Apple Music, your listening history, and the divide between Mac and iOS

Kirk McElhearn, on Apple Music and your listening history:

If you listen to music on your Mac – music that you’ve added to My Music, and that shows up in your iTunes library – then it shows up in a Recently Played playlist, if you have one. (iTunes creates this by default, but you may have deleted it. See below for instructions on how to create it again.) However, if you stream music through iTunes, or on an iOS device, it doesn’t get added to this playlist.

There are two issues here, both important.

First, there’s the lack of access to your listening history. This is valuable, both for the convenience of going back a few songs to remind yourself of a song you like, and for the value as social currency (sharing your music history/likes/experience with others). Apple is missing something basic here.

Second, there’s a huge divide between the Apple Music experience on your Mac and your iOS device. The first time you like a piece of music on your iOS device, you’ll get a “first love” alert. Smart. Apple is making sure you see the value of clicking on the heart next to a track.

But if you then hop onto your Mac and click your first heart, you’ll get that same notice. This is just a small example that illustrates that your left hand (Mac) and right hand (iOS) are not connected when it comes to Apple Music.