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Macintosh News => Apple News => Topic started by: HCK on December 20, 2021, 04:05:11 pm



Title: Apple Music Voice Plan first listen: Equal parts fun and frustration
Post by: HCK on December 20, 2021, 04:05:11 pm
Apple Music Voice Plan first listen: Equal parts fun and frustration

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<body><section class="wp-block-bigbite-multi-title"><div class="container"></div></section><p>If you try to play a full song in Apple Music with the new Voice Plan by tapping on it in the app, you&rsquo;ll get a warning that you need to ask Siri to play it instead. Whether or not you&rsquo;ll actually hear the song you want is another question entirely.</p>



<p>A new voice-controlled Apple Music subscription tier called&nbsp;<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=111346X1569486&amp;url=https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/apple-introduces-the-apple-music-voice-plan/&amp;xcust=1-1-560380-1-0-0&amp;sref=https://www.macworld.com/feed" rel="nofollow">Apple Music Voice Plan[/url]&nbsp;has arrived just in time for all of those new Apple devices under the Christmas tree. Priced at $4.99 per month (as opposed to $9.99 for the full subscription), it&rsquo;s Apple&rsquo;s cheapest Music plan and the clearest sign yet that it has no intention of launching an ad-supported tier like Spotify.</p>



<p>Nothing about the Apple Music Voice Plan is conventional. While you can sign up within the Apple Music app, Apple also lets you say, &ldquo;Hey Siri, start my Apple Music Voice trial&rdquo; to instantly begin a 7-day no-obligation trial. (You can also ask Siri to play a song, which should bring up a prompt asking if you would like to start a trial.) You don&rsquo;t need to have a credit card on file or remember to cancel a recurring subscription, though you can get three months free if you turn on auto-renewal.</p>



<p>Naturally, the lower price brings fewer amenities. Unlike the full Apple Music subscription, Apple Music Voice Plan does not allow you to make personal playlists, so you&rsquo;ll need to stick with the ones that are already in the system. Thankfully there are a lot of them spanning all ends of the musical spectrum, though other features like Spatial Audio and the time-synced lyric are also missing. But the biggest thing that&rsquo;s lacking is the confidence that you&rsquo;re going to hear the song you want.</p>



<h2 id="siri-killed-the-radio-star">Siri killed the radio star</h2>



<p>With a sparse interface, you&rsquo;re encouraged to start listening right away with Apple Music Voice. I began my search in the Radio section, where Apple&rsquo;s own Music1 radio station broadcasts live all day. I then scrolled down to the Local Broadcasters area to get a taste of different stations from around the world. This isn&rsquo;t a feature that&rsquo;s exclusive to Apple Music, but it&rsquo;s nice to be able to choose stations from several services, including TuneIn, iHeartRadio, and Audacy.</p>


<div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" src="https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?quality=50&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1200" alt="Apple Music Siri requests" class="wp-image-560386" srcset="https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?quality=50&amp;strip=all 2400w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 300w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 768w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1200w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1536w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 2048w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?resize=1240%2C826&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1240w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-siri-miss.jpg?resize=150%2C100&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 150w" width="1200" height="800" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption><p>Siri is hit or miss when it comes to finding the music you want to listen to.</p></figcaption></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG</p></div>



<p>I quickly browsed past several of my favorite stations and landed on an unfamiliar one, Radio Meuh, an internet electronic music station from the French Alps. Making my selection, I continued to scroll around the Local Broadcasters section when a voice on Radio Meuh leaped out at me and sang, &ldquo;Stop scrolling and connect!&rdquo;</p>



<p>I was legit taken aback for a second thinking Siri was keeping musical tabs on me, but I quickly realized that it was all a coincidence. It was a song actually called&nbsp;<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=111346X1569486&amp;url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjmouTCwJMY&amp;xcust=1-1-560380-1-0-0&amp;sref=https://www.macworld.com/feed" rel="nofollow">&ldquo;Stop Scrolling and Connect&rdquo;[/url]&nbsp;by Londoner Ziggy Funk that just happened to be playing at just the right time.</p>



<p>But while Siri won&rsquo;t admonish you through song, it will clap back if you try to tap a song to play anything other than a preview snippet. Siri is your guide through Apple Music Voice, and it does a mostly acceptable job. I asked Siri to play various genres of music&mdash;disco, house, drum &amp; bass, rock, punk, and reggae&mdash;and was given appropriate stations for each. And when I asked it to specifically &ldquo;play some music for sleeping,&rdquo; I got a laidback meditation station, so Apple has clearly given a lot of thought to the kinds of things Voice subscribers will ask Siri to play.</p>



<h2 id="siri-has-a-lot-to-learn">Siri has a lot to learn</h2>



<p>Other Siri requests weren&rsquo;t so successful. Though I attempted to speak slowly and clearly to Siri as I went along, there were still some amusing misunderstandings between us. The best one was when I said, &ldquo;Hey Siri, play some polka music,&rdquo; hoping to hear some Lawrence Welk, and Siri brought up a poker podcast instead. Swing and a miss.</p>


<div class="extendedBlock-wrapper block-coreImage undefined"><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" src="https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?quality=50&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1200" alt="Apple Music Siri miss" class="wp-image-560385" srcset="https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?quality=50&amp;strip=all 2400w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 300w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 768w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1200w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?resize=1536%2C1024&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1536w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?resize=2048%2C1365&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 2048w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?resize=1240%2C826&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 1240w, https://b2c-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/apple-music-point-of-no-return.jpg?resize=150%2C100&amp;quality=50&amp;strip=all 150w" width="1200" height="800" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /><figcaption><p>You never quite know what you&rsquo;re going to get when you ask Siri to play a song.</p></figcaption></figure><p class="imageCredit">IDG</p></div>



<p>In another instance, I wanted Siri to play the 1987 pop hit &ldquo;Point of No Return&rdquo; by Expos&eacute;, but I only asked for the song title and not the artist. Instead, a 1977 song, &ldquo;Point of Know Return&rdquo; by Kansas, started playing. When I tried again, Siri surfaced a 2003 song called &ldquo;Point of No Return&rdquo; by rapper Immortal Technique. The third time was the charm, but you might want to be very precise to get Siri to play the song you want.</p>



<p>All of the voice commands that you can use with the Apple Music Voice Plan may sound very familiar if you use AirPods or have a HomePod. It&rsquo;s somewhat similar to Amazon&rsquo;s Single Device plan ($3.99/month) that lets you can basically ask Alexa the same musical questions that you ask Siri, though that&rsquo;s tied to a single Echo. Spotify also launched its own &ldquo;Hey Spotify&rdquo; feature earlier this year, but that&rsquo;s more of a companion than a service. Apple is trying something unique with the Apple Music Voice Plan that might work for some people, provided Siri gets better at understanding what you want to hear.</p>



<p>But $4.99 a month is a nice price for the fun and listening potential that you can have with the Apple Music Voice Plan, and a decent option to consider if $10 is too much to add to your monthly streaming allotment. As a professional DJ and writer who loves to record her own continuously mixed sets as opposed to making or listening to unmixed playlists, I&rsquo;m not really the target customer for a service like this, but the price and convenience is tempting&mdash;as long as Siri gets a lot better.</p>
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Source: Apple Music Voice Plan first listen: Equal parts fun and frustration (https://www.macworld.com/article/560380/apple-music-voice-plan-review.html)