Q: Would anyone be kind enough to help me get my head around Apple music?

Hey Jimmy - my favourite kind of post so I'll give it a go!

"- It matches the music I own to what is in its cloud and sort of duplicates my music collection in the cloud.  Now my music is available through all my devices everywhere I go without having to faff about syncing.  Presume I just launch the music app."

Yes, Apple Music scans up to 100,000 songs of your own music library and attempts to match your songs with those in the Apple Music catalogue. If a match is found, you can re-download that song on another device but it will still have DRM (Digital Rights Management) on it so you can't burn it to a CD for example. Any songs not matched will be uploaded as they are and accessed in their original format.

"Not sure how many devices?"

I am unaware of a device limit. I have Apple Music on an iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air for the standard £9.99-per-month subscription.

"Not sure if I have to be connected to Wifi/3g/4g for this to work?"

You have to be connected to the Internet for the initial library upload and for streaming the music whether that is through a wired or wireless connection.

"Not sure if my playlists will also appear?"

Yes, your playlists you have already made in iTunes will appear across all your devices.

"If I pay £10 a month I can also access all other music in the world ever which makes my iPhone this huge jukebox. "

Yes, £9.99-per-month will give you access to the entire Apple Music catalogue. I don't think this quite covers all music in the world ever, but in Apple's word "almost" all!

"Not sure why - if it gives me access to all music ever - it would bother duplicating my music collection in the cloud as above?  But the duplicating my music library in the cloud bit is "iTunes match" whereas the having access to all the music in the world bit is Apple Music.  And if you subscribe to Apple music you get the whole shebang."

This is a good point; I think it's basically Apple's way of saying, 'We know you've already purchased X amount of music, so we don't want that to be lost in the vastness of our catalogue'. You can imagine people signing up to Apple Music with their own music and playlists suddenly being lost and then having to search and put back their favourite music - wouldn't go down too well! Plus, the upload includes music from random CDs that you may have collected over the years that isn't in Apple's catalogue. iTunes Match differs from Apple Music in that it provides a match for your music to the iTunes Store catalogue and NOT the Apple Music catalogue. Why does that matter? The iTunes Store catalogue is DRM free, the Apple Music catalogue is not. What's DRM? Digital Rights Management which basically means in this case if you cancel your Apple Music subscription, any matched tracks you've downloaded to other devices will be rendered useless but with iTunes Match, those songs are yours to do with as you wish.

"- I can connect all this with the Sonos app (I just got bought a Sonos Play 1 for birthday ).  In Sonos, connected with Apple Music, I can probably now build new playlists consisting of music which I don't currently own in my music collection.  But if I ever de-subscribe from Apple music - it will all disappear."

Yes, Apple Music works with Sonos. Both the iOS and Mac OS Sonos apps simply connect and let you access your Apple Music service with all its playlists as they are. If you cancelled your subscription, this connection would disappear. However, you can of course create your own Sonos playlists which mix in Apple Music songs with other music sources within the Sonos app itself. Then, only the added songs from Apple Music would disappear If you cancelled your Apple Music subscription.

"- This is better than paying for Spotify membership because ... ?"

Apple will give you many reasons why. For me personally, it is the ability to mix my own music collection with an online streaming music collection all in one place or app. Previous to Apple Music, I would have to go to my Music app to play my music I already have and then Spotify to play other music I didn't necessarily want to own, but wanted to listen to. Apple Music gives me the best of both worlds. There are other reasons such as Connect, iCloud music sharing etc but for me, that's the winner.

Hope that covers most your queries but please feel free to reply for any further clarification.

"Not sure why - if it gives me access to all music ever - it would bother duplicating my music collection in the cloud as above?  But the duplicating my music library in the cloud bit is "iTunes match" whereas the having access to all the music in the world bit is Apple Music.  And if you subscribe to Apple music you get the whole shebang."

AppleMusic hasn’t licensed every album ever recorded so the duplication of your collection guarantees you’ll have access to all your music, even the music Apple doesn’t have rights to. This means, among other things, I can use AppleMusic to listen to the music my band recorded when I was in college since I digitized it years ago.

Also, this duplication is not quite like iTunes Match. In almost all respects but one it is. The big difference is this. With iTunes Match any of my music that’s been uploaded to the cloud can be downloaded to any registered device I own without any kind of DRM but with AppleMusic DRM is attached to the music that Apple has licensed to stream unless you purchased it from the iTunes Store. In other words, The Beatles music on my main iTunes computer has no DRM and I ripped the CDs I owned. The Beatles music on my iPhone was downloaded via AppleMusic so it has DRM on it. (I can sync my iPhone to my main computer to avoid this but the convenience of downloading via AppleMusic generally trumps this.) Again any music I purchased through the iTunes Store is downloaded without DRM.

"- This is better than paying for Spotify membership because ... ?"

In many ways I like Spotify better than AppleMusic for discovering more music and listening to curated playlists. I think Spotify does both better for me. I’m probably not either company’s target audience: I’m nearing 60 and have an eclectic taste in music. In high school and college I played in symphonic and jazz orchestras as well as a somewhat schizophrenic rock band. (We covered everything from ELP to the Dead to Lynard Skynard.) AppleMusic doesn’t know what to do with me . What I really like about it though is the access to all my own playlists plus access to all the new music coming out today. I typically use free Spotify to listen at work which lets me find the new music I then add to my playlists on AppleMusic.