I remember all the way back on my Commodore 64 having a small collection of MIDI music files. It was so limited at the time that the song from Beverly Hill's Cop, Axel F, was broken down into two files. The right channel and the left channel. To play it right you'd need two Commodore 64 setups and a steady hand to hit play at the same time on both.
On the computer front, I got serious with music when I got WinAmp MP3 player. This was just before things like Napster and other pirate/sharing services got big. Most music was ripped from CDs to mp3s and then shared among friends. WinAmp, if you haven't used it, was great. I don't remember how long I specifically used it but I don't think I completely dropped it until I got iTunes. We might be talking like ten years.
The real combination of these two music worlds happened in 2003 when I bought a 3rd generation iPod. That's when Apple opened up the iPod and iTunes world to Windows and it gave me the ability to transfer ALL of my music to a device and carry it around with me. It replaced my Walkman and after getting a cassette adapter, my tapes and CDs in the car. I think the pinacle of this was in Lita, my 1999 Chevy Lumina LTZ. I bought a head unit and iPod connector so that I could plug the iPod directly into the car stereo and even use the steering wheel controls to control the iPod! Good times!
For a good long time that was what my music was. I listened to it on my computer and I listened to it in my car. I had my trusty iPod with plenty of space for all my music and just kept collecting mp3s and maintaining various playlists. As I got new cars I either replaced the head unit so I could plug the iPod directly in like in Lita, or I used the tape adapter.
At some point, I added music to my phone. I know I had some phone on my Samsung Blade around 2005, but the phone's audio comparatively sucked, it didn't have much space for music, and you had to purchase music from the Samsung store so I couldn't keep my full collection there. It was a novelty. It was more than likely around the time that I got my Samsung Galaxy S 4 (my first Android) or my Nexus 6 that I started adding that to my music players. iTunes didn't work on Android, of course, so I had to transfer my music to Google Play Music. Yeah, it was a pain because I had my 'primary' music and my 'secondary' music. I'd hear a song I'd want on the radio or in a movie or wherever. I'd then go to iTunes and buy it, which added it to The Computer immediately. As soon as I plugged the iPod in, I had the new song in my car. But if I wanted it on my phone, I had to somehow get the song again or rip the copyright protection off and then upload it to Google Play Music. At that point, I could download it to my Android and listen to it there.
Sometimes the music just wouldn't make it to the phone as it was more of a novelty. I didn't NEED it on my phone. I probably would have stayed that way if iTunes would have been reasonable. But over the years iTunes grew more and more bloated. It was running processes in the background and at startup. It actively slowed down my computer when I loaded it up. So, at some point, I realized I could flip the script. I could make Google Play Music my primary source of tunes and even go so far as to purchase songs there. Since those songs were easier to clean of copyright protection I could easily add them back to my iTunes library and therefore keep my iPod up to date meaning The Car used iTunes while The Computer and The Phone switched to Google Play Music.
This was also the time of the great purge. I think my playlists for all songs had about 1,600 songs. Google Play Music would only allow playlists with up to 999 songs. MOST of my playlists, as they were vastly curated, were well below that number. But I had an 'all' playlist with all music and a 'Good' playlist with about 1,400 songs in it (eliminating around 200 silly songs). I ditched the 'all' as I rarely listened to it anyway and shaved the 'Good' down to 999 songs. I remember that restriction lasted about a year which meant that any song I added meant removing another song from the list.
Eventually Google Play Music removed that restriction and at that point my playlists started to grow again. I've only recently gotten back up to 1,600 songs!
Over the years I added more places for my music. I stopped listening to the radio at night as I fell asleep and added an alarm clock that could dock my iPod. I got a Bluetooth speaker for the bathroom so I could listen to my songs in the shower and while shaving. And finally around 2018 I made our home smart. I added Google Home devices in several room.
The smart house replaced the bathroom speaker and the alarm clock (seriously... it IS my alarm clock as well as music to go to sleep to!). That leaves me with these places for my music; The Computer, The Car, The Phone, The Smart Home.
