MusicKit business questions

Question

dimsumthinking OP

Created Oct ’21

Replies 3

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Hi,

Given yesterday's announcement of a new subscription I have some business/permissions questions about apps built on MusicKit. If this is not the place to ask them can you please direct me to where would be more appropriate.

(1) When we test to see if someone has a subscription, is there any difference between a Voice subscription and a regular subscription? i.e. will we be able to query and vend any song in Apple Music if the user has a Voice sub the same way we can if they have an individual or family sub?

(2) Can our app require that they have some sort of subscription or do we have to provide functionality even if they don't?

(3) If I read the agreement correctly, we can't store music for offline listening but we can create and use a playlist in Music. Is there a way to prompt the user to download the music to this playlist?

Thank you,

Daniel

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Answer 1

Frameworks Engineer OP

Apple

Oct ’21

Hello @dimsumthinking,

Thank you for your questions about MusicKit and the new Apple Music Voice Plan.

When you check the user's MusicSubscription, it will be configured with canPlayCatalogContent set to false for users with an active Apple Music Voice Plan, whereas it will be set to true for users with an active Apple Music Individual or Family Plan. That difference exists because it's not possible for third-party apps to initiate playback of content from the Apple Music catalog for users with an Apple Music Voice Plan.

We'll get back to you shortly with more information about the other two questions in your post.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

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Answer 2

dimsumthinking OP

Oct ’21

That's very disappointing.

I appreciate your response but Apple is encouraging people to embrace this less expensive subscription. I don't think customers will understand that this doesn't give them access to the entire library or that it would effect a third party app.

If you ask them "do you have a subscription?" They will think "yes I do."

And now it looks as if the lack of service is in the third party app.

Given that you have just released these APIs that allow us to offer great functionality from within a Swift app, I would request that Apple reconsider this decision.

I appreciate that the decision isn't yours and that you have the unfortunate task of explaining and defending a decision you didn't make - but the result is I can't go forward with my app as it will anger too many customers and they won't understand that the issue is with Apple not me.

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Answer 3

dimsumthinking OP

Oct ’21

Joe - any update on questions 2 and 3?

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