Apple Music for iOS

Apple Music enables you to stream on-demand tunes and videos, as well as international, 24/7 radio. The new streaming subscription service currently works with iOS devices, Mac, and PC, with Android and Apple TV compatibility coming this fall.

Pros

Multiple ways to search: Apple Music offers more than 30 million songs, which you can search by Trending, New Music, Hot Tracks, Recent Releases, Top Songs, Hot Albums, New Artists, Spotlights, Recommended Videos, and Discovered on Connect (Music's social media component). You can also limit these searches by genre.

Highly curated: Apple Music editors and participating music-magazine editors offer their sonic recommendations via playlists. You may also select seasonal playlists by activity, such as BBQing, Romancing, or Working Out. Each activity section has a couple dozen playlists to choose from, so you'll never go hungry for new music.

Plenty of options: Select a song, and you can choose to play it next, play it after that, start a Pandora-like station based on the track, add it to your music, make it available offline, show it in the iTunes Store, or share it over social media. When you love a song that you're playing, click the heart on the song page to help Apple give you better recommendations. All of this functionality worked well in testing.

Choose Artists For You: Under Account, select Choose Artists For You to inform Apple about what you're into. Bubbles appear with genre titles. Tap once on the ones you like, twice on the ones you love, and press and hold on the ones that you don't care for. Click Next to go to a page with bubbles filled with artist names. Perform the same tapping gestures as before for the ones you like or dislike.

Siri commands: Say "Play the No. 1 song from January 1, 1984," and Music will start streaming Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson's "Say Say Say." Unfortunately, it doesn't always work as planned. We asked for Madonna's "Open Your Heart" but instead got a "Borderline/Open Your Heart" medley from the "Glee" cast.

Connect: Follow your favorite artists on Apple Music to gain instant access to their singles, albums, and videos, as well as exclusive photos and posts. Apple automatically follows all the artists from your iTunes music library -- you can unfollow them or change the default setting to stop automatic following. You can also follow new artists and genres, such as Classic Rock, Rock, and Pop.

Beats 1: One of our favorite Apple Music features is Beats 1, an international, 24/7 radio station, fronted by popular British DJ Zane Lowe. If you're not a fan, listen to other radio stations based on your favorite artists and genres.

Long free trial: Click on the Apple Music icon for the first time and you'll be given the option to start a three-month free trial. You are then given two choices: Individual plan, which costs $9.99 per month and a Family plan for up to six people for $14.99 per month.

Cons

Home Sharing removal: With the new Music app, you can no longer share your iTunes music library with other users on your Wi-Fi network.

Delays and bugs: When we clicked on videos, only the songs played while the videos slowly loaded, which got annoying fast. By the time the videos were watchable, we had moved on. Also, when we tried to dismiss genres and artists we disliked in Choose Artists For You, they reappeared, continuing to clutter our screen as we tried to narrow our selections. Finally, once we clicked all the artists and genres we loved, it took a while for Apple Music to load tailored recommendations.

Bottom Line

Apple Music is an excellent option for music fans. With over 30 million songs to choose from, expertly curated playlists, Beats 1 radio, and plenty of social options, there's no reason not to register.