Apple Music on Ubuntu

EDIT 2019: Now it's much more easy to use Web Apple Music Players (see answers below)


EDIT 2018: I've installed it and it works (Ubuntu 16.04 and wine 2.16).

Install iTunes with Apple Music on Ubuntu :

  1. Download iTunes 32-bits (Apple Music require a version >= 12.3) : https://secure-appldnld.apple.com/itunes12/031-24468-20150916-D642FEDC-5C68-11E5-8BC9-CC5C6DA99CB1/iTunesSetup.exe (source : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7270928?start=0&tstart=0)
  2. Follow iTunes setup installation (https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=31322) :

Installation:

1) Setup wineprefix with WINEARCH=win32

2) Leave configuration in Windows XP (for now)

3) Install with winetricks: gdiplus, msls31 ie8, ie8_kb2936068 .

  • If your winetricks is not able to install msls31 because of hash mismatch, just download .dll (it should be around 157 kilobytes) from any website (like filewatcher) and replace the existing one in windows/system32.
  • ie8_kb2936068 is not necessary but it seems iTunes Store is not crashing every time with it.

I was not able to install ie8_kb2936068, it works well without.

  • I do not recommend touching IE after installation at all, iTunes Store doesn't seem to work properly after that.

4) After you've finished installing components, switch to Windows 7 and run the installer. Make use it's 32-bit.

Then run iTunes (you can find it on your dash now) and it should work =)


ORIGINAL 2017: Update, it is now supported : https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=31322


Apple Music uses iTunes, you could try using wine/crossover to run it on Ubuntu. The problem is that iTunes has been very hard to run on Ubuntu. You can check the status of iTunes running on wine here. You can see that version 12.x (the latest) can be installed but nothing related to networking works. So if you already have music on your computer it will play it, but won't stream anything.

I do not recommend switching from Spotify to Apple Music if you're using Ubuntu. Stick to Spotify or try Google Play Music where both have a working web interface and Spotify has a dedicated app for Linux. If Apple ever offers a browser-based solution to iTunes maybe it'll be possible but I really doubt it. Apple's goal is to get you into their ecosystem and close all exit doors so you depend on them 100%.


Apple does currently not have a dedicated desktop program for Ubuntu. However, they provode an API thru theirs MusicKit JS (https://developer.apple.com/musickit/).

Developers has used the MusicKit JS in order to create a third party web player. Here are some third-part web players that redirect you to Apples' website in order to authenticate yourself so that you don't need to give away your password:

https://playapplemusic.com/

https://music.zacharyseguin.ca/

https://am.netlify.com/

They are open source and source code can be found on GitHub:

https://github.com/naveedgol/apple-music-web-player

https://github.com/zachomedia/apple-music-webplayer

https://github.com/bottleneckco/am