On canceling my Apple Music subscription

If you had told me 4 years ago that I would unsubscribe from Apple Music I would have scoffed loudly. Having unlimited music anywhere I have my iPhone or any Apple device is like magic. I'm walking and want to listen to REM? I can ask Siri to play REM as a random mix of songs or any specific album. As someone who grew up with cassettes, records and then cds, it's a dream to be able to play anything into my ears as desired.

But a couple years ago I started noticing that I'd drifted into a habit of mostly listening to LoFi style music almost constantly. Then a year ago my listening shifted again, this time away from the Music app to YouTube as I got in the habit of playing one of these screensaver like music videos. Is this the new elevator music? What has happened to me?? From LoFi to Jazz or, in mid September a spooky but still light and relaxing Halloween theme. There's Medieval and Tolkien themed videos, ambient space craft and on and on. Load up a video and it will play for hours with the relaxing music or sounds and a lightly animated video. It's so relaxing.

I found I was hardly using the Music app and paying $10/month seemed awfully wasteful. I gave myself a few months to think about it and then turned off the renewal. It's been a couple months and I can safely say, I don't miss it.

Something I did have to sort out is what to do when out walking or doing chores. The problem with the above solution is that playing videos on the iPhone works fine but I'd like to be able to lock the screen and this often results in the video stopping. Sometimes putting the video in PiP mode will allow it to continue, other times not. Also, when I'm doing chores I really want to hear higher energy, lyrical music.

My solution is the FileBrowser app which lets me browse local network drives and which has an excellent built in media player. Pre-Apple Music I had a fairly large local Music library which I still have on my Mac. I've FileBrowser lets me save favorite locations. I've saved the Music folder of my the library as a favorite. If I know I'll be within WiFi range of my tiny house I can just stream albums straight from the hard drive. If not I can copy whatever music I feel like listening to the Local Files section of the FileBrowser app and it works like a charm.

I don't see myself missing Apple Music anytime soon and I will to admit that I find a bit of satisfaction anytime I can cut a service and implement a work around. Just a wee bit of effort keeps me plenty satisfied.