I started using Beats Music a few months ago, and have really been enjoying the custom playlists that it’s been suggesting for me. I think Apple has done a good job overall moving the functionality of Beats over to Apple Music, but there were a couple things I used to do in Beats that it took a little figuring out on how to do the same thing under the new regime.
The “Introduction to” playlists
Almost every artist on Beats Music had a playlist called “Introduction to <artist name>”, which would typically contain a good number of the “greatest hits” from that artist, along with a few other less well known, but good tracks mixed in. I found these playlists to be a fantastic way to get acquainted with the work of an artist I had not listened to much before.
When I found such an artist (typically when playing some mixed playlist that they were in), I could simply tap on that artist, then there was a “Playlists” section on the artist page where I could go find the “introduction” playlist and subscribe to it. This approach doesn’t work in Apple Music though, as the artist page seems to only show their tracks and albums, but not playlists they’re in.
I did find a new approach though, which is to simply search for that artist’s name instead. In the search results, there is a “Playlists” section that will contain any playlists that contain songs from that artist, including the “introduction” playlist.
“Loved” songs
Apple Music brings over the ability from Beats Music to “love” a song by tapping the little heart icon next to it. This gives Apple Music feedback on what you like, and lets it make better suggestions for you. One thing that I always wished Beats Music had (or if it did, I could never manage to find it) was the ability to see a complete list of songs that I had already “loved”.
This is now possible under Apple Music, by creating a smart playlist with a rule reading “Loved is true”. That will list all the songs that you’ve marked as loved in a single convenient playlist. Note that there doesn’t appear to be any way to create smart playlists on iOS, so you’ll need to create the playlist using iTunes on your Mac or PC, but that playlist will then automatically sync over to your iOS device (assuming you have iCloud Music Library enabled, of course).
On a related note, Beats also had a “don’t love” button (heart with an X through it) that you could press if you didn’t like a particular song very much. There doesn’t appear to be an equivalent button in Apple Music though. I don’t know how much effect that button had on your suggestions, but I did find it satisfying to press for particularly egregious choices that would come up now and then.
Beats playlists vs. my playlists
I was initially a bit annoyed by the fact that on iOS, my own playlists were mixed together with the playlists I had subscribed to in Beats/Apple Music. I have a relatively small number of my own playlists, which makes them easy to scan/find, but the presence of the Beats playlists made it much harder to pick mine out of the crowd. It took me a little while to discover that you can simply tap the “All Playlists” heading and that will let you choose to only view Apple Music playlists or your own playlists.
