These App Alternatives Are Faster Than Apple Music
Every time you open the Music app on your iPhone, there’s a good chance you’ll stare at the download icon for a lot longer than you’d like. Apple Music can be a great service for streaming and searching for music, but this iPhone app tends to be a lot slower and more buggy than you’d expect from Apple’s flagship product. This is definitely a case where third-party apps can offer a better experience, speeding up your access to your music and reducing your frustration. Here are four great alternatives to the Apple Music app.
Sur (iPhone, iPad)
Soor ($6.99) is a great example of what a native Apple Music app should be. It has a customizable home page that allows you to keep your favorite sections right at the top. If you don’t like the “radio stations” feature in Apple Music, you can easily hide it from Soor.
In addition to customizing the layout, Soor also allows you to create custom smart playlists. For example, you can create a 70s rock playlist that will automatically populate with items that match your criteria, excluding the band you absolutely hate.
Soor has an intuitive interface and also supports song lyrics synchronization via Musixmatch, so you won’t miss any important Apple Music features.
Marvis Pro (iPhone, iPad)
If you prefer the Spotify interface but are stuck with Apple Music on your iPhone, then Marvis Pro ($6.99) is the way to go. Its interface is as nice as Spotify’s but uses the Apple Music database.
The feature set of Marvis Pro is definitely for power users who are very picky about their playlists. It allows you to create smart playlists based on rules and filter songs, groups, genres and other categories from playlists you already have in your library. Marvis Pro also has a handy feature that lets you sort your music by length or number of plays, among other criteria.
Apple Music Electron (Windows, Linux)
If you are tired of iTunes on Windows, you can try Apple Music Electron . It’s free to download and works much better than Apple’s own player. If you only use iTunes to play Apple Music songs, you can switch almost immediately.
Apple Music Electron downloads much faster than iTunes and its interface is easy to use. You can also customize the theme in the app; it’s not exactly a throwback to the days of WinAmp skins, but it’s nice to have. Apple Music Electron runs on Windows and Linux and you can download it from GitHub .
AppleMusic.com (Internet)
If you’re fed up with the Music app on your Mac, consider using the Apple Music web interface . It’s not a huge improvement over the app anyway, but the good thing is that you don’t have to wait for the app to load. You’ll lose some features—the Apple Music web player doesn’t let you download songs or view lyrics—but that might not be a factor if you mostly listen to music in the background while you work.
If you don’t like Apple Music’s web interface, you can also try Thin Music or Fever Tunes , two other alternative web players for Apple Music that often load faster than Apple’s own website.