I'm new to the Mac environment and I think Apple Music sucks! What's a good alternative?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iMac 27″, macOS 13.5
So let me be a bit more precise:
I want to be able to access my music catalog through a Finder type method. My Music folder is organized by artist with all albums of an artist in that folder, listed by year. In some cases, if an artist also has a multi-album compilation, those albums are in the compilation folder. Some albums are organized under their own Genre folder, and all multi-artist albums are in folders named Various Artists.
With Apple Music, I seem to be stuck with only being able to sort my music by Album, Artist, Genre, and Song. However, when a choose an artist, I cannot access that artist's body of work in columns, but I'm restricted to the Album formatting, and, if I have many albums by one artist (e.g. about 30 albums by The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, etc.), I have to scroll through everything in order to get to the one I want. It's a bloody PAIN in the A**!
And, if I want to find an artist on an album of various artists, and then play that album, it's a nightmare!
Maybe I'm not seeing some obvious solution to this, but, honestly, I find Apple's methods extremely arcane and not at all the easy, user-friendly system that is touted by many. I'm really starting to regret moving from the PC system!
BTW, I have a 2019 Mac with Intel 8-core i9, running the latest version of Ventura, I have no idea what Catalina is or how to run a "Windows" version of iTunes (an Apple program!) on a Mac (the whole idea sounds quite ridiculous!).
Tidal, Pandora and Spotify are decent alternatives. Personally, I prefer the Apple Music App and streaming over the others though and I’ve used paid versions of them all. You might play around with the Apple Music App for a bit and see if you can get comfortable with it.
Ihor280 Said:
"It's not a problem with playing my mp3s - it's being able to easily manage/play my personal collection of 1000s of albums"
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For thought…
Use of a Virtual Machine to Play in Windows:
On a Virtual Machine, you can enable FTP in the settings to allow it to sync with the Mac. For ease of access, create shortcut on the Desktop on your Mac to where you have these music files stored. With a shortcut, all will be accessible through FTP settings on the Virtual Machine.
Determining Virtual Machine Software to Get:
Virtual Machine applications include VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Learn more here: What Is a Virtual Machine? - VMWare Support. As of this reply, Parallels is what use for a Mac with a Silicon processor.
It is true that the interface of Apple music on Mac is a little outdated but we must not underestimate the power and sound quality of Apple music, without forgetting the live monitoring of instant lyrics (live sing).
After that if you are still not satisfied with this streaming service I invite you to go to the deezer.com website to download the Deezer app on your Mac to benefit from a more current interface, a rich catalog of more than 100M of songs and a quality of service (sound and visual) of high quality equivalent to the Apple Music service.
My concern is price. I know other services have increased price, but Apple in particular has priced Apple One too high with back to back price hikes of 10%+, two times in two years. Sorry, but incomes have just not kept up. I have dropped Apple One for at least 1-2 months to save about $60 (I kept Cloud because I basically had no choice). If I go back to Apple One, I will drop it again at the end of the year to get the price hike “neutralized”. But come on Apple…surely you have forced other people to drop their service and can see the negative impact of raising prices but losing subscribers??? Is that really what you wanted? Well, it worked on me. Problem is, I miss News+ AND Music. But I’ll make at least one month away from the service. In the mean time, I am looking for alternatives.
It's great that column view is available in Songs. But it isn't in Playlists. And, as the previous poster said, it would be nice to choose Artist view and be able to sort by year, date purchased, etc.
Typical Mac users continually replying to continue trying to use an app the OP clearly doesn't care for. Im OS Agnostic - I seriously don't have an issue using Mac or Windows. I am an Network Engineer and I support both. I have both, but the one thing that has always annoyed me about Macs isn't the Mac itself, its the users who pretty much are such a cult they cant believe that anyone would want to use something Apple didn't create. The music app sucks if your more than a casual music collector. I, like the OP have a ton of music - currently at 5 TB. Some of it I constantly listen to, some of it rarely, but what i have a taste to hear can change on a dime.
There are a lot more music managers out there than the Music app, some better than others, some for free and some that have a reasonable price and others that are insane.
My answer for the OP is this: Your probably going to use a combination of apps because I have not found a reasonably priced one that does everything I want AND has a good player app.
Personally, I use MusicBrainz Picard to organize. It is phenomenal for tagging and has hundreds of free plugins, and there are paid ones that provide even more database access. Its easy to use and gets somewhat regular updates. I use Swinsian for a player. It has some good oranization capabilities but I still prefer Picard.
I do that but it's tedious. Another problem I discovered recently is that Apple Music does not import all my music into its library. Along with the other shortcomings, I've decided to go back to Windows and kick my iMac to the curb.
Does Elmedia Player (or VOX Player) allow you to play music on your macbook from an usb connected device like an iPod Classic, an iPhone or just an external hard disk? This used to be my workflow on iTunes/High Sierra, no need to waste my macbook‘s HD for my music library and I like having different music libraries on different devices. TIA.
In bothe Playlist view and ARtist view you can choose a sort option.
It's not a problem with playing my mp3s - it's being able to easily manage/play my personal collection of 1000s of albums
Hi,
You could use Vox, VLC or fidelia. There are few others - search for other options.
Jim
(accidental duplicate)
My choice is VOX: MP3 & FLAC Music Player. It is a great and easy to use music player on mac.
Apple Music still s*cks. You can’t play music on your macbook from a usb connected iPod Classic or an iPhone, which happens to be my workflow.
Alternatives to the Music App on my new Mac, to play my own music collection
