Why Do Apple Music’s Own Curated Playlists Have Songs That No One Can Play? ⇥ theverge.com

Nathan Ingraham, the Verge:

Between the shorter lengths and Apple’s smart recommendations, I found myself following a couple dozen playlists shortly after I started using Apple Music. By and large found them a really enjoyable way to find new tracks or dig in on a particular style, era, or artist. However, perusing these playlists has led me to one of the most ridiculous and unfathomable Apple Music bugs yet: a whole bunch of these playlists include songs that aren’t playable on Apple Music.

Yup, that’s right — I’ll be in the middle of enjoying Pitchfork’s Modern Americana Gold playlist and come across a song that has somehow been added to a playlist that Apple itself created, and that song will be greyed out, teasing me. It’s incredibly bizarre and frustrating and I have no idea how such a thing slipped past the humans curating these playlists.

Michael Rockwell comments:

I would guess that Apple isn’t limiting their curators strictly to the Apple Music library for the sake of future proofing. Apple hopes to eventually have all music available on the service and the currently unavailable tracks would automatically become playable once Apple acquires the proper rights.

I think Rockwell is right, but I think this is a way to coax labels into granting rights. It’s sort of like the name-and-shame battery menu in OS X, and the similar Settings panel in iOS. If you’re on that list, you’re responsible for screwing up the user experience.