile and discover that they can share many types of content: finished new songs, songs in progress, photos, snippets or full lyrics, behind-the-scenes videos. But he soon notices that sharing is often not easy and it is not clear with whom he actually shares the results of his creation. About this experience he broke it down Dave Wiskus, member of the New York indie band Airplane Mode.
He writes: "Imagine a social network where you can't see how many people are following you, you can't contact any of your fans directly, you have no idea how successful your posts are, you can't follow others easily, and you can't even change your avatar."
He then elaborates on the avatar problem. After establishing the band's profile on Connect, he tried to use the new network to communicate with fans. He shared new compositions, sound experiments and information and the process of making music. But another artist appeared, a rapper, who also tried to use the name "Airplane Mode". He then canceled the profile of the same name, but the band kept his avatar.
Dave discovered that he had no option to change the avatar and therefore contacted Apple support. After repeated urging, she created a new profile for the band with the correct avatar and made it available to Dave. However, he suddenly lost access to the band's original profile. As a result, he got the desired avatar, but lost all posts and all followers. Dave could no longer get in touch with them through Connect, as it is not possible to contact users directly, only to comment on individual posts by artists. In addition, he never found out how many people actually followed/follow his band on Connect.
As for sharing the content itself, it's not easy at all either. The song cannot be shared directly, you need to create a post and add the song to it by searching in the library of the given device (in the Music application on iOS devices, anywhere on the drive on Mac). Then you can edit information about it, such as name, type (finished, in progress, etc.), image, etc. But Dave encountered a problem when editing, when even after filling in all the fields, the "done" button still did not light up. After trying everything, he found that adding a space after the artist name and then deleting it fixed the error. Posts that have already been published can be deleted, but not only edited.
Artists and fans alike can share posts on other social services and via text message, email, or on the web as a link or player. However, a simple share button directly next to the song, such as on SoundCloud, is not enough to embed the player on the page. You need to use the service iTunes Link Maker – find the desired song or album in it and thus obtain the necessary code. With songs shared in this way or music uploaded directly to Connect, its creator will not know how many people have played it.
Dave sums up the situation by saying that "it's a confusing mess for the fan, a black hole for the artist". In the discussions under the posts, it is impossible to respond effectively so that the person in question notices it immediately, and partly most likely as a result of this, no interesting exchanges of opinions usually take place. Users do not appear as people here, but only as names with pieces of text that cannot be tracked further. Artists have no way to effectively respond to their questions.
Streaming services like Spotify or Deezer are good for listening to music, but the social component, especially in terms of interaction between artists and fans, is almost non-existent. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter allow artists to communicate with fans directly and effectively, but offer very limited possibilities in terms of sharing the art itself.
Apple Music and Connect want to offer both. For now, however, it still remains only a matter of will and potential, because in practice Connect is unintuitive and complicated for artists, and gives fans only small opportunities for socialization. Apple presented a very interesting and relatively unique concept with Music and Connect, but its implementation is still insufficient at best to achieve its announced goals. Apple has a lot to do in this regard, but so far it is not showing much signs of work.
that's a shame, otherwise it would be great
It's still great. I personally use it by searching for albums that I download and listen to and mixing playlists. For €5,99 I can listen to so much music for which I would otherwise pay thousands per month.
It's not for someone who drives 5 albums around, but if you like listening to different music, it's fine - and a failed connect is a completely inferior matter.