Andyland, USA

Let’s take a short walk before we get into the meat of the matter. I’m opinionated when it comes to music. I’m very opinionated. But that doesn’t mean those opinions don’t sometimes change. 30 year old Andy is not as passionate or vitriolic about people liking certain bands as early 20s and High School Andy was. I still have my very strong opinions though. I lothe whatever the hell country music has morphed into, and I generally find myself bored to tears by what passes as top 40 pop music these days. Now, I used to not care for Taylor Swift, this is true. However, seeing her embrace her pop side, combined with the fact she seems like a decent person--I kinda like the girl. I don’t think myself as a fan, but I don’t groan or grumble anymore when her name is mentioned. It’s the same way I don’t care for Lady Gaga’s pop music, but as a person I like her. When she teams up with Tony Bennett, I think it’s golden. I also like that the combination of that duo helps to introduce Th...

Two weeks ago, Apple launched their new streaming service, Apple Music. Apple Music is built on the backbone of Beats Music—the streaming service that the popular headphone company launched last Winter--which Apple bought last year--and also was a service I was a subscriber of. So upon the day that Apple Music rolled out, I gladly rolled my account on over and began a three month trial of Apple Music. There's things about Apple Music that I really like, and there's things about Apple Music that I really hate. There's also things about streaming music in general that makes me feel weird, but we'll talk about that later on. First, let's talk about what I like. Because Apple Music is built off of Beats Music, the core of the service is very familiar to me. Curators, Apple Music Editors, and Activity sections, all of which contain playlists that have been curated by their music editors—actual, human music nerds making playlists for people. By in large, th...