If Apple loves music so much, why can't it get streaming right?

Apple acts as if digital music is a solved problem, but there are definitely places where the company could improve the music listening experience.

- DAN MOREN

Over the last two decades, technology has reinvented much of what we do in our everyday lives, but the first major domino to fall was probably the advent of digital music. April marked 20 years since the launch of Apple's iTunes Store, fave.co/3KwCNDb (fun fact: a birthday shared with yours truly), which, though not the first way to obtain digital music online, was certainly the most far-reaching.

The digital music experience has certainly changed in the intervening years, especially with the rise of streaming over the past decade, but when it comes to Apple's take on the act of listening to music-well, there are some things that frankly haven't changed enough. It sometimes feels like Apple believes that digital music is a solved problem, and the company is sitting back and dusting off its hands. But there are definitely some places where it could improve the music listening experience.

Apple's handling of music you own and streaming music needs work.

NOT SO GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM

In 2019, Apple split off its venerable iTunes app on the Mac into three separate apps: Music, TV, and Podcasts. While some look back at the iTunes era with nostalgia, I'm not going to sugarcoat it: iTunes had become a hot mess. In theory, splitting these off into disparate apps related to specific types of media was a good idea: People don't want to watch TV shows or listen to podcasts in the same way that they listen to music.