Apple Music: Three Quick Tips!

The spankin’-new Apple Music service, released a few days ago with iOS 8.4 and iTunes 12.2, has some pretty cool features, and below are a few tricks for using it that you might find helpful or just plain fun. I know I’ve been enjoying playing around with Apple Music, despite its…ummmm…quirks. Yeah, quirks. Can I use that word and still be on Apple’s good side? I can? Awesome.

Anyway, on to the tips!

1. Redo your genre selection. What’s displayed under the “For You” section is partly dependent upon what genres you chose when you initially walked through the Apple Music setup.

If you’d like to redo that configuration and choose differently, you can. Within Music on your iOS device, tap the silhouette at the top, and then touch “Choose Artists For You”:

Alternatively, within iTunes on your Mac you’ll click the silhouette icon near the upper-right corner, and then select the same option. 

Don’t worry! I won't spend my credit all in one place.

Once you do either of those things, choose the “Reset” button that’ll appear, and you can go nuts with making changes. 

 

2. Add Apple Music to your Watch. It’s neat that you can download music and sync it over to your Apple Watch, even if you haven’t purchased it! Here’s how. First, add the music in question to your library by tapping the little ellipsis icon next to it.

A new menu with a ton of options will appear. 

It’s easiest to then choose “Add to a Playlist”; your Apple Watch can sync with only a single playlist at a time, so if you’ve already got one set to go, just pick it from the list.

When the new music is added to the proper playlist, you’ll need to put your Watch on its charger to force the sync to start. You can verify which playlist is gonna sync (and see the progress) by opening the iPhone Apple Watch app and choosing My Watch> Music.

And then you can use your Bluetooth headphones to play the songs from your Watch, no iPhone required!

 

3. Use Siri. Siri can now respond to requests for Apple Music, so just ask.

As you can see, things can get a bit esoteric, and this is what I’ve been having the most fun messing around with. Apple notes that you can say things like “play music from [year],” “play the top song from [year],” “play more songs like this,” and so on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a song on the radio—you know, the actual AM/FM, crazy-old radio—and have wanted to hear it again immediately, and now I can! OK, maybe Apple Music is more “fun” than “quirky” after all. I’m still deciding.