Like most of the early triallists, my 3 months will be up very soon. Not sure I'll stick with it as I use free Spotify and have the new although admittedly limited Prime music service. Do you like it enough to stick with it? The Guardian has been assessing its post trial value.

http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...rth-paying-for

I got the family subscription mainly for my kids to use because I didn't really listen to much music. Since having it I've started listening to a lot more so we are going to stick with it.

That's a rare positive but yeah I can imagine it's big with kids if someone else is paying!!

I'm sticking with the £9.99 Spotify. I think the Apple Music app is very basic and I much prefer the design and features of Spotify. In fact, when Tidal was first released I also did the trial of that and I found that to be fantastic, despite what people say about Jay Z's motives for doing it. I actually found Tidal even better than Spotify. Right now I'm sticking with Spotify, but I might change to Tidal in a few months.

I'm sticking with it. I like it, does what it is supposed to do.

Double check you're not activated to continue the sub if you don't want to. Even if you de-activated it previously. I was charged today and know for a fact I removed the sub in month 1. But when I went in today, it was activated. I can't be 100% sure if I clicked the "Save" button at the bottom however. I think I would have but somehow my change didn't save. Worth checking.

I haven't even signed up for the Apple Music trial yet, and I'm a long-time Mac user.

I find these streaming services useful but also quite irritating. The one thing that I would find useful, they don't seem to do, and that is proper recommendations.

For example, on Spotify there are a handful of "because you listened to Artist A, you might like Artist B' suggestions. But the ones I've looked at are very loose connections. What would be really useful would be 'because you listened to Artists A, B and C, you should listen to this track by Artist D'. That way instead of just getting what looks like a random album by an artist loosely linked to another artist you liked, you'd get a specific track that showcased another artist at their best.

Does any streaming service do this?

I think you're highlighting the limitations of AI recommendations. It's the same with Netflix and even Amazon shopping. There's probably big bucks up for stake for someone who can make real progress with recommendations algorithms.

Google play music is very clever for recommendations based on our tastes, listening & habits on inter web.

I stopped on October 1st to see what happens. All the songs you have added remain in place but obviously you can't play them. I thought everything you had added would be removed leaving just the songs in your personal library. So you have to remember what is added from Apple music will not play. Or go through and delete them all. Anyway I have now subscribed again. I do like the service. So keeping it for now.

If you turn off iCloud Music Library in Music settings then all Apple Music tracks/albums disappear.

As for me I'm keeping the subscription going as have more than made the most of it during the trial.
Also using family sharing with my teenage kids who are paying me £5 each to use it which makes it even more of a bargain.

yep that exactly, it didnt over me anything over Spotify, the best thing I thought was that i have 48000 mp3 that I could link it all together but I couldnt use them properly, it mismatched, changed the songs so they were actually different songs from their names and messed up albums, not to mention that they still havent increased the limit to 100,000
tracks.

Spotify aint that good at using your own music either , it cant cope with the number of mp3s I have and freezes sometimes

Best thing was Beats 1 but without a timeshift option like iPlayer I couldnt really use it properly, Zane Lowe show on at a bad time for example.

Does it still allow you to stream tracks you've bought or uploaded to your library (like Google), or is there no free option at all?

You can still listen to anything you've bought and cd rips you've synced from iTunes, you just can't listen to any none purchased tracks.
Beats 1 is also still available to listen too.