Google Play Music still worked everywhere except for the car. And if you've followed along with this blog, you've seen some of that transition where I tried various music players in the car like a digital walkman. None of them really worked and I still had to use iTunes.
Once Google replaced Google Play Music with YouTube Music, I gave up on that as a service. YouTube Music SUCKED. You'd think for a search engine company it would have the ability to search and organize things at the core of any product, but YouTube Music was just terrible at it.
Briefly, during the pandemic, when I had an iPhone I switched to Spotify. It worked on The Computer, The Smart Home, and The Phone. I could still transfer files around and use iTunes to keep the car up to date. Finally, I think it was late in 2021, Apple Music offered an Android version. With that version came the ability to stream on the Google Home Smart Home. And at the same time I was getting used to connecting my phone to my car so that I could ditch the iPod/Walkman devices.
Apple Music was now on The Phone, The Mart House, The Car (via the phone). The Computer, since there wasn't a Windows version of Apple Music, still used iTunes. A year or so later when they added Apple Music to Windows, I was finally completely unified again. I had Apple Music everywhere.
Now, Apple Music never EVER worked great. It's so obviously an Apple product and it's gimped everywhere else. Here are some examples:
The Computer
I can access Apple Music via iTunes (big, bloated, bad) or the Apple Music app on Windows. The app is fine and not nearly as bloated as iTunes but I swear by debloating what iTunes was, it took out half of the options. One thing I used all the time was switching between sound outputs. I go from my speakers to my headset and back. iTunes had a setting to follow that. Apple Music doesn't. So if I start listening to music on my speakers then switch to my headset I have to close Apple Music and start it up again. It also can't seem to remember where it's window was. MS Word, Photoshop, Chrome... these all remember where they were when they're closed. They open in the same spot. Not Apple Music. And specifically not it's mini player.
The Phone
In all honesty, it works fairly well on Android. It doesn't like to organize the music in playlists with as much finesse as the Windows version does, but that just means its harder to find a particular song. Most of the time I'm just putting a playlist on shuffle so the problem doesn't come up all that often.
The Smart Home
I had to buy a family plan to use it fully on the Google Home. For the longest while Mom and I would go to sleep at roughly the same time. I listen to an hour's worth of music while Mom listens to nature sounds. Well, to have two streams going on at once means having the family plan. Otherwise mom would be going to sleep with her babbling brook or thunderstorm sounds playing and as soon as I turn my music on, her sounds cut out. In addition to that, Apple Music and Google Home would occasionally just not get along. I'll tell one of my Google Home devices "Hey Google, shuffle playlist Shower Power" and it would come back "Okay, playing the album Shuffle by Powerhouse" or some other nonsense. When it gets that way it will last for days and the only way around it is to use a different service (since I get YouTube music with a subscription I already pay for, I keep it up to date with my Apple Music playlists and can therefore say "Hey Google, shuffle playlist Shower Power on YouTube Music" and it will work). The same would happen to Mom and her nature sounds.
The Car
A few years back I started using Android Auto which lets me use Apple Music. I even bought a wireless adapter which let me 'connect' my phone to my car without any wires. Just sit in, turn the car on, and Android Auto appears on the screen. As it's through the phone, it had the same problem as The Phone above... organization sucked. It was also incredibly slow when doing anything other than playing music. If I had to go into my library and pick another playlist it would hang on several screens for tens of seconds. Certainly not long in the grand scheme of things but longer than I want to take my concentration off the road while hurtling down the highway at 75 miles per hour!
None of these were big enough of a reason to stop using Apple Music. For twenty three years in one way or another I've used iTunes and/or Apple Music. But then Tatiana came along. You see, The Car was no longer a device that I'd carry from the computer to the car and it was no longer dependent on my phone. It was it's own Android Automotive operating system and could stream its own music. When I get into Tatiana I don't connect Android Auto. Instead I boot up my Pocket Casts app when I want to listen to PodCasts. Ideally I'd load up Apple Music when I want to listen to music but... Apple doesn't put out Apple Music for Android Automotive.
For a while I tried to split my services again and use YouTube Music in the car. But the Android Automotive YouTube Music app is just awful. Terrible. It simply does not know what 'shuffle' means. When I pull up my 'Drive' playlist it has around 900 songs. YouTube Music would seem to pick out five or six songs and then shuffle between those. It was just bad. So, since I didn't drive her all that much, I just went back to Android Auto for music. That's all I used Android Auto for. Navigation, maps, audio books, podcasts... these were all run natively on the Android Automotive operating system in Tatiana.
When I got my job, I started my daily commuting again. My commute, audio wise, looks like this: Start the car up and listen to music while I drive to the highway. Once on the highway I put on a podcast and listen to it. When I'm about a mile or so from my exit, I change it back to music. When I get to work I take out my phone and put it into Do Not Disturb mode... and that disconnects it from Tatiana. On lunch, I want to listen to a podcast but when I turn the car on it defaults back to Android Auto and tries to play music... which it can't because my phone is still in Do Not Disturb mode. So I have to flip Tatiana over to Pocket Casts and put my podcast back on.
The annoyance of Apple Music on The Computer, The Phone, The Smart Home, and now The Car finally boiled over. I'm ready for a change.
During the Pandemic I'd used Spotify and have good memories of it. I recall one of its biggest problems was in uploading my 'original' music. Songs that it didn't have in it's service but I still wanted. But between then and now, I've been purging almost all of those. Some of them are decades old and they're of such bad quality (when compared to the lossless version I stream) that it's jarring. If its a song that I can't stream... I dump it. I mention that because uploaded songs won't be a problem on Spotify any longer.
With as integrated as my music is to so many parts of my life, I didn't just want to jump off the deep end and deal with the switch everywhere all at once, so I decided to take it in turns.
After signing up for a premium account I downloaded the Spotify app and started using it to listen to music. It went surprisingly well. About the only problem I have is that I organize my songs by 'Date Added'. On Apple Music about three quarters of my music shows up as being added on 2022 or before. Only songs added after that are in true date added order. But that's still four years worth. Well... Spotify shows ALL of my music as being added a week or so ago in 2026. Annoying, but not problematic.
What IS problematic on the computer is the mini player. It has a really good mini player. It shows the album art, lists the song title/artist/album currently playing, and then has a que of upcoming songs underneath that. BUT, the make it so that the miniplayer stays on top of all other windows. I don't want it on top. I use that space occasionally and put things on top of the mini player. Worse, I view videos in full screen and the mini player will even remain on top of those. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, but it's a change.
After that worked fine, I downloaded the Spotify app on my phone and on Tatiana. They both work wonderfully. I was able to download all the songs on my phone so they'll play in their best format and Tatiana can use Spotify to stream in very good quality while driving along. In fact, Spotify on Tatiana works well enough that I've stopped Android Auto from connecting automatically.
The next experiment is to add Spotify to the Google Home. Just add it. I can then call up Spotify for music to listen to at night and in the shower. Nothing will change for mom as the default will remain Apple Music. So long as that goes well without any hiccups for me at night or in the shower, I'll then make it the default for the home. My first trial will be making sure it can play music in my room and nature sounds in mom's room at the same time. If it can't, there's a 'family' account which hopefully WILL allow that.
And finally, if that DOES work, I'll ditch Apple Music. I currently use Apple Music and Apple TV services. Having Apple Music in family mode and Apple TV service makes it so that having the family plan of Apple One worth while. That's $26.99 a month. I'll be able to reduce that to simply Apple TV for $6.99 a month. Spotify premium costs me $12.99 a month. They have a 'Duo' account that might work for Mom and me at $18.99 otherwise it's the family plan for $21.99 a month.
